Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Land Use And Transportation Committee 20240713

Good afternoon, and welcome to the land use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board o board of supervisors. I am aaron peskin joined by supervisor safai and on my left by member dean preston. Our clerk is ms. Erica major. Do you have announcements . Yes due to the Health Emergency City Employees and the public the board of Supervisors Chamber and Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely at the same extent as if physically present. Public comment is available for each item on the agenda both channel 26 and sfgovtv are streaming the number across the screen. Each speaker is allowed two minutes. Comments to speak during the Public Comment are available by calling 8882045984. The access code is 3501008. Then press pound and plowed again. When you are connected dial 1 and zero to speak. You will beelined up in the order you dialed. The system will be silent when you are waiting. They will notify you when you are in line. Callers will remain on mute. Account for time delays between live coverage and streaming. Best practices call from a quiet location and turndown your television or radio. You may submit comment in the following ways. Email me. If you submit via email it will be included as part of the matter. Written comments may be centuryithroughcity hall. Thank you. As i have done for a couple months i would like to thank the behindthescenes staff making this Virtual Meeting happen. Thank you john, arthur, brent, john carroll as well as the folk at sfgovtv. With that, madam clerk, would you please read item two out of order. An ordinance amending the planning code to provide that in the urban mixed use district all office uses are prohibited except that a professional service, Financial Service or medical service is allowed as conditional use on the ground floor when primary open to the general public on a client oriented basesis. Call 8882045984 and bles prese and zero to speak. If you are on hold, standby. My understanding is that the sponsor of this legislation, supervisor ronen who is trying to call me and i am trying to call her back would like to have this item continued. I see that her legislative aid is participating in this meeti meeting. Ms. Binart is my understanding correct . You are welcome to speak before this committee. Amy, come in. Amy binart. Thank you very much for accommodating our request to continue. We would like to request the same one more week. We would like to hear this on may 11th. With that, i would just defer to your actions. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to item number 2 that is sponsor has requested a one week continuance on . Madam clerk. I think you might be on mute, madam clerk. I cant hear you. I have two callers. I will call the first caller. You have two questions remaining. You have two minutes to speak starting now. I would like to remind callers to turn down the tv. We are getting feedback from the television. Next caller. You have two questions remaining. Hello, you have two minutes to speak. I am calling in regards to item 2. It is insane you are going to make it harder to open job site offices in this current economic climate. Wwe are going through a terrible recession. We need every possible office space. Anybody trying to open an office needs to do that without conditional use hearing. Sorry i have a job or i am retired, and i dont care. It is the wrong set of priorities for the board. You shouldnt have to beg and plead with a bunch of over concerned people that my job, office cant be in this neighborhood. Any job now is valuable and we need to make that happen. Think about the workers in the offices. Think about the tax money to generate for the city and think about the revenue that other businesses in the area would get by having more workers in place. That has to be the number one priority Going Forward. Think about that instead of whether the neighborhood cares if a coffee shop is open. You have two questions remaining. I am garrett. I am a resident of San Francisco. I am calling in regards to item two. While i support to spirit of the proposed legislation to promote housing over office uses in district nine. I am concerned by lack of out reach to the handful of sponsors in district nine whose projects would be impacted, particularly the lack of grandfather the projects would receive should it pass a written. Given the extraordinary amount of time and money and project sponsors must obtainness approvements for the land use environment, it is utmost importance for consistency. I recommend that all project that were in the pipeline prior to the introduction of this legislation be granted grandfathering clauses. And that all future proposals are accompanied buy out reach to the sponsors whose projects may be affected. Thank you. Next caller. You have two minutes to speak. Hello, caller. That conpleats the queue. Thank you. Seeing no other members of the public, Public Comment is closed. Madam clerk, on the motion requested by the representative of supervisor ronen to continue one week to may 11th, a roll call, please. Motion to continue to may 11th. Supervisor preston. Aye. Safai yes. Aye. Peskin. Aye. You have three ayes. Can you please the first and last item. Ordinance to demolish a Single Family residential building on a site zoned as rh1 or rh1d when it is not affordable or financially accessible housing. Members of the public for this item call 8882045984. The access code is 3501008. Press one and then zero to line up to speak. For those on hold, please standby. Thank you, madam clerk. I want to thank and welcome supervisor mandelman, the author of this legislation. I am proud to be the soul cosponsor. This is an issue that has been kicking around for a long time, and as supervisor mandelman will remember, i believe supervisor safai will remember, supervisor preston was not on the board. I have a history of fixing infirmities in 317 of the planning code to prevent demolition of extent Affordable Housing and i rant to thank supervisor mandelman and his staff for bringing this forward. I believe supervisor mandelman has tweaks and i have tweaks based on the suggestions in both of our cases that came out of the Planning Commission hearing. The Planning Department is ably represented in the meeting so if we have any questions of the Planning Department, they are here. Of course, the recommendation of the commission are set forth in the package that is before this committee. With that i will turn it over to supervisor mandelman. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. Thank you, chair peskin. Thank you for your leadership on demolition issues. For a long time the item before us today is an ordinance that i drew with supervisors cosponsor to close a loophole for Single Family homes that encourages speculative demolition of existing housing to be replaced by very large and more expensive and less affordable Single Family homes. Currently 317 of the planning code requires conditional use approval in most cases where the demolition is proposed. There is an exception. Some existing Single Family homes can be demolished if the value of the property, not the value of the home, is above a certain amount. Currently 2. 2 million. That is set by the Zoning Administrator and adjusted periodically. These are demonstrably unaffordable that is referring to the property and not the home. They are exempt from the conditional use requirement. When 317 was added in 2007, part of the original logic was the loss of expensive housing was less concern in terms of preserving existing units. The average sale price tripled and the value is on the development value. Speculators are willing to pay 2 or 3 million for a lot with a thousand square foot home not worth anything near that on its own because they know they can build a 5,000 square foot mansion and flip it for 5 or 6 million or 7 million or more. Bizarrely, this practice triggers a special exception to allow the old house to be demolished without any public review any other demolition would require. This is not about saving 2 million homes as some suggested. It is about stopping or stalling the 7 million mansions being built or giving those projects the same level every view as any other demolition. I also want to be clear that it is an exception only applies on property zoned for rh1 or 1d. Those are subject to fink el family zoning. It doesnt make good sense to get an expedited review when the demolition of the same home in the area for two, three, four or more units have to go through conditional use process. This is to level that Playing Field and ensure there is a chance to look at these sites and push for appropriate replacement be in terms of design, scale and density. Before i conclude i will describe the two amendments i ask to be considered today. A non substantive change for clarity we arrived at with the deputy City Attorney jensen who is here today. I want those amendments in front of this supervisor. I want to confirm with my colleagues on this panel, supervisor safai that what is before you as well, is that correct . Let me doublecheck. Usually i just hand one to my left and one to my right. I am sorry to interrupt. I have them. Supervisor preston. Yes, i have those as well. Sorry. Please proceed. This first change is simply to retain reference to the remaining exception related to unsound buildings in the list of exceptions in 317c. You will see at the bottom of page 2 in the current version of the ordinance that c5 is struck out. In the proposed amendment this language worry tained. Secondly, i would like to incorporate the grandfathering provision for projects in the pipeline prior to february 11th of this year. That would mean projects filed Development Application with planning prior to february 11 would continue under the existing review process. Those after that date are subject to the conditional use requirement. That is fair in this case. To make the change that i think we should make. In summary, colleagues, this would make a narrow amendment to eliminate the double standard favoring luxury mansions offer existing homes and new desert projects. As we continue to address the housing from multiple angles this will allow scrutiny and slow the loss of existing housing throughout the city. I ask for positive recommendation to close this loophole as soon as possible. Thank you for your consideration today. I want to thank chair peskin for the work done on the issue of demolition and the good ideas that were generated through our efforts around antidemolition last year. This is one of those good ideas. There are more. I want to thank jensen, jacob in my office and audrey and aaron star. Thank you. Thank you, supervisor mandelman. I dont see my colleagues with questions at this time. In so far as names are not on the roster, i thought that i would speak to the amendment that i would like to suggest at this meeting that i believe, and we can check with deputy City Attorney pearson, who is our Legal Council to this committee. I believe those two would require a one week continuance for additional Public Comment. This was actually discussed in the Planning Commissions hearing and in some part because of a piece of analysis that was done in Planning Department staffs report to the commission on supervisor mandelmans proposed changes. The relevance analysis is in the Planning Department staff report at the top of page 3 where in staff points out some of the infirmities in section 317 that was well intended and over the 13 years it has been on the books has been the subject of attempts to make it more effective and meet its Public Policy goals. As a matter of fact i might point out that i attempted to do that. I already mentioned that i attempted to present then the demolition controls but ran into a political buzz stop. In the staff analysis, they really point out and the Planning Department is concerned about the ability to enforce. I think there are a couple easy changes that we can make that meet the intent of supervisor mandelmans legislation and make the legislation more enforceable. I would suggest adding this additional text to 317 on page 2 at line 14. This is under definitions and this is actually very simple. Right now the definition of residential demolition shall mean any of the following work on a residential building for which the department of building inspection determines the permit is required. That is first one. Or major alteration of the residential building proposing removal of more than 50 of the sum of the front and rear facades, and the removal of more than 65 of the sum of all exterior walls. Then it goes on to say three, a neutral. You said and. You said or here not and on the last part. What i am proposing in this amendment is to strike and and replace it with or. Okay. Good. I am proposing the exact same thing, and this is pursuant to a conversation that the Planning Commission had that was received favorably, none of them made a motion to make it part of their actual recommendations to this body, but the third is a major alteration that proposes removal of more than 50 of the vertical elements and more than 50 of the horizontal elements of the existing building. I suggest in that definition to strike and and insert or. I know that my staff has discussed this with supervisor mandelmans staff. This was well received in the discussion at the commission, but nobody made a motion to make that part of the recommendations to the panel. I would ask i would add that to it. If this panel. Wait. Can we hear from the department because i actually watched the tape on this conversation. I know you spent a lot of time and your staff spent a lot of time in terms of the conversations about demolition. What you are proposing is a significant change. I would like to hear from the Planning Department to see if this was something there was consensus about. I understand there was consensus about what supervisor mandelman is proposing. What you are proposing seems to be a significant proposal. I am interesting to hear how the Planning Commission received that. Absolutely. We will hear from the Planning Department staff what supervisor mandelman is proposing relatively to grandfathers is actually, as you will see in the committee package, is actually a formal recommendation of the commission. What i am proposing was discussed by the commission, does not need to be rereferred to the commission and we will let the Planning Department staff characterize it. It was well received. This is based in some part on the actual analysis by the manning Department Staff Planning Department staff and let me read the top of page 3 of the staff report. Quote. The proposed ordinance will not solve one of the major this is supervisor mandelmans proposed ordinance. Let me start again. Proposed ordinance will not solve one of the main problems problems with 317. It does not prevent those under the demolition threshold. As a result projects originally qualified as unaffordable will Submit Application for extensive remodel which does not preserve the relative affordability of homes. Worse yet. Section 317 controls disincentivize adding new units extremely difficult to accomplish without demolition. I think what i am proposing deals with precisely what staff raised and the commission discussed. Pursuant to vice chair safais request, mr. Maloney, the floor is yours. Mr. Chair, before do you that. Who do we have here from the Planning Commission . I mean from the Planning Department. Aaron star and Audrey Maloney. Audrey maloney is the chief author of the report. Good afternoon, Audrey Maloney from the Planning Department here to first of all, give the presentation briefly. The commission did hear this on april 23 and voted 51 to approve what was before them with the additional modification suggested and outlined by supervisor mandelman including grandfathering provision for submitted applications before the introduction of the ordinance february 11th. As to supervisor peskins recent amendment, we have not had a chance to look at this in depth. Just going off what supervisor peskin announced, it is my recollection the Commission Voted on a very particularly specific and limited scope of changes to 317. Although the verbiage change may seem simple, at first glance it appears to dramatically change the scope of the ordinance. What section 317 would do in april of itself, i believe this would create a massive amount of work for the department. It would have fundamental changes. The commission. I have to interrupt you. You cannot you can do what you want. You cannot in one breath say that the proposed ordinance doesnt solve one of the main problems. And your department opposed many of the changes that i proposed last year to actually fix those infirmities. It seems a little and i mean this not in a prejourtive way. Schizophrenic to say you recognize the problem, identify the problem. You say if we actually put into words or those two sentences that it will cause too much work for the department, lets analyze that a little bit. Which is you still have a quantitative measure that you have to consider, which is the removal of more than 50 of the front and rear facades and more than 65 of all exterior walls. You still have a quantitative threshold that requires an amount of staff work in the definition of demolition at b . Same at sub c. I dont understand how it adds more staff work. Having said that it does address the infirmity that you speak to in the staff analysis. Having said all of that, what is important is whether or not this was discussed at the commission and would need to be rereferred. The actual matter of fact is this was discussed at the commission and does not need to be rereferred or this supervisor would not be making these proposed amendments because i dont want to kick the can down the road for another 90 days. Absolutely, chair peskin. I want to make sure it is clear that we believe these changes would be significant. We all agree there is a major problem with code section 317 as to what the solution to that problem is. Unfortunately, i dont think my case report addressed that at the time of this ordinance, we were addressing a limited scope in change. That paragraph was to address this particular ordinance would not go to solve our problems with 317. It is clear that the departments and supervisors have differences how to accomplish the solution to the problem in 317. Our ideas are different there. I will say it is not a question to me as to whether or not this was considered. I would refer to City Attorney ann pearson. We also have aaron star, who would like to speak. Mr. Star, before i call you. I dont think you were done with your presentation. I did not mean to stop your presentation. I was to jump in there. You are welcome to finish before i call on mr. Star. Thank you, chair peskin. As a summary of what happened at the commission we had a significant amount of Public Comment. It was split between those who opposed the ordinance and the hurdles and it shouldnt be focused on during the current pandemic. Then the other half of callers feel it is important to add process for proposed demolition of housing. There was a petition in support of a grandfathering clause. That concludes that presentation. Mr. Star. Thank you, aaron star, Planning Department staff. I want to expand on what audrey had said about that. I dont believe it is really the issue about staff time because this is already a cumbersome process that we have to go through. Not many staff can do the calculations because they are so cumbersome and technical. It would increase the commission workload quite a bit. A lot more conditional uses before the Planning Commission to meet this threshold of dem demolition. You say 50 front and rear combined. If you take off the back and leave the front the same and just do the rear addition no matter how big or small that would trigger that. There is a lot we have not been able to analyze. We all agree that 317 is not working as intended. We disagree how to fix that. I dont think making minor strike throughs and putting in the ors instead of ands is going to fix the fundamental problem of 317. It does not encourage affordability or density. It sets up the problem where somebody is going to come in under the thras threshold and yu notice there is dry rot, you have to weather rise the side building walls, you have to make them title 24 compliant, fire rated. We think that while this is a minor change in text. It is a huge change of the workload of the Planning Commission to review things. I dont think it will solve the problems that are with 317. Respectfully, mr. Star, this is the second time that this supervisor is trying to address problem that we all recognize exist in this piece of code. The consistent response from staff at the department is this is no good, this is no good, this is no good. Respectfully, it is not as though you sat down and i dont mean you personally but the department which has a change in leadership has sat down to propose any other solution. Having said that, i believe and am delighted that the vast majority of staff at the Planning Department are very well trained, highly educated. When i here things that are complicated to figure out, and i quote from the law to determine whether 50 of the elements of an existing building as measured in square feet of actual surface area. I mean really . I dont think that is hard. I dont understand why you make this out to be some kind of incredible form of calculus. It is not. It is a simple math equation. How would you like to respond, mr. Star . I think that the department has sat down with many people, a lot of stakeholders to fix 317 so i disagree with the characterization. We have sat down with your office over many months, giving you ideas how to fix it. I disagree strongly. We compromised on everyone of those issues. Go ahead. If you would like, i am sure that our Deputy Director of current planning would love to sit down with you to show you how the calculations are done and how it is done. I would also like to go back on the commission hearings, it is clear, in my recollection only brought up by one commissioner and other commissioners did not have a broad consensus about it. This would be asitionnificant change to the planning code. Ms. Pearson. Yes, chair peskin. I have been led to believe that the discussion that was the at the Planning Commission meets the standards that would allow this body pursuant to additional Public Comment to adopt the amendment that i have set forward should it choose to do so. Without referral to the commission as mr. Star seems to be alluding to, is that your understanding . Thats correct. I have had a chance be to review the videotape of the meeting. Iconned this was considered. It is substantive but would require a continuance in committee for one week. I concur on both matters. Thank you ms. Pearson. Supervisor safai. Thank you, chair. I think we have a number of things going on. I appreciate supervisor mandelmans work on this. I know this is something that is Going Forward. I support supervisor mandelmans proposal. I understand what you are attempting to do is clarify in the process what demolition would mean. It is really clear and i think you would agree thinking the and to or increases the scope with which this would apply. As you demonstrated on so many things we worked together on three and a half years, something of that magnitude probably deserves more conversation. I know you and your staff spent time doing that. The grandfathering or date this would apply, was a different universe of projects. There are a lot of projects and i dont know how. Would be changed. I feel similar to the way we did within conclusionnary housing. The larger plans code changes. I would ask for additional time to have some more consensus around this. I am not sure if all stakeholders were aware this amount minute was come this amendment was coming. Planning staff seem to be asking for additional time to work to build consensus around this definition. It is air very difficult issue to attack. We agree we want to stop unauthorized or unlawful demolition. As mr. Star said if a rear addition to a house, if someone is doing a rear addition, my district has a significant amount of those. Families trying to create more live. If they would al alter to commercial uses. I dont think that is your intent. I think you are stopping them. Those that go beyond simple additions to property. I wanted to hear your response. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and working with supervisor mandelmans proposal. A couple thoughts. Lets be honest with ourselves. This is a phenomenon that is much more prevalent in supervisor mandelmans district than it is in district 11. That level of speculation and demolition that is, i think, our universally held policy goal to inhibit is much more prevalent in district 8 than 11. I think that this furthers the fundamental goals of supervisor mandelmans intent, but i would love to hear from him. Again, it is interesting that there is an ongoing narrative, if not mythology that was going on between planning and other offices. The realty is what i ended up bringing to the commission and board of supervisors was actually the subject of a compromise between myself and director john ramming which planning staff under pressure ultimately abandoned. I would be happy t to explain to me the loop of 65 of the exterior walls measured in inyear feet linear feet at the foundation level. That is straightforward. You can go to the Property Information map and igyo figuret out. I would love to understand why that is so complicated. Maybe we should go to mandelman and hear his comments. I wasnt done. I absolutely agree with what you said. I have seen and experienced the amount of homes in the city and i know they are trying to stop rebuilding of monster homes. What i want to hear why we are moving and and or. What i was referring to in district 11 is people trying to do simple additions to add on to their home. If the Planning Department says changing and to or in the b would begin to capture rear additions, i dont think that is what you are trying to do. I know that is not what we are trying to stop in supervisor mandelmans district. My point was to say that could potentially expand the number of projects around the city captured under this new definition. That is what i ask you to respond to. I didnt think you are trying to capture rear additions. Ultimately, we should hear from supervisor mandelman. Let me ask this question mr. Star or ms. Maloney, Planning Department staff think ththe removing the demonstrably affordable, does that increase that time . You guys arent in apappraisal business, isnt this saving staff time as well . I believe the staff report did acknowledge we have had a very low number of application in the last few years to demolish unaffordable hokes. The Planning Commission would not impact staff time in amount of applications you receive trying to demolish a home through that provision. It was 10 total over the last two years. That is where the staff time or lack thereof on the impact for the ordinance is coming from. Lets use those 10. Did staff obtain appraisals and analyze those . How did that work . Do you have the expertise . Square footage is one thing. Did you have the expertise to analyze those appraisals . I can give that to mr. Star if he would like to expand. We have proceed turs through code documents that state there would be an it appraisal submitted within 6 months of the application being filed. We are going to rely on the expertise of a professional appraiser. If the land plus building value is over the threshold we set, that is where we start the process for the unaffordable application. I agree with audrey said it best. We rely on the appraiser for that. It is not so much staff time. The demolition calculations even though you dont believe me do take time to figure out and not as clearcut as you might think. It is the amount of cases coming to the Planning Commission. They are very impacted. We are trying to make sure we approve Affordable Housing. We will be inundated with Small Business concerns as soon as shelterinplace is lifted and people go back to normal. We can hire more staff but there are only 7 commissioners and they meet once each week and the calendars are full. It should be more commission time. The original question i am not quite sure what you were asking. Just so you remember. If you go back to the legislation that i introduced, we tried to reduce staff time by saying that the project sponsor would submit the counts under penalty of perjury and you didnt have to spend time analyzing them. That was what we offered you a year ago before the department opposed that legislation. I am trying to figure something out. When i read the top of page 3. Worse yet section 317s controls dissen sentyvise. We are trying to give you policy ways around this. Every time we have something designed to meet the Public Policy goals that i think we all their, certainly mandelman. We will share that. Planning department has Different Things. It reminds me of the conversation about housing people in hotels during covid19. Every day it is a new excuse why it cant work. With that, supervisor safai . Any concluding remarks. I her planning say that about 10 cases were impacted under the current form of 317. What i heard them say is with this current proposal in change of definition, not to say it is not moving in the right direction. It cog significant in the amount of cases. I dont think it could potentially be getting at what you are intending to do if it is going to impact small additions to properties. That is not this supervisors intent. Good. That is all i was trying to get clarity on. I am asking what the intent was. That is clearly not my intent. What we are trying to balance here is tantamount to demolition and what the department is saying. I dont disagree with them. I think they are right. Cheaters will cheat. We have people ladu a demolition by pushing up against the threshold. I am pushing the threshold down. This is not about adding reasonable additions to buildings. This is interest tand tantamouns the housing that we have. That is not my intention and thank you for asking that a second time. Supervisor plasupervisor mandel . I am sympathetic, chair peskin. I couldsponsored it last year. I do think that there is a difference in times between what i am proposing, which is intentionally modest. It was a small piece. We did a fair amount of outreach and conversations about this. We have taken a fair amount of incoming from folks that belief five to ten projects away means slowing down. What you are proposing makes sense to me, but i also sense it makes sense to give the department an opportunity to explain whether this is going to increase whether they think this increases c. U. S by another 10 or 100 or what that does. For the board to think about well, if we increase ceus there, is there somewhere to alleviate pressure on the system. I do think that is going to take more time. I imagine that the Development Community alerted to this possibility will make itself heard in the next week. My preference this is your Committee Members can do what they want. Does the file get duplicated that you for card the legislation with positive recommendation and work on the committee giving the department an opportunity to weigh in. Thank you, supervisor mandelman and thank you for acknowledging you and i have been trying to fix this problem. Mr. Star and to your colleagues at the Planning Department, i really want to engage with you all on it with a discussion. As we solve your concerns about clogging up the system, staff time. You are subjected to political pressure as are me and my colleagues. Maybe this is not respect fully, you turn tail. We had conversations in my office with mr. Ram where you said, yes, these are reasonable ways to fix these things. Then when the pro very bial hit the fan, you guys went running. To supervisor mandelman and the Planning Department to the extend this covers 10 cases each year and yo you are getting raz, those 10 cases are in dr anyway. Net, net and i supervisor supervisor safai referenced it. There is no difference between the legislation as far as it gets rid of the ceu in certain cases and dr is attracted in many cases. Notice will say get rid of dr. We are not going there. If we are solving for 10 cases and that is the entire reason we spent an hour having this conversation, okay, what i would suggest is the following in so far as ms. Pearson, deputy City Attorney advic advised. Our changes are substantive. We havent had Public Comment. Roll them into one. Are mine substantive . Your second one is. Ms. Pearson. I advised supervisor mandelmans amendments were not substantive. Am sorry. My apologies. Okay. I am now seeing the wisdom of supervisor mandelmans ways. Supervisor preston anything to add or subtract . Seeing nothing from supervisor preston. Why dont we open this up for Public Comment. Thank you, mr. Chair. Sorry, chair peskin. This is supervisor preston. I was bumped off a minute ago. I have called in by audio only. I wanted to clarify. You missed one minute of my ramblings. We are opening up for Public Comment. Would you like to comment on this item number 1 . Checking for callers in the queue. Hello, caller. You have 12 questions remai remaining. Hello, caller. You have two minutes. I i am a resident of excels. I think this is fixing the wrong loophole. Single family homes sell for less than 1 million if they havent been renovated. That makes them good. They are relatively affordable. That doesnt make excelsior affordable. For the city is unaffordable for long time residents of my neighborhood. This proposes to fix the wrong loopholes. They are excepted from rent control. They are unaffordable relative to my neighborhood. The real problem is Housing Ordinance sage. We need to streamline the demolition of Single Family homes. It is false that only a Single Family home can be built. If you demolish one home you can build two a bu. I prefer condos were legal but encourage more a. D. U. S to help with affordability. If this happens you might make less affordable to top 1 . The preservation of the neighborhood character is destroying the architecture. I urge you to reform 317. You should encourage demolition of Single Family homes to build multifamily homes. Thank you for your home. Hello, caller. This is christy wong. I really appreciate the comments of the prior speaker and wanted to wish you the best in these strange times. We agree Single Family homes with higher Property Values should not be exempt from requirements other homes are subject to. Eliminating double standards is a good thing. As noted, section 317 does not serve the goals of obtaining Affordable Housing stock. It is a barrier to add new units to existing homes. Since it is a barrier, we feel this raises the better question why it should require conditional use permit at all, particularly when communities are considering the extra ordinary privileges of Single Family home ownership. Our concern is about efforts to extend the housing stock. We appreciate the effort we urge you to explore eliminating conditional use approval for demolition of nonhistoric Single Family homes where Additional Units will be added regardless of value. We feel this would be potential to make 317 more effective and equitable. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. You have 12 questions remaining. Two minutes to speak. I am robert. I live in San Francisco. I think that what supervisor peskin is proposing is huge attack on the planning process in San Francisco. Waiting until after a Planning Commission hearing to propose significant changes. Are they significant . No one knows because he skipped the Planning Commission and meetings with stakeholders to get around the Planning Department writing reports. Yes, changing the definition of what demolition is would be a change. Is it good . No one knows. Why are we making changes when no one knows. Supervisor peskin believes in Community Input. Why would we have major changes proposed without Community Input . That is completely backwards. The original legislation would have affectedhomes each year. That is really nothing. This change no one knows. No one knows the effect until the report is written. I urge this committee to follow its own best practices with Community Input to make the decision about solving the problems in 317. I can suggest a number of changes to change how section 317 operates. You can get the demolition permit on monday. The other permit on tuesday. There hasnt been analysis of those ideas. Follow common sense and get analysis. You have 11 questions remaining. Two minutes to speak. I think this is nonsense. Supervisors would allow more family development. Single family homes are not affordable. This is a waste of everybodys time. Thanks. Do you have another caller . Hello, caller. Residential bidders association. I am shocked at the lack of openness in this amendment. The last time 317 was discussed i believe it was three to four hours of good solid discussion and Public Comment at the Planning Commission level. That is not occurring here because it is in here at the 11th hour. This legislation and amendment will have a major impact on our department and the ability to process. Every rear yard addition is now a c. U. Every year addition needs lawyers and higher impact fees because the c. U. Profits doubled the fees for this type of work. Same for vertical additions. I am just guessing 40 to 60. It would be a huge impact creating legislation to promote projects is what we need to look for. There is not one word to promote density or equal units. These are the flatteds. There is not one thing for middle income people of San Francisco. We need policy that encourage the right product, not something that is thrown in at the 11th hour with no transparency or openness or ability to comment and somehow to implement this as well. This is crazy. You have nine questions remaining. I am francisco. What is missing. We have a Planning Department that analyzes every aspect. Now you supervisors want to bring something before this land use and Transportation Committee for a decision made by the planning decision on the back burner. You know, the Art Institute that deprives San Francisco of thousands and thousands of rental units, something where people can get a place to live because hundreds and thousands of rental units were removed and rental board did nothing. You board of supervisors are doing this in a pandemic. You are talking about rich people, Big Developers trying to use this mickey mouse law that it may be 10 times or four or five times before the board of supervisors. It is discretion and you have to make a judgment. That is what i have to say. Thank you. You have eight questions remaining. Two minutes, caller. Thank you i am from the deloris heights improvement club. I thank you for bringing this change forward and also to thank supervisor peskin. This loophole in 317 has been exploited by developers for years. There is an increasing pace of demolitions of homes large and small and gradeter oversights is needed. Protection of the existing stock is in the public interest. There is no public purpose in demolishing the house and replacing it or a house on a conveyed ruple house and replacing on a larger house. The code should treat them all consistently and treat them with the conditional use hearing. I can say this for several reasons. The standard for granting the c. U. Is for dr. The scope of issues the commission can act on is broader. Dr is not an adequate solution or same opportunities for bringing in public benefits. I support to Planning Departments grandfather statement of january 11th. I ask it be approved quickly. Thank you very much. Two minutes. Good afternoon. I hope everyone is okay. This is georgia. I continue to support the change to 317 for the affordable. As i stated at the Planning Commission hearing at the 23rd of april. My comments were included in the staff report. People can get any kind of appray sal they want. That is the Sticking Point with this loopholing to get a demolition. The advantage of closing the loophole besides stopping demolitions in the rh1 and rh1 d you have the potential. If it is before the commission and they want to des fithey can do it properly with a decent unit through a. D. U. Legislation for the state and city. I think that it is a very good thing in terms of what has gripped the citiesanticly district 8. The people want to see reasonable alterations. People who want to live in their houses want reasonable alterations and neighbors want to see reasonable alterations. That is where this legislation is headed. I understand supervisor peskins concern as well as commissioner moores and also commissioner imperial raised questions, too, that needs further exploration. This is good legislation for now, it makes sense and i want to thank everyone involved on the staff in Planning Department and Supervisors Office, and ms. That is it. Take care. Than thank you for your comm. Please continue to hold. Hello, you have two minutes, caller. I am a renter in district 5. I find this incredibly frustrating. Over the years i have seen every supervisor at some point say they are progressive. They want more Affordable Housing. It is easy to say that on a campaign trail. What do you do when you write legislation . You write it like this and amendments like this. Lets be real. This legislation if it is a little bad like the original or really bad like the amendment from peskin. It wouldnt solve the problem of affordability. It is preventing one mansion owner from looking at someone elses mansion. Why do we care . Why is it to protect the Single Family homeowner . To those on the board who are progressive and i believe you are or try to be. Lets make it easier to build the housing. Lets foforbid this demolition. Remove rh1 zoning. Make anything to build Affordable Housing by right. In a progressive city we dont ask rich neighbors if it is okay to build housing for less fortunate people . Are you doing this . No. You argue over what size mansion is allowed. Do something to make it easier . I havent be seen any legislation to remove obstacles to build new housing. When will you start saying no and start saying yes. The people being priced out and construction workers all want more housing. I dont understand. You have search questions re search questions re 7 questions remaining. Two minutes. I am sonya trout. I also think this legislation should be promoting density. The callers today have been so amazing. The previous caller. We are asking for up zoning. It is proponents that care about affordability they wouldnt be mad somebody is building 5,000 square foot structure they would be mad it is one home. They would ask like we are to trash all of this, go with the suggestion tha that single famiy homes. Everybody agrees on that. Do something positive, you know. Say yes, like the previous speaker says. Thank you so much. You have six questions remaining. Two minutes. This is laura foot. I think this legislation is going to do what the Planning Department said not helping with affordability. I dont understand why we are paying attention to it right now. We are in the middle of a crisis every person who has given Public Comment, every planner who has spoken on the legislation has Something Better to do than this. I dont think this is the right thing to be doing at this time, let alone ever. The Planning Department has told us that requiring c. U. S for tearing down Single Family homes does not increase Affordable Housing or affordability. Why are we taking any step in the wrong direction now . This doesnt make any sense. It is a waste of everyones time and resources. We dont have time to waste right now. At this time is when we literally do not have time to be wasting. This is bad legislation that indulgeses people to yell about fearing large buildings in their neighborhood. It says we are going to lock things in amber. Wrong direction. I hope you decide it is not worth your time. Thank you for your comments. Next caller please. You have five questions remaining. Two minutes to speak. Hello. This is jonathan ran doll. These bills add more to the housing supply. I oppose this because it doubles down on demolition. I am surprised peskin is spending so much time on the bill last year. Please watch the meeting june 20th to learn about the problem was the bill. The problem is not hard to determine what 50 of this is demolished. Preserving th this has nothing o do with afford built. As we learned at the demolition bill hearing it is not very dido remove the walls. The premise is old houses are more affordable. That is incorrect. Rehousing the future depends on this. Seed corn is most affordable. I propose to focus on protecting tenants and not preserve 50 of the studs. If you want to expand carve out an exception to construct a greater number of units. Please amend the ordinance to create more ordinance or sleeping room. Thank you. You have two minutes. Good afternoon. I am sarah. I am calling to join my fellow members of the nv action in opposition of this bill. Anything that is going to be a step in the direction of preventing multifamily, multiunit housing is a step in the wrong direction. We are in a pandemic which is being exacerbated by the already existing housing crisis. Please oppose this. Dont create more work for the Planning Commission. They need to be focusing on multifamily housing, focusing on projects to promote density, we need workers in San Francisco to contribute to the economy and rebuild the city after this Public Health crisis. This is just, again, a step in the wrong direction. It doesnt do anything regarding affordability. It creates unnecessary work right now. Please focus on building more homes. Thank you. You have three questions remaining. Hello. Two minutes. I have been listening to this discussion. This amendment legislation captures a small sub set of homes. These are homes that were not included in conditional use authorization. They were exempt because they were too expensive. Lets bring them into the conditional use authorization process to be reviewed because many of them are bought by investors who will demolish them. What is going to happen when they are demolished . That is the question that can come up at the conditional use authorization hearing. Should this house be demolished . What will replace it . I support the legislation. It is sensible, and, you know, for the small number of these unaffordable homes in this category, it is something to consider because developers will buy up a place and build a mega mansion. We need to stop this. Also, the grandfathering clause, lets keep that. As far as peskins replacement in the 317 of the and or. That is hitting the third rail, touched a nerve. If there is a better explanation as to what effect these changes of or and and makes on 317 that might be helpful to the public so they understand what you are trying to get at, supervisor peskin. Lets move this along and be done with it. You have two questions remaining. Two minutes. As the previous caller pointed out, with this legislation we have the opportunity for debate between mega and megamega mansions. What i dont understand is we have a path to requiring further review on demolitions if it is in rh2 or rh3 zones. Why dont we opt Single Family homes by rezoning those lots to rh2 or rh3. We will not have the tools to make progress on the problem of afford built. It will slowdown every other project and prevent the city from collecting the additional property tax revenue on those lots, which will be eventually redeveloped for a mega or megamega mansion. Two minutes. I am in opposition of the legislation. I dont understand the point given 30 has the provisions designed to protect tenants from housing being demolished. I feel like this is all here to solve made up problems of monster homes. A nicelooking house with two bathrooms rather than 1. 5 or 1500 square feet rather than your 800 square feet house is a problem. That is not something staff or legislators should spend time on. We should be encouraging demolition as long as they add to the count in San Francisco. We have a shortage of multifamily housing in the city. Thank you very much. You have zero questions remaining. That completing the queue. Thank you, madam clerk and thank you the members of the public for your Public Comment. I dont know if there is any additional comments from the sponsor or members of this committee, but what i would propose is in alignment with what sponsor mandelman proposed. As i indicated i thought his Second Amendment would require a one week continuance, in so far as it doesnt, i suggest we duplicate the file, add to send the original file duplicate the file, amend both files to include supervisor mandelmans amendments, and amend one of them to include my amendment, and that we send the duplicated file with supervisor mandelmans amend meant to the full board with positive recommendations and continue the second file to the call of the chair as amended. We can take those separately, but that would be my suggestion. Supervisor mandelman. Supervisor safai you hit the button at the same time. I was going to make some closing comments and some suggestions, but i am happy to move those amendments as proposed and allow supervisor mandelman to speak and if you can come back to me, chair, i would appreciate it. I want to thank you, chair paschairpeskin for the proposale the duplicated file. In hearing the comments, of course, i always value Public Comment. I think one thing i was struck by hearing people talking about the need for density in San Francisco. We all know we need to build more housing. It is my recollection it was 1. 0 and the prior iterations who worked on the a. D. U. Legislation to allow the a. D. U. S to become a model for statewide legislation. Further, much of the thousands of units built in the city each year for the last decade are built with rezoning from the board of supervisors. Aaron peskin was president of the board. I share the feeling of many of the callers density restrictions are outdated and prior to covid19 we were looking for ways to eliminate density restrictions in parts of my district. We should look citywide. If we are going to eliminate the restrictions and encourage the construction of buildings with more units, it becomes more incumbent on us to be aware of and preserve what is valuable about the neighborhoods we have now. It is not entirely fair to say the Planning Department doesnt have a solution. If there is more density it is good, we dont worry what we have lost if it is not historic. There is a vast category of buildings not meeting the narrow definition of historic but concontribute to the neighborhood of the community. If we are pushing density we need conversations about the particular buildings that are of value to the neighborhood. I hope my legislation will get passed to the full board and i look forward to the conversation continuing. I really appreciate your comments relative to the Hunters Point shipyard project, the hill plan, the eastern neighborhoods rezones, all of which i presided on as president of the board or member of the board in the earlier part of the century. I appreciate that. Yes, i was ahead of my time as it relates to a. D. U. I was not able to prevail on a board that interestingly enough the dynamic was not moderate versus progressives. It was west side supervisors of both stripes against east side supervisors. In the reality we all see the world based on where we live and our conat this time wents. I represent the dense part of San Francisco that has the highest density per acre of any part of the city. Part because of chinatown but mostly because most of the district is rh3 but in reality is denser and different in the southeast or west side of the city. I dont have rh1 or rh1 b in the Northeast Corner of San Francisco. Nonetheless, i think that making sure was dont lose most Affordable Housing we have whether it is Single Family home that is a smaller building that now with todays land values can be turned to the mega mansion contrary to the admonitions of speakers turning mansions into mega mansions that is not what is happening but it has been happening in district 8 and other districts. I appreciate your comments and i appreciate supervisor safai welcoming this discussion and to my friend mr. Together land, this is not a new think. It was discussed at the Planning Commission or the City Attorney would not allow this to move forward without referral to the Planning Commission. I want that on the record. That we will continue to have a cordial and productive relationship. I want to add that the legislation that you, supervisor mandelman and i unsuccessfully tried to push forward did have a provision that in exchange for additional density there would be no conditional use requirement. I actually cooked that up in conjunction with the the Residential Builders association. It was not embraced by the movement. Why dont we take these motions one by one. Supervisor preston i dont know if there is anything you want to comment on, if you dont lets take the first motion. Supervisor preston i dont want to cut you off. If you would like to speak, the floor is yours. I thought supervisor safai had a comment. You are right. The floor is yours. Lets make the amendment then i will make my comment. As to supervisor mandel mands amendments in 5 and 6 as previously described, a roll call, please. So the original legislation was coupe indicated. On the duplicated. On the motion to amend, supervisor preston. Aye. Supervisor safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. You have three a yes. Then what i would like to do to this file after supervisor safai speaks is to send the item in the first file as amended too the full board with recommendation. Before we call the roll, supervisor safai. I glad you made that last point, supervisor peskin about density in exchange for avoiding the c. U. I spent about two and a half years working on legislation in my district that would control for the size of housing that would discourage people from building mega dormitory style conversions of rh1. What we did in that instance and i am happy to work on this. As you remember when we made the amendments look at far as it pertains to the lot size and use that as determining and have a. D. U. As encouraging factor for additional size. If you wanted to add in the process by which the c. U. S could be avoided. What we are trying to control is that some Historic Preservation limiting the size of properties to keep them relatively affordable but promoting density. Everything we did with our legislation, if you recall, and it was that that gave a significant incentive for a. D. U. S to be built and the multiplier was different from that instance. That should all be part of the conversation when you are approaching compromise. I would encourage the Planning Department to make this a high priority to work with you so we can get this done in an expedited manner. I appreciate your willingness to move this forward and continue the conversation. Thank you, supervisor safai. On the motion to send the original filing with supervisor mandelmans amendments to the full board with recommendation a roll call, please. Supervisor preston. Aye. Supervisor safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. You have three ayes. I would like the motion to the duplicated file in the residential demolition definition at the top of page 2 at line 14 to remove the and also proposes and insert or in subsection b. In subsection c remove the word and and insert the word or as previously described. On that motion a roll call, please. For clarity this is incorporating mandelmans amendment. Yes, i suspect given the three individuals on the panel and the sponsor who is not a member of the panel it will pass. It doesnt matter whether that is in here or not. It will be a matter of law if and when the deaf mission changes or moves out of committee. Yes, i intended to duplicate the file and stated such with mandelmans amendments. On the motion to continue the matter as amended. No, first motion to incorporate the removal in the definition section b 2 sub c and insert the word or. In b 2c remove and and insert or. We need a vote on that. Once that is amended i would like to continue to the call of the chair. On the motion as stated, supervisor preston. Aye. Speaker safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. On the motion as stated to the call the chair. Preston. Aye. Safai. Aye. Peskin. Aye. You have three ayes. Any more business before the committee . No further business. Supervisor mandelman, congratulations. We are adjourned. Is our United States constitution requires every ten years that america counts every human being in the United States, which is incredibly important for many reasons. Its important for preliminary representation because if Political Representation because if we under count california, we get less representatives in congress. Its important for San Francisco because if we dont have all of the people in our city, if we dont have all of the folks in california, california and San Francisco stand to lose billions of dollars in funding. Its really important to the city of San Francisco that the federal government gets the count right, so weve created count sf to motivate all sf count to motivate all citizens to participate in the census. For the immigrant community, a lot of people arent sure whether they should take part, whether this is something for u. S. Citizens or whether its something for anybody whos in the yUnited States, and it is something for everybody. Census counts the entire population. Weve given out 2 million to over 30 communitybased organizations to help people do the census in the communities where they live and work. Weve also partnered with the Public Libraries here in the city and also the Public Schools to make sure there are informational materials to make sure the folks do the census at those sites, as well, and weve initiated a campaign to motivate the citizens and make sure they participate in census 2020. Because of the language issues that many Chinese Community and families experience, there is a lot of mistrust in the federal government and whether their private information will be kept private and confidential. So its really important that communities like bayviewHunters Point participate because in the past, theyve been under counted, so what that means is that funding that should have gone to these communities, it wasnt enough. Were going to help educate people in the tenderloin, the multicultural residents of the tenderloin. You know, any one of our given blocks, theres 35 different languages spoken, so we are the original u. N. Of San Francisco. So its our job is to educate people and be able to familiarize themselves on doing this census. You go online and do the census. Its available in 13 languages, and you dont need anything. Its based on household. You put in your address and answer nine simple questions. How many people are in your household, do you rent, and your information. Your name, your age, your race, your gender. Everybody is 2,000 in funding for our child care, housing, food stamps, and medical care. All of the residents in the city and county of San Francisco need to be counted in census 2020. If youre not counted, then your community is underrepresented and will be underserved. Muted. Perfect. Sorry, dominica. Okay. Sfgov tv, we are ready to start the meeting now. This is a special meeting of the Small Business commission. The meeting is being called to order at 11 05 a. M. Small Business Commission thanks Media Services and sfgov tv and the department of technology for televising this meeting, which can be viewed on sfgov tv 2, live streamed at sfgovtv. Org. Members of the public, who will be phoning in, the number is 888 3634735. And the access code is 4134030. When prompted, dial 10 in order to be added to the speaker line. The auto prompts will look at callers entry. The questionandanswer time. But this is the Public Comment period. If you call in before Public Comment is called, youll be added to the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, please mute your device that you are listening to the meeting on, when it is your time to speak, youll be prompted to do so. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker, unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting. Speakers are requested but not required to state their names. Sfgov tv, please show the office of Small Business. Today well start with the reminder that the Small Business commission official public is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. And that the office of Small Businesses is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone. As always, our services are free of charge. Before item number 1 closed, id like to thank Media Services and sfgov for coordinating the live stream. A special thanks to tom, shawn, jim, and corwin for their assistance. Commissioner adams . Here. Commissioner dooley . Here. Clerk commissioner huie . Here. Clerk commissioner laguna . Missioner william ortizcartagena . Clerk commissioner yekutiel . Here. Clerk mr. President , you have a quorum. Wonderful. Please call item number 2. Clerk item 2, approve of draft meeting minutes. Action item. Anybody want to make the motion . I motion to approve. Second. Clerk motion by commissioner adams to approve the draft meeting minutes, seconded by commissioner dooley. Roll call vote. Commissioner adams . Yes. Missioner dooley . Yes. Commissioner huie . Yes. Commissioner laguana . Yes. Commissioner yekutiel . Yes. Clerk motion passes 70. Please call item number 3. Clerk item number 3. Small businesses forum. Impacts related to the covid19 emergency, opportunity for Business Leaders and Community Service providers to present on economic response to the covid19 local emergency and provide recommendations for recovery. Discussion and possible action item, presenters are carlos solorzano, mark trim please mute yourselves. Okay. Clerk wait. Not done. Sorry. Theres feedback. Everyone who is not muted, please mute yourselves. Presenters are carlos solorzano, Northern Regional chair, Hispanic Chambers of commerce. Mark quinn, adviser and former San Francisco Small Business Administration District director. Laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. Jen dasilva, executive Committee Chair of freelance Economic Development alliance. And founder and executive director of start small think big. And rodney fong, president and c. E. O. Of San Francisco chamber of commerce. Okay. Today we have invited a number of Business Leaders and Community Service providers to provide us with their perspective on the economic response to the local emergency. As we head into the second month of sheltering in place, its imperative that we hear from these groups and businesses themselves and put in perspectives to inform recommendations of the recovery effort. We know that theres not going to be a quick fix for turning the economy around. Thats the unfortunate reality. But we do know that the economy will come back and that any effort to support our Small Businesseses should be developed with their voices and diverse experiences in mind. For that reason, weve invited everyone. We want to hear what you have to say. Were particularly encouraging members of the public to call in and provide their input and voices. We received a number of emails. So with that id like to introduce carlos solorzano, north region chair for Hispanic Chamber of commerce of San Francisco to kick off our discussion. Welcome, carlos. You should unmute yourself, carlos, if youre muted. Hello. Can you hear me now . Thank you very much for the city, the mayor, the Small Business. Im the c. E. O. Of the Hispanic Chambers of conference of San Francisco. And the chambers are the american, the american caribbean. Also the chair for the california Hispanic Chamber and northern region. Im proud to be part of the Economic Task force. Which is something thats really important. This is my third meeting today. The main reason is because we believe, as all of you, that every latino professional and every professional should be morally obligated to support the community. Thank you. The main concerns that weve been having are several. One, although theres been opportunities for loans, theres been opportunities for access to small capital, they have been really not enough to support a Small Business, especially the independent contractors or independent consultant or Small Businesses that are not that doesnt offer tangibles. They offer Services Like tax preparers, like real estate, like immigration consultants, like business consultants. So our concern has been that it hasnt been that much. The other concern is within the community. Theres really no what i do want to express in between them that, i thank the office for the Workforce Development because they are making an effort. But we still need more in terms of communication through the spanishspeaking and for the other minority communities. You know, the mission is very diverse. We have asian parts, we have american, we have latinos, we have africanamericans. Its a good conglomerate. The point on is that with all of the efforts that theyre doing, we need to make extra support for Small Businesses. Thats why i was happy when the Small Business commission invited us to participate in this, because, you know, when you dont have presence, its like somebody once told me, if youre not sitting at the table, that is because, you know thats whats been happening for us. You know, i know that the supervisors have a lot of good intentions, urn. But a lot of times you need to do more than good intentions, especially with the Small Business community. People forget that were part of the community. People forget that we need to advocate and get together. People forget that we need to make a plan for having a community for the local stores, support the local stores. We know that the taxes and the registration. That is all good things. But if we dont have access to the money, you know, and just right now a little while ago, i have one of my members, who was one of the first moving companies, latinoowned, he said, carlos, ive been applying for this. I applied for the emergency loan. I applied for the personal protective equipment. What happened with that . Well, thank you for your interest. At this point you have not been selected. When you heard that one, two, three, four times what do you do . Or the Hispanic Chamber joined with the california hispanic. They do not have enough people. So we join them and to help them, to guide them with that. And so were becoming a certified with the Small Business development. Since we were to guide them, the commune sayings is really communication is really important. I do want to commend the San Francisco chamber, the filipinoamerican chamber, the africanamerican chamber. And all of you for doing the work youre doing. But we need to have more communication. We need to have more access to information and access to the capital, access to the money. I know that now its a lottery because, of course, the applications. So much money. Weve been attending meetings. But to promote that, its very important. That its there right away. Not when the money has been gone, not when the applications are gone. So for us, you know, thinking about that, being part of an obligation for us, the moral obligation. Being a part of the task force. Thank you for the Small Business commission. I do want to give kudos to you guys. I have worked with william, i have worked with miriam. I have worked with you. You know, its really important that this is the time. Because the new normal is its nothing. And it will not be part of the old normal. You know, if we dont work united, if we dont communicate and provide support with the economic support, we dont provide information, you know, help remember thinking about the Small Business they are landlords, they want to rent rooms, they want to rent. So many things that we can do together. It is very, very important that we work. I cannot stress it enough. Work together. Be safe. My time is coming up. I do want to thank you all. Were available. Were processing information. Like i said we thank you guy, the Small Business commission. Excellent work. I know youll keep doing better. We have a lot of work to do. The mayor,. Commissioner haney the mayor, lets keep going. Its important. I wanted to expression the positive that we have. The positive energy of our people. The positive energy of San Francisco. Thats who we are. Thats what we need to do together. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, do we have any questions . All right. A reminder, commissioner, ill recognize you. A reminder, commissioner, if you could put your name in chat so that i can all in order. Commissioner yekutiel . Hi, carlos. Its manny. How are you doing . My question for you is whether or not youre hearing from your members, if you think that the mission and specifically latinowned Small Businesses are accessing and receiving less funds than maybe other parts of the city and other communities . And if so, why do you think that might be . Okay. First of all, manny, i had youre a new commissioner. Congratulations. You represent us well with all of the businesses, especially with your Small Business. I want to give kudos to you in that direction. Yes, the Latino Community, i use the term latino. Im sorry. But the latinos, you know, we still need to have that access. We need to have the information. Were not getting enough of that. Because by the time we find the information, its already done and gone. Okay. So thats the problem we have. I urge you and all of the commissioners to make sure that theres something with money available, by the time it gets to the Latino Community or to the minority communities, its already done and gone. You know, so its not really original. We have a lot of young people with Small Businesses in the Mission District, right where you are, right in valencia. All of the Small Businesses that need help, okay. We need to get the support and the access as fast as we can to them. Because by the time they come out, its already done and gone. Like i said. So, yes, we do need the help. We do need the communication. Great. Commissioner ortizcartagena. Thank you. Thank you, carlos for your time. Thank you for your feedback. Thank you for highlighting the issues that our latino communities are facing, not only in the mission, the region, the state and nationwide. I want to concur and say, yes, all of the resources typically evaporate by the time they hit the Latino Community. Wondering, carlos, what are your suggestions, what we can do as a commission to make sure the information gets at the same time to the Latino Community. And also in our language. Because so much of the information, the applications come out in spanish and then theres the capacity issue. Even if they get the information on time, if they dont understand it, whats the point. Yeah. Thank you, commissioner ortiz. Thank you yekutiel. I forgot sometime there. So excited about being part of this. Youre in the superviseory position, i need you to treat you with the praise you deserve. One of the things that happens is this. Theres a budget. I dont know if you could reach out. I know were talking about the Hispanic Chamber of commerce. Everything we do receive with marianne and regina, everything that we receive we right away put it on. The communities that dont have access to records, the wifi, the internet or theyre not savvy enough for that. So once you have that, its important that we have the sense of communication through the app all of those that are reaching out to us. More than happy to help, if you need it in spanish, i know that you translate over there into spanish. But also needs to be connecting with them. I know you do a good job on that, because i see you in the Mission District walking around. You know how we have suffered. You know how many businesses they have closed already in the mission. And valencia. And with this new abnormal normal with covid19, were losing more of that. What can we do . We need to get your communication right away and have it that we can understand it. And we need to reach out from the city. Recreations with creative ideas. All of those people we need to reach out directly to them, not just in general. Okay. More than happy the Hispanic Chamber of commerce in San Francisco, continue providing, promoting and supporting everything that you do, both communication thats power. When you do it and you do it fast, you allow our communities to join and get more support. Okay. Carlos, we are out of time. But im going to extend the time a little bit. Because i did have one quick question for you. You mentioned the laurie. In expect to the Resiliency Fund or is that were you talking about some sort of federal aid . Well, you know, in part its the fund. So are the other ones. You need to be we dont need to have we need to have equal access. We dont have need to have a fair access. We need to have equal access. Okay. Let me im sorry. Just because were short on time. But on the Resiliency Fund, do you do you think a lottery is the best approach to that or would you recommend a different approach . Well, you know, it would be great if it could be awarded equitably. Some money for this, for this, for this. Its not going to work that way. Why . Because the more savvy, theyll be moving fast on in that direction. If you do a lottery with all of them, at least maybe you get the same. Maybe you get one from each one. You know, its a little bit closer solution for the time being, until we find Something Better. Certainly my feedback on, that we should make sure there are Funds Available in each and every tier, you know, to break up the fund into smaller pieces. Well have to continue that conversation later. And i may follow up and reach out to you later as well. Because thats an important issue. And i want to make sure that the city gets it right. And that the commission supports you and the Hispanic Chamber and your mission. Were honored to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you, carlos. Thank you very, very much all of you. Thank you for the good work. I get back to my other meeting. Have a good day. Bye. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Now id like to introduce mark quinn, adviser to cameo and former San Francisco Small Business Administration District director. Welcome, mark. Thank you. Am i live here . I want to make sure my sound. Everybody mutes and unmutes. First off, nice to hear from my friend carlos. I cant compete with his passion. But its always good to hear from him. I wanted to cover a few things. A brief intro from my background. Ive been with the city in the city of San Francisco as a district director of s. B. A. Since the late 80s. In the last couple of years, ive been working with cameo, which is a California Association for microenterprise opportunity, which is really the umbrella for the network of microlenders and Technical Assistance providers, who are in the community throughout california, but in San Francisco we have a real rich mix of Technical Assistance providers, microlenders and other ways in which Small Businesses can get assistance. So i wanted to do two things. One, briefly talk about the experience that we have i had seen while i was at s. B. A. , during other downturns, the Great Recession and other downturns and disasters. How the city what the experiences were and what the responses were that were working. And a couple of suggestions about to consider in this current situation, which is unique and beyond anything that we have experienced in the city before. So as i said, i think ive been around s. B. A. And in San Francisco for a long time. And a number of the things, particularly that we saw in the last Great Recession, really affected Small Businesses was the real loss of a lot of the microbusinesses, that really were already challenged in a lot of ways running their businesses. San francisco has a lot of real great assets, but its an expensive place to do business. A lot of tiny businesses are really always on the edge of being able to stay active and successful in San Francisco, because the margins are pretty small. And the costs are pretty high. On a variety of levels. Some of it is the market, some of it is the city. But the combination really has always given me the sense that Small Business people are just remarkable. And those of you who are commissioners, that are Small Business people, its remarkable that you get to be able to do what you do, as successfully as you do, given the challenges that you have to work in San Francisco. So a lot of those businesses were particularly challenged. What we also saw, s. B. A. The largest type of business that s. B. A. Makes loans to are restaurants, in terms of the number of businesses that actually s. B. A. Lends to, for a lot of reasons that totally make sense. Theyre riskier from a banks point of view. Theyre successful and they do well. But theres a real volatile market and its a challenge for businesses. A lot of restaurants are ones that we saw particularly in the neighborhoods that were challenged, when the Great Recession happened, and they had to come back from a really tough time. The other part of this was really the particular impact on neighborhood corridor businesses. Some of the businesses in the neighborhood corridor, they were providing retail service, particularly challenged because while their markets changed, their rents did not. So many of those businesses really had a real tough time recovering. So i think that those are things that we saw ten years ago or more. And were going to see those even in a greater degree Going Forward from this point in time. A couple of things that i would suggest to kind of keep in mind, as commissioners and as a city, number one is really to recognize and rely on the network of Technical Assistance and microfinance organizations in the city. Theres a tremendous number of organizations that do great work in San Francisco. And i always really look at those organizations, those Nonprofit Organization as really backbone of microfinance and the success for tiny businesses. I think one of the things that everyone should realize is that the city both supports directly and then also sees the motivation of getting federal support, its something thats really important piece to be able to continue to rely on. Market to those people, make sure that the city, Small Business Community Knows about them. And make sure that everybody takes advantage of that network. Its a broad network. Its multiethnic, it covers a lot of the types of businesses in the city. San francisco is one of the few cities that has a commission, of course. One of the fewer cities that act the as the host for the Small Business development center, the only one in california thats the host for the Small Business development center. So we have unique assets in San Francisco in and amongst the organizations. The first thing is really making sure that we lean on them to provide the assistance that people need. The second is really considering things that you havent done before. In particular on the microfinance side. One of the things that seeing a real challenge is, ive been working with a lot of organizations on s. B. A. Programs, the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury disaster loan program. Both of which have run into gigantic problems and part of the problem, especially with p. P. E. , its not very well targeted. Its not targeted to the microbusinesses, its not targeted to neighborhood businesses. Its apparently targeted to the lakers and other big businesses. And we really do feel like that program, while it has some good intentions, really hasnt done the targeting. So that is something that we should learn from this, if you will. The stakes of that structure and recognize that a better targeted program is important. But the one thing that has been brought up in the program, thats important to consider, the concept that we really have not really used the thats for loans. Effectively grants. But the idea is that the city has had loan programs and has used loan programs, microloan perhaps, programs through a couple of good organizations in the city, and San Francisco has really a great microlenders, working solutions, opportunity fund, all based here in San Francisco. All are organizations that really could use Additional Capital to be able to expand what they do. But the one part that hasnt been done is really using what what is used in the p. P. P. P. Discussion is forgivable loans. If its a targeted loan, the ability to be able to use targeting and forgive the loans for businesses using those loans in a targeted way. Its to leverage the organizations to be able to do those programs through that. And i recognize the challenges, the economic challenges that all cities have. The idea of trying to find ways to really deal with those tiniest of businesses, particularly the businesses who get turned down by p. P. P. And San Francisco businesses, that are not eligible for s. B. A. Loans, particularly with issues whether documented individuals, entrepreneur is one that does not have a green card, so theyll not get an s. B. A. Loan, because of that. Thats a market that we should recognize is a market that the state can reach, whereas the feds cannot. I think thats an important piece. Really its nonprofits and using forgivable lending is a means to do that. And the last the third piece is really recognizing the highest risk is the neighborhood businesses in retail locations, where rents, prior to covid19, were already challenging for businesses and trying to figure out a way in which you can incent the landlords, if you will, craft the loans craft the rent cost that those businesses have into a debt situation, that allows the businesses to instead of having to pay rent, while still trying to keep their operations going and margins continue to be cut because the Customer Base has been challenged, to be able to turn some of that rent cost into debt, if the city can back the debt. Essentially thinking of it as the way the s. B. A. Approaches lending with banks to have, in this case, the landlords be able to allow a business to convert rent to debt and have the city back the debt in the same way that s. B. A. Backs the debt through guarantee from banks. Really be able to find a way to work with both the landlords and incent them to be able to allow their tenants to stay and figure out a way the tenants can have their rent cost deferred until they are able to see the business get to a level that they can sustain those kind of costs. I think a couple of ways in which to think about that are important. Because i think that the biggest challenge is going to be in the neighborhood. The rental costs are high. Those are fixed costs. The variable costs of Small Businesses can handle is the fixed costs that will be a challenge. Thank you, mark. Commissioners, do we have any questions . Commissioner yekutiel. Surprise, i have a question. Is it john mark or just mark . I go with either one. Okay. My question is there any precedent for municipality backing debt for Something Like this in the past . Not that i know of. I havent seen this kind of structure before. I think, though, the thing to keep in mind, though, is that if if a landlord is able to make the rent cost per se a potrero, six per se a period of time, a debt to the business and they can pay that back over a fiveyear period of time, it allows not to have the fixed costs right now and defer the fixed costs. The city would be looking to step in in the circumstances of a default of that loan. So basically convert your rental costs to a debt, to the Business Owner, and then defer those costs and allow that to be paid over a period of time. At the same time i know the city has talked about vacancy costs to commercial space. This would be a way in which you can say to those businesses, or those landlords that have space thats vacant, a way in which we can keep the tenants in the occupiable spaces and not lose the tenants. I think from the neighborhood, i live in noe valley. The idea that we want to make sure that we dont lose the services, the Neighborhood Services that are really key to the character and the fabric of the neighborhoods. Thank you. And this is commissioner manny before. Youre fine. Mark, not seeing any other commissioners and questions, a couple sort of brief observations. One, so i think i read that most Small Businesses, certainly this is more than true of my own, have less than a month of cash reserves available to them. , in other words, if theres a downturn, they only have a runway of at most a month. I know in our case, it was about three, four days. So i guess the question i have is, you know, when we talked about deferment or we talk about loans to businesses, that they have to repay back, how do we imagine that that works and to the framework of a business thats already running on narrow margins to begin with. Now youre introducing another debt that has to be serviced. Do we you know, i guess my concern is, you know, if were talk diagnose deferring Something Like rent, if its just a month, deferring that over frame the payment out over two years or three years or four years, probably pretty workable. But if were talking about, you know, six months, eight months, a long period of longer peri. It eats further into the profit margins. Im wondering what your thoughts are on that, as to how we can guide the city into making decisions that actually promote, not just getting through this period, but a sustainable aftermath. Yeah. Its a good question. I think the challenge really there is that recognizing that from the landlords point of view, you know, in many cases they have debts that they have to pay. They have fixed costs that they are responsible for. So i recognize theres really an ecosystem of players here. Anything that is at the expense of one is really something thats a burden to the other. I also recognize from the citys point of view, being able to step in and subsidize those costs on a continuing basis, on a scale of San Francisco, is probably fiscally not possible. So it really is the case, what we need to do is to try to have a balance of trying to figure out a way in which we can do this. Theres a variety of incentives, they can be positive or negative to landlords and to businesses. I generally feel that the negative incentives, to landlords, are probably not as valuable as positive ways in which we can say to a landlord, that youll lose a tenant if you are not able to if you have to say that you cant pay the rent, youre going to be out. You lose a tenant. And the city will lose a service. Youd be better to take it as a deferred payment, Owner Financing of that tenant, rather than trying to lose the tenant and try to deal with it otherwise. I also recognize the fact that, a landlord has a set of financial obligation of their own. Asking the commercial rae market to bear a little bit of the burden of dealing with Small Businesses in the meantime. At the same time i feel that the city and i think theyre doing that well, to make sure that everybody thats a Small Business in San Francisco knows of and takes advantage of the federal programs out there. I know theres a lot of information and makes sure everyone knows about injury disaster loans and the p. P. P. Program as well. Making sure everybody gets access to the tools, external costs, that could be covered is part of it as well. But theres not an easy answer to this, because theres not city, landlords or Small Business person that can bear all of the costs themselves. Commissioner haney , this is steve this is steve adams. Can i make a comment. Briefly. Ill be very, very brief. Mark, i want to thank you for the comments that you just made. In my new position here, working for a landlord, youre right. It takes a village and not just federal aid. You said something that was very key in and its something a lot of landlords need to do. Im actually in situations where i can help finance, i am helping out those tenants with their business, because i dont want to loose them. Because at the end of the day, i have to make my mortgage payments and Everything Else like everybody else. But i did find out that by actually helping our tenants, especially our small mom and pop tenants with their financial aid, instead of waiting on government aid, its really, really been beneficial. And i really, really appreciate that comment you just made. Thats it. Great. All right. Mark, wed love to talk more. Im sure we could ask you many more questions. But unfortunately we are already over budget for time. So thank you for coming. Were honored to have you. And appreciate you spending your time with us today. Best of luck. Thank you. Thanks, mark. Okay. Next, id like to introduce laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. Go ahead, laurie. Am i unmuted . You are. Can you hear me . Thank you for asking me to join you. And thank you to everybody out there. Im going to pivot a little bit from my prepared remarks. As i listen to carlos and to mark, i think we want to maybe take a different direction with what i was going to talk about. Just kick me off when i hit five minutes, okay. So first and foremost, i do want to second a thank you to the office of economic Workforce Development, the team and everybody there. And how closely theyve been working with us in the Business Community and the city in general to delay the gross receipts tax payments until next year, under 25 million in gross receipts, to delay the license fees, to help with the grants and the loans. Well come back to something carlos said. And i can reassure him its certainly nothing to do with hispanic or not. I didnt make the lottery for my small restaurant. Its just more demand than supply problem that we have. Theres so much need. So i do want to reiterate from the restaurant perspective, that i think that the biggest spinning that occurred to me thing that occurred to me is communication. And so many of us are in financial stress, our restaurants, as you guys know, last year we were already we were already sick. We were already sick. And im just going to im just going to keep talking, but be right back. Were already sick and we fell 40 more closures than openings. In the city we now know theres 3600 food services, businesses per ted egans number that he gave to the task force on friday. Of that its interesting to note that about 70 have revenues of less than 1. 1 million. Certainly not micro, but on the smaller side. I are reiterate what you just said, most of us, including me had less than a month of cash runway. We just werent ready for the music to stop. Most of us keep paying things from the cash flow and we thought we were in decent shape in february. And it turns out we werent. And so to have to pay a payroll to furlough employees or cut back on payroll took all of the extra cash in the business and about 60,000 of a personal loan. I have two two small restaurants, in addition to being the e. D. Of golden gate restaurant association. What we need is cash, cash, cash, cash. And it occurred to me that one thing that hasnt been clearly communicated, that i just filed for, is part of the cares act, that we all really need to work to get the message out. Its a complicated part of the cares act. Its something called the Employee Retention credit or the e. R. C. And thats really something that, for whatever reason, has been overlooked. Its not a loan thats forgiven. Its a credit up to 5,000, up to 50 of what an employee earns over the period of that were in, the disadvantaged period where were partially, fully closed. The i. R. S. Rules and a drop in revenue. Were clearly in the semiclosed or totally closed situation. And any revenues through the end of the year, in that period for employees under 100, you can get up to a 50 credit from our friends at the i. R. S. So payroll taxes that weve paid. Its interesting to note that this applies you can apply for a refund for anything paid starting from pay dates of marc. So we finally did the math on that a couple of days ago. And i realized, wow, i could get some money back thats not earmarked for anything. It could be used to pay payables, things that, you know, we have to pay, mostly payables to get that going again. And then when we bring people back, well be able to keep counting up to 5,000. So up to somebody earning 10,000 in payroll for, you know, the next couple of quarters. And i think this is something we need to try to communicate. Its complicated. I spent a lot of time with Mission Local yesterday trying to explain it to them. It took me a while to understand it. But again i think it goes to what mark just said and carlos just said, there are some more Government Resources that we need to try to explain. And ill be trying to do that to our membership as well. There are many things that we really need to reopen. I just want to reiterate the rent and lease issue is key. Many people will be in the position to file for bankruptcy, to break lease obligations, if landlords dont work with their tenants. Some are, some arent. Were continuing to try to help that. There are multiple concerns about reopening, who is going to help the people pay for the personal protective equipment. Can we open up our outside spaces to allow for more capacity for restaurants . You know, what can we do in terms of forgiving maybe the gross receipts and payroll tax completely under a certain level. Id opt for a 5 million or below, lets just forgive that. I completely understand the pain that were in. Our city has seen a drastic reduction in revenue. Its not like they dont want to do anything. Its that our hands are tied financially. So again i have lots of things i could talk to you more about that we need for our community. But right now were anticipating only up to 80 of restaurants that dont come back, based on a recent survey. And thats thats devastating. We employ 60,000 employees just in San Francisco. Thank you, laurie. We appreciate you coming down or i guess youre not coming down. Yes. Going to your office or wherever it is in your home. So do we have any commissioner questions . Okay. Well give it five seconds here. Commissioner huie. Hi, laurie. Thank you so much for coming today. Yep. I just had a quick question. Going back to the delivery cap. Ive gotten some questions from people in terms of how the delivery cap has been affecting their restaurant and their understanding of where that delivery cap is being however the Delivery Companies are i guess executing or implementing this cap. So what i heard from somebody was that they were taking this out of their marketing. Yes. I spoke to billy about that. So i did have a call well supervisor peskin and his aide the other day. There are a few in this instance, a situation where grubhub was applying the discount that the commission that were capping at 50 , not to exceed 15 in this emergency ordinance. They were pulling that out of a marketing dollars. So this individual was disproportionately affected because they were allocating that and cutting out marketing. Therefore, not driving consumers. That was the site he had good reviews on. So i know that there is thability. There ability. There could be an emergency modification to that order to allow for a restaurant to pay for additional services, such as marketing, if they wanted to do that. Were also in discussions with the Supervisors Office regarding the more permanent legislation thats been introduced that will go through the normal 30day process and all of that. So this is an ongoing thing. But we can take this offline. I did hear that. There could be something we could do to modify the existing ordinance in a specific way to address that problem. Because that was not intended. Most of my members are very positive about this change. This is this is enabled them to see significantly more dollars stay in their pocket, to try to offset the cost of staying open in a reduced takeout or togo situation. Okay. I would be happy to talk about this afterwards. And i have communicated commh with this individual back and forth. I totally understand it. And the Supervisors Office is aware of it. So we can certainly circle back and try to fix that. Okay. We didnt want any bad, unintended consequences for sure. Thank you. So, lawyery , before you go, one last question. You spoke earlier about the impact of i think we know now that unfortunately many restaurants just arent going to survive. And you spoke or you mentioned lease obligations. Yes. In some cases are, you know, pretty significant obligation. Huge. Right. And are guaranteed by the owner. I know i have lease obligations that are personally guaranteed. So what that means for the public is even if i declare bankruptcy, as a business, via the personal guarantee, the landlord can pursue the tenant. So i guess the question i have for you is new york has a bill, 1932 thats currently in the works. You might have heard of it, that prohibits landlords from enforcing a personal liability provision against any commercial tenant impacted by covid19. Do you think that that is something the city should look at or the state should look at . Do you think that would be helpful, you know, well that be constructive, mindful of commissioner adams comments about, you know, landlord also having their own obligations. Right. Should i answer . Yes. Okay. So i was just made aware of that yesterday. My understanding is that senator wiener is considering taking up legislation at the state level to address that. This would have to be a state type of a thing. I literally just heard about this yesterday afternoon. I do think that would be helpful. I do have calls from my friends in the real estate side of the world im sure wanting to talk about that. And i i think the problem, as we go forward and this is where, you know, maybe i can help. I have always hated hardball negotiation. The best outcome is where everybody takes a hair cut. We ask as we go forward, with all sorts of Different Things and ill be advocating for this on the city task force, is everybody is going to have to realize that nobody is going to come out good in this if one side tries to take a disproportionate cut, if you will. And so we do have to recognize. Some of these landlords. I spoke to someone on a call the other day, thats how she pays for her family, right. Its the rent that she gets. We have to be mindful of that. On the other hand, the personal guarantee thing is terrifying. But even without personal guarantees for a business, such as mine, if i were to get out of, you know, millions of dollars in rent obligations. People say leases can be liabilities. You have to file a bankruptcy, which isnt going to help anything in the city. We want to try to educate everybody, like mark said, lets think of creative solutions. It never occurred to me to ask milord for financing. Thats like a new thing. I just heard of. So i think where we as leaders are obligated and certainly with the e. R. C. And more elusive type of government programs, and to carlos point, we have to figure out how do we explain this in a way that people that are completely tapped out can understand. Okay. All right. Laurie, thank you. As with everybody else, wed love to talk to you longer. Yeah. Send me emails. Im available. Thank you. Okay. Byebye. Grateful to have you here. Okay. Next up, id like to introduce jenny dasilva, executive Committee Chair of the San Francisco Economic Development and founder and director of start small think big. Hi, thank you very much. I hope you can hear me okay . Yes, we can hear you great. Okay. Great. Thanks very much for having me. And for convening this meeting. As you said, i am the chair of the San Francisco Economic Development alliance, which is a showers and consortium of 18 organizations, who all work in the Small Business and Economic Development space to support Small Businesses. And the executive director of start small think big, which is a Nonprofit Organization that provides free legal, marketing support to entrepreneurs to help them build stronger Small Businesses. About 97 of our Small Businesses are minority and womenowned. Average Business Revenue is about 33,000, when at the come to us for support. So these are definitely the Small Businesses that are on the front lines, as we all know of this Small Business crisis. I think we saw in 2008, with the recession, and were seeing it again, that the younger companies, the minority and womenowned businesses are certainly going to be the hardest hit. And in crisis like this. One of the things that mark had said and that laurie had said and i feel like its not a competition about like what we need most exactly, because theres so much need at this point, whether its capital or Technical Assistance. Thats the place that im coming from is, as a Technical Assistance provider. So what i see is that there is that there does seem to be a lot of capital. But the businesses that i work with, are not able to access that capital. Ard part of that is structural. If with you just look at the p. P. P. Loan process, how that process has unfolded. I feel thats sort of demonstrated conclusively, you know, what happens to businesses, particularly smaller, typically minorityowned businesses that dont have Technical Assistance. And really sort of comprehensive individualized Technical Assistance. There are obviously structural problems with that program, you know, banks prioritizing loans to businesses, that have substantial payrolls, large loan applications, which obviously puts smaller businesses at a significant disadvantage. But then theres the process itself, the larger businesses lean on their relationships with banks, law firms. [ please stand by ] this new age of Creative Business will take over the market share and i think Technical Assistance is really going to be facilitate that pivot and therefore, it will be more crucial than ever and so Technical Assistance is going to include lots of things. Theres the sort of traditional Financial Support and i think really providing support for businesses to increase their digital capacity is going to be key in returning a key to returning didnt having an ability to pivot as needed at a bare minimum. Thats digital platforms helping to communicate and engage with platforms and even when youre on pause, keeping alliance and allowing you to scale up when that time is right because theres a lot of back and forth there. We have time for underquestion and were running behind schedule and ill recommend question huey. I know theyre looking at the same conversation with started with with the hiss panic chamber in terms of looking at language, and community access. Things are translated but theyre not necessarily living within those communities and not the cultural context of those communities. I guess its maybe not so much a question, but maybe kind of like to ask to see if that is part of your structure and if theres a possibility of growing that more into the structure and i think the technical portion of things will be huge and hopefully as the city can figure out its funding portions, but maybe there might be some support or something available for that, as well. Yes, i mean, i think the point that you make about there being a difference between translating services and making services and delivering Services Within and from a community in native languages, where the services are organ quicklquickly deliveredorganicaa critical point and one that has to be remembered as programs are being delivered and as new programs are created and that is a very those two things are very different. If you translate a program or you translate a service and you have an organic program that lives within and is from the different communities, those are two very separate things. The San Francisco chamber of commerce. Hi, everyone, nice to be in the same room for everybody. And yes, thank you for this opportunity and we are all paying good attention to whats going on. I want to share with you quickly, if you dont know the chamber of commerce, 0 80 of membership is made of o up Small Businesses and we are trying to fight for Small Business owners. Joining me is carmen chu, Rudy Gonzalez and we have a task force of 80 people which seems like a lot but considering how many different sectors, not just business, nonprofit, trades, transportation and thats a pretty small group and that group, the task force will start out into very specific sectorrelated conversations and so, we want to ma make sure everyone will give their input. The three main buckets, policy areas of the task force are retention of existing businesses and jobs in San Francisco. And so important to hang on to the one we have. The second is the focus on a vulnerable population and that may be different than we thought before and that could be people reliabilitily laid off or furloughed and e were wan we wae sure were creating jobs for them and then Economic Development and are there opportunities moving forward and other large cities to be the leader in the clean management in movement and science and technology that helps post covid life. I think were in a great position in the bay area and maybe better than others to attack that and turn that into an industry creating jobs for us ultimately. People talked about a vshape recovery or lshape recovery and what we have to be careful of with the Health Decisions is that we try to avoid a wshaped recovery where we open up and hey, were back open for business and the Consumer Confidence is not there yet or worse yet, we have a second wave of an outbreak that sets us back. We all know as operators here, that even though weve closed for seven weeks, it will take capital to get back up and Different Things off and well have to rehire and we have to fix these things. Its going to take money to do that. To the w point, we may have one good spot to do this and we want to do it right and at the right time so we dont have a false start. Two things i want to share with you that maybe are overlooked from the business perspective, but that is the Public Schools and the private school systems. And so important for the Business Community to get fully functional that our Public Schools have to be reopened with the same kind of confidence that the parents can send their kids off to school and then feel confident that they can get back to work, even if that means staying at home at work but i want to put out that school is so important. By the way, 38 of the working force in america are parents and provide some sort of childcare, relying on senior care and parental care and it goes way up. A lot of this comes done to land use and we need to be fully aware land use will control a lot of our future. Retailers may begin to think about how many people they allow in a Boutique Store and reservationonly or appointment only and we used to see Art Galleries with appointment early if we thought that was way fancy and that might be the way of the world Going Forward. Swift shifts may come back around, using San Francisco as more of a 24hour city is viable and ive felt guilty when ive seen big buildingings and we have a crunch forward land use and theyre climbing on top for more space and we are not maximizing our square footage. Lastly, i think so important is the emphasis that all of us in the Business Community that we need to put on the internet and expansion of equitable Broadband Service and many likely, many of us will be working from home or wherever two or three days a week. From an equitable point of view, so many, we live outside of San Francisco and its important, i think, that be considered bayarea wide. Speaking in the bay area, i was encouraged by the shelterinplace, when we did that to see all of our nine counties Work Together and i hope this is an opportunity or a breaking point where all of our counties come together to talk about transit and talk about housing, all the way across the bay area and not just in San Francisco and that starts a bay area conversation. Ill stop there and just to let you know that cutouts from the information on the one San Francisco. Org site. And give me a call rdfong sfchamber. Org and well let you know how we can make this a better city. Do we have any commissioner questions . Commissioner kubia. Hi. Ive done a full interview with you, i know youre one of the shares of the Economic Recovery Task force is thank you for fighting for Small Business on that task force, which is awesome and im a little concerned about the timeline of the task force. From what i read, the final report is due to be submitted to the Mayors Office in october when, of course, the bleeding is happening right now in such a big way and if were going to take Decisive Action to help Small Businesses, it needs to be done now. So my question tow to you, do yu feel theres an opportunity to book longterm is also shortterm quick changes to help Small Businesses who only have a couple of weeks left of runway. Absolutely, mannc. I dony. I dont think this is au hand over, but i think this is a google doc that just flows and the board of supervisors, in my opinion, should have access to this breathing plan, no and i dt think this is something that we script every single play, no matter what. This is a playbook where what if this happens, and what if that doesnt happen and we impart this solution . So maybe the first five, six things are scripted and it should be a play list to plural the cost benefit when the time is right. I believe it needs to be brought to the attention to the mayor and board of supervisors and the public. Thank you. So, rodney, you know, something that has come up for me and somewhat relevant to mannys point and a degree of uncertainty about when theyre going to reopen and under what conditions or criteria. Do you think that the task force is going to be examining that part of recovery as to the dry tarcriteria for opening thes of businesses and in order to open, what sort of requirements might they are to make . What im hearing from a lot of Small Business owners is a lot of trepidation around the planning portion of this and how to get ready to come back. I know. Its so hard, and hiring back you would like to have a little bit of notice. So i think theres some things that are out of our control, the best we can be prepared, when we get that green light go and i think the mayor has done a great job listening to health advice. At a certain point, we have to listen to economic advice. At a certain point, when the time is right. And one advantage of maybe us being conservative about it is there are many states and countries that are ahead of us and if you set up a google alert, economic recovery, theres all kinds of things coming in and people to some degree, maybe foolishly ahead of us, but i want to watch that and to see what things work well for them and what mistakes and failures theyre making so we dont step on the same pile. The best we can do is try to be prepared is cue up some things. To your point, we had a directive yesterday that loosened up construction and i think thats important, that the governor just really is trying to careful about what to unleash when things open back up. Yes, and you know, i share your thoughts that all leaders have done a great job and were fortunate being here in San Francisco and i think weve navigated this very choppy water as best as we can. I think i want to commend the Small Business Community Many are committed to staying closed because they support the publics interest in keeping everybody safe. Its become a bit strife to sayy were all in this together but its true and genuine how much everyone has sacrificed to make sure that we keep everybody safe and how much folks like yourself are contributing towards making sure that we get to the other side. So thank you for your contributions on the task force. I wish we could bottle that sentiment that people are closing for the right reasons, for their employees, neighbors and its hard these days to capture that, but were going to need to take care of each and look out for each other on the rebound. So i dont know how you bottle that, but that is good stuff. So if you can, if youre schedule allows, stick around and well open up the questioning to all of the presenters and we have a cue from the commissioners here. So commissioners. Hi, everyone. Thanks to our last speakers and i have a question for director fong, if you have gotten a sense from the task force that they are already lining up, kind of prioritization of which businesses can reopen when and i think we have touched on it briefly, but i know a lot of people who a lot of businesses subject to the last supplemental, the six supplemental that installed a business curfew for apms are wondering if thats something that the city is discussing and lifting or adjusting or if were talking about going the opposite direction and enforcing more types of curfews. Yeah. To tate date, we havent been pf those conversations, but i think we should be and i think we should be thinking about what is semiessential and what types of businesses have procedures in place, like a haircutter. Cosmetology has state regulated Health Certificate and so whenever i think theres that level of already some oversight in regulations, we should consider letting those be some of the first to come back out, worth secon. Im not a health exl defer to safety first, really. Well said. Any other commission comments or questions to any of our presenters . Commissioner adams, i know youre on the phone and i just want to make sure you have an opportunity to ask any questions. They are thinking about helping businesses rebuild and just a closing thought, something im thinking about for myself, as we look at the next phase, we talked a lot about recovery and as jenny mentioned during her comments and the need to pivot and rodney mentioned about looking at different businesses and how theyre going to have to sort of restructure their operations, i really think that were not looking at recovery, were looking at rebuilding and i think rebuilding and the right word for what were doing here, because i dont think were going to recover to where we were before. I think were building something new. And while that is extremely challenging and difficult for many businesses, my own included, were in full scale collapse right now. So im right there with you. This is changing as time goes by and this is a conversation to be continually checking in with each other and continuing to listen and make suggestions so that we can move forward in a positive manner. So with that, i will open it up for i guess next item or do we open it up for Public Comment, dominica . Its Public Comment . Do we have any Public Comment. Operator you have one question remaining. Hello, commissioners. Can you hear me . Yes. Great, im adam gordon and i own oxygen Massage Therapy and i employ 30 people at three locations and first of all, i want to thank you all for everything thats been said on this call so far. I see all of the support for our Small Business community on this commission and i just second so much of what was just said, in that this is an opportunity to rebuild and i want to really emphasize that we need relief when it comes to rent and tacking on four months of rent will be debilitating. I think its really important to look at the nuance policies of the payroll protection act loans because they are allowed to be used and there seems to be a talking point that i have received from a number of my landlords that i should use my ppe loan money to pay my rent. However, if i, too, i dont payl salary i was paying everyone, the loan will not be forgiven and a quarter of an annual quarter of my payroll is astronomical. Im working on 5 margins and in 2019, my margins were negative. So to cover that out of my own cash reserves would be impossible. And the landlord is taking that government handout and asking for me to pay rent out of that is not reasonable and i wanted to make sure people were aware. There seems to be a talking point, because there are three locations and three landlords working with me on that. And another thing to emphasize, the Massage Therapy business, San Francisco has subjected us to some of the most intensive regulations due to our association with Human Trafficking and i have nothing to do with Human Trafficking. Weve been written up as one of the leading therapeutic systems in the country and we have no reason to want to be associated with that. Were trying to disassociate ourselves. Ive lost one location and ive seen the writing on the wall and i dont want to keep acquiring debt and theres been issues where i dont believe the landlord would be a great actor. However, the relocation costs, due to the regulations on my specific industry are between 10 and 20,000. And that comes from not only the individual Health Department regulations, which are the least of the cost, but the way that regulation requires a reference from the police department, the department of building inspection and specifically planning and the way that the ddi and planning work is so much discretionary. The planner youre assigned to, costs can amass and a lot of the reasons the systems dont work because to dismantle them, its like trying to fly a plane and if we rethink the way it suburbainterfaces with the busis community and to update them to the most modern standards, this would be the time, thank you. In Public Comment, theres just a reminder that this is Public Comment for item number 3, so comments should be specific to this item. Thank you. Operator you have two questions remaining. Go ahead, commenter. What adam just said, i agree with everything. Small businesses are getting zero support and any business under 25 employees, zero support and my application has been with my pp has been for two weeks, nothing. I dont think were going to get help. Youre going to see a ghost town all over San Francisco and big banks have completely scaled down on every single level. I dont know what to do and adam doesnt know what to do and no one knows what to do and i would also like to be considered for the task force to represent the spa industry. So thank you so much and i hope we can get through this. Thank you. Operator you have one question remaining. Hi there. , there. I own a neighborhood bar in the Mission District and i have three missions that i wanted to comment on. First, i would like to suggest that the Business Commission organize a Breakout Group for bars. I hear a lot of talk about restaurants and their challenges and i think bars have unique challenges that merit some thoughtful discussions. My next point is to echo lauries comment that we need cash. Ive applied for all of the loans and grants im eligible for and ive heard nothing back, positive or negative. Also, i would like some updates on the sf health interestfree loan that the city is offering and my final comment is regarding landlords. I think its important in the discussion of landlords and leases to distinguish between types of landlords and some own one or two properties, but some landlords are really in the business of landlording and own multiple properties and maybe could afford to be a little more lenient or understanding and that may require some leadership from our government. Thank you. Next question. Operator you have zero questions remaining. Were going to give them just 30 seconds. The number is 888 4634735 and 4134030. Do we have any in the cue now . Operator ten. Next speaker, please do. Go. I think that was a typo, no one is left in the cue. Thats weird. Im getting a message from one commenter who said they are there but theyre on silent. To wyou need to dial 10 to get o the cue. Im a resident in the city, a smalltime Business Owner and i own and operate an apartment Maintenance Company and two mexican restaurants, one in hayes valley and i own a management Apartment Building in the tenderloin and i have over 70 employees fulltime and more tenants and some of my employees run departments for me so theres some crossover. My concern is the undocumented workers that we have, that work at the restaurants and in the Maintenance Company i always knew ther. I always knew a sharee workers were undocumented and using other peoples credentials, but really i did not know to the extent of the problem until we shut things down and i really had to figure out who was eligible for Unemployment Benefits and who was not. And you know, it turned out that almost everyone in the back of the house at the restaurants and a lot of guys in the Maintenance Company were not eligible for these benefits. They were not provided any stimulus relief money, even though many of them pay the taxes through tax i. D. Numbers, in hopes when they gain citizenship and they were also left out by this administrations policy for the individual relief. And it seems clear that 75 , 80 of these small restaurants are not going to survive. I think theyll pull through and our restaurant down there in union square relies heavily on the tourist business and Hotel Occupancies and im not sure that that business will come back to really guide us with the income that we need. We managed to keep what i thought was a reasonable reserve and the restaurant accounts, almost 80 of one months revenue and nearly 100,000 of income from reserves in the business accounts. As soon as we shut down, i paid out all of the unpaid sick leave and advanced nearly 40 hours sick leave to all of the employees hoping to get reimbursed from the workers and family first program. These workers that work on the Maintenance Company with the guys that go out at night and they just dont have any resources and it will be the undocumented workers that suffer the most and i want to make sure theyre putting together a plan take care of these people. And these people have been working for me more over a dozen years and many are even family members in many years. We have to move on. Thank you for your comments. Operator you have four questions remaining. Question hi, this is Steven Cornell and i would like to add one thing to the mission for the longterm recovery. In todays chronicle, theres a list for seniors that could linger for years and if i take two sentences, even when stayathome orders are relaxed and most people resume some semblance of everyday activities and seniors need to take extra precautions to avoid being exposed. This could mean no dining out, no public transportation, no travel and this could be out for a year or two until we have a vaccine. So this will affect a lot of our businesses that have a lot of seniors coming, maybe restaurants and that sort of thing and also it will affect our employee. S. Can we employ people over 65 . I see this was a whole other impact oaspect of our planning r businesses, loans and Everything Else. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. Question this is ben wineman. Prin pai inaudible . inaudible . Operator you have three questions remaining. Next speaker, youre up. Question hello, this is david, three generation familybusiness for 57 years. Were open still, so were fortunate, but i would like what was said earlier about rebuilding, because we have to rebuild, too and how we rebuild is our custome customers and rer customers and what i notice in just the last few days, how customers arent abiding by the rules and they are not Wearing Masks and everybody should know that and its seeing the change in the last few days. I reached out to my inspector, the department of Public Health, to ask for some more signs, colourful and big signs that would be put in front and so what im saying is, were rebuilding and im getting a little bit ahead. Thank you very much. Operator you have two questions remaining. Question hi. My name is sage and my partner and i own two dog grooming shops in San Francisco and i would like to comment on behalf of all of the pet services in the city. Its a multimillion dollar industry in San Francisco and as you probably know, theres probably more dogs in the city thaunder the age of 12 and a lof people consider their pets their children. Not only is it is vital industry but its essential to pet owners and i feel like weve been sort of ignored in this whole conversation. I looked at the task force online and i did not see one representative for a pet Service Industry. Ive asked to be a part of the task force and i want to ensure that at least somebody is on that task force speaking for the pet Service Industry and advocating for the millions and millions of pets in our city that are not getting the assistance they need right now. We can make protocols and open safely. Also, a dog, its not like they just have a bad hair day like a human. They get matting and their hair is starting to pull and harm them and they have nails that are overgrown and theyre getting ear infections and our customers are desperate for these services. And i want to make sure were getting represented in this conversation that we can be a stage two business that opens and we want to open safely and we just want to be a huge part of the discussion. And until we can open, we need a way to get information and provide relief to these pet owners. Next caller. Question hi, i own a cafe and we responded when the initial sheltinplace order was implemented and doo during the 16th of march, we moved our service to the doorway so no one comes inside and we were checking barriers to help customers and employees feel safe. And were very, very fortunate that our cafe business is mostly returns. And our wholesale is down over 80 . The ongoing concern that i want to bring up is that weve been applauded by customers and by other people for moving our ca cafe. Maybe we need to be more inclusive of the extraordinary measures that they have taken for peoples safety and publics health. Were nervous one day a Health Inspector will come by and make us change our setup, which is ideal and everybody feels great about and its making people safer. People that called in with Public Comment, we appreciate all of the feedback and input. Its really important when you do that, it enables us to convey your concerns with policymakers and agencies. With that, ill open it up to commissioner discussion. Do we have to make that a formal item, dominica. No. Any commissioners have any comments . Mariam here. I think this is good and im glad we created a forum to receive some input from different sectors and pick up on some trends. This is a big area that we need to address and it insects with seniors and microbusinesses that are just, you know, one individual who intersects with another vulnerable population and theyre falling through the cracks. I think getting more info out on that Employee Retention credit is huge and then, another trend is the land use and planning codes and we definitely received some written Public Comment that also eluded to that, where a Business Needs to relocate, but because theres a cu or a neighborhood corridor restriction for, you know, a franchisee, like a formula retail franchisee which could still be a Small Business by a single owner, but land use, we need to ask if theres any suspensions to land use or planning codes at this time. I think thats something that im not sure thats been asked or thats happening and i would also like to ask where some of the federal backstop recommendations that we made regarding commercial Property Owners or small Property Owners to be able to accommodate that rent freeze from tenants, so im curious where that conversation is, if anybody, my of my fellow commissioners has an update on that. But those are some of the things i think we should bring back around. Great, thank you, commissioners. Im going to recognise the commissioners that spoke and im going to, as often the case, we go to a more sort of general discussion, but i want to recommend to the commissioners in the cue first. Commissioner ortiz . Thank you to all of our speakers, time and insight. Every information is resource that you bring to the table helps us to disperse it among our constituents. And issu everyone in the publict is watching, making your suggestions known, we thank you because we couldnt do it without you. All of the minds and thoughts are needed in this crisis. And like all of my cocommissioners, one of the biggest things, liquidity, liquidity, liquidity and we need money on the streets and from a cultural component, in the latino population, thats been the hardest hit with the virus in the city and obviously, were the hardist hit with the affects and im part of the Economic Recovery Task force and all of the data, selfproprietors are not mentioned. It has to be one employer or more and this is a sole proprietor, whether its a contractor or even a Small Food Service area that may be you have your kids working in the kitchen and its kind of for free, while theyre going to school and whatnot. This leaves the Latino Community, weve been very underserved regarding all of the of the programs, all of the resources and Everything Else. So we have toking cultural sensitive during this crisis and all of the resources dont necessarily make it to the mission on time. And when they do reach out, theyre not in our language and then it becomes a capacity issue where you have to handle somebody and walk them through this very culturally unfriendly process. So i commend or politicians. They acted quickly and they acted within their capacity and i think we need to fund more programs that exist to capacity and we should take the burden ourselves and lead the way as a city. And also, its time to revisit the legislation. Before this pandemic, our businesses had a weakened immune system with all of the ordinances and all of this legislation. The time is a new day and we need to start looking at stuff. We need to revisit. And we need to stop making it so cumbersome to start a business. We need expediters to change their permits and zoning and whatever they need. We need to be helping businesses. Thank you. Commissioner hewing. I would like to thank all of our speakers today. This is an incredible meeting and i am so fortunate. I feel not saying im fortunate. I am saying we are so fortunate that we live in a stay with so many strong Business Leaders and its been incredibly impressive with all of the thoughts coming together right now and i feel that we have the opportunity to be very innovative. One of the things that i wanted to just echo or speak about, i guess, was what one of the things in terms of recovery. Ive gotten a lot of questions and ive heard a lot of this pointed out in this last piece of discussion on really identifying businesses that have other oversight bodies and other types of organizations that can help them open up safely. I really like to push forward or i guess i would like to just add that exclamation point to add that the businesses sooner rather than later so that we can start getting things into a better position sooner. Thats all. Thank you. Commissionecommissioners . Thank you to cynthia for leading the webinar and representing the Small Business commission with so much tact and so thank you, cynthia for that and for people who wrote in Public Comment and to our presenters, this has been a great meeting in a time of crisis. So i just put together some thoughts after speaking to a lot of Small Business owners and the groups im a part of and listening to this call and broke down b what i think might be the beginning i know this is kind of brainstorm time for proposals to submit to the Economic Recovery Task force and just to work on. And so if youll allow me, i want to go through them. The first are fees. And there are a lot of Small Businesses that have fees from before shelterinplace started in march, that they owe the city and. My thing is lets aim high and see what the city comes back with and ask for what we need and wit what the Small Business owners need and i want us to waive the fees that Small Business owners had before racking this up, which is weighing on their heads. The next thing is to waive Registration Fee for brick and mortars or any consumerfacing businesses for 2021. Those fees have been pushed out until september but Small Business now is a 4,000 bill on it, now. And so thats money that will come out of my bank account at some point and consider waiving those. Any application fees that make changes to physical space and make improvements. We shall allow for flex use space citywide and right now, flex retail is on the books but most commercial corridors do not allow it. We should expand it and expand formula retails from 11 shops to 51. A lot big bad businesses have a lot more than 51 location exposd that would allow new businesses in vacant spaces should they occur. Funding, i propose one is a recovery fund, a fund to be used to reopen Small Businesses and this is not for ppe and sanitizer masks. I think that needs to be separate. A lot will need to purchase new inventories and new signage and make improvements to the space in order to bring people in. Whether its Financial Support or a lease procurement portal to purchase the ppe sanitize and this ithese are businesses thatn out of money and at the very least give us a procurement so that were not competing in china and in the state of new york for the same product. Two more pieces, hdso, money should only be paid out to hdso being used and it should be i think it should be suspended for another year to three years until Small Businesses can get back on track. Im so glad and happy that the mayor has made the announcement to fak take over funds and givek to workers and i think thats magazinmagazinegreat of her. We need to suspend the program for another three years before we recover. A lot of people have demonstrated a lot of angst on renegotiating their leases to accommodate what will likely be a slow and long recovery and i think the city should help Small Business owners by providing free local services and all languages to help to renegotiate. Ill just end by saying, i think time is so of the essence right now and so, i would like to ask if you are all amenable to these, maybe starting to circulate a working document that we can kind of agree on and finalize by the next Commission Meeting should we be allowed to have it. I think we need to anticipate potential departments having issues with some of these proposals and i would like to see with your permission, to ask the office of Small Business to schedule meetings with the individuals responsible for i fr approving these with dpw, fire, planning, oewd and maybe some from the mery mayoral staff andt be clear asking to schedule a meeting in four weeks so once we have this finalized, we can present it to them. Great. Commissioner, were going to come back to you in a minute because ill have a recommendation for you. I have to take off, everybody, good talk. Ok. Thank you, commissioner suzunus. I want to make sure with is a quorum. Yes. And so, i will make a couple of sort of brief comments here i need to jump in before you go because i didnt put my name in. Yes, of course. First off, i just want to echo what my fellow commissioners just said, the speakers were great commissioner, everything you just said, i just think is awesome and i hear you. I want to thank our speakers. I probably learned more from these speakers today and got some hope than i did from watching any media. And i like what rodney fung had to say between house advice and economic advice and opening up. And i do feel theres a pentup demand out there right now and if we dont do something sooner than later, im nervous of what we may see and what may happen and thats it and i want to thank everybody who called in, the Public Comments. And this has been very, very, very good and very, very informative. Thats it. Thank you. , steven. So first off, the first thing i want to say is many of the Public Commenters expressed a little bit of angst that their business type or their business industry wasnt highlighted or mentioned. And so i wanted to speak to that. The we have the Small Business commission and we represent all Small Business, not just restaurants, not just cafes or y particular Small Business. We representative bars and we also represent dentist offices. Commissioner, ill come to you in a second. To briefly talk about some of the other things that were mentioned here, im deeply concerned about the impact of personal guarantees with so many of our businesses failing through no fault of their own and personal guarantees were designed to prevent reckless abusive and fraudulent behaviour and none of that is the case in the wake of covid19. And so, i know new york has introduce the ed a law to try to prevent landlords from exercising pertinenexercising p. I am of the opinion that we need to expand that concept and needs to be extended to folks who are falling behind on loan payments and commercial lending agreements 1. We shouldnt see Business Owners using their life savings to make banks whole because of something that affected all of the of us. I feel strongly about that and i want to make sure that doesnt get lost in the mix because that is something that will be very relevant, particularly with respect to the ability of the Business Owners to reopen a business again in their lives. If we knock them all the way back to losing every last thing they own, many wont be in a position to rebuild and deploy the expertise that theyve gained over many years of being in business. So i want to make sure we Pay Attention to that. Something that came up a lot is the issue of access from a cultural perspective, from weather due to language issues or just being, you know, in a place where youre familiar with how the process works and theres a lot of people that are left out of the current aid process. And one thing i did want to mention, there was an article in the chronicle this morning. Theres a new group thats come on board called i forget what k stands for, but you can search for it in the chronicle. They are a joint partnership with a law firm called morrison and forester and berkley law students and they are providing free Legal Support for Small Business owners and i believe its 25 employees or less. And i think thats important for people to be aware of, that theres a free service out there. And i just learned this reading it in the paper this morning, putting together a 1 billion punned to help Small Business which is magazine tides larger n anything available in the city. So keep an eye on that and as a commission, i think we need to think about what to do to integrate with that. I think bot commissioners talked about landutilization flexibility and i agree wholeheartedly and thats something that we need to make it easier for people to be in business and i think its no secret to anybody that the planning and the dbi has become so labor intensive and we need to be a forceful advocate to make change so that we can engage in the building process. I think formula retail is something absolutely, you know, that we have to look at. You know, theres a lot of smaller chains that are getting lumped in with the burger kings of the world and we head to think about how that can be improved upon. The ppe, were now seeing regulations come in, and they dont have a way to get it and i think thats an outrageous state of affairs. Why are we making it harder for Small Businesses to operate when the city cant even get ppe and you know, we heard mayor breed talk about shipments diverted but were laying all of this expectation that a small corner store will deal with what the city cannot. I think we need to make sure as manny suggested, i agree wholeheartedly, some sort of portal or ability for them to access the supplies. And acso is absolutely something. So many businesses pay into this and i think many businesses dont understand and certainly members of the public dont understand that a lot of these funds never get used by the employee at all and eventually, they get subsumed into the general fund. Youre paying money and neither the worker or business gets any benefit and it increases the cost and expense of being in business and i think originally, that was crafted in a time we did not have the aca and we did not have we had a lot of workers that did not have access to healthcare. Im not saying that aca has fixed all of that, but i am saying that theres something i agree with wholeheartedly, something is fundamentally broken and there is 130 million sitting in a fund that workers and Business Owners paid into, both, and it took executive action from the mayor for them to be able to get access to those funds. Thats an outrageous state of affairs when Small Businesses in the crisis that its been long before the coronavirus entered the picture. None of us has seen in this our lifetime and we need to rethink how some of this is structured. I agree with all of that. For the benefit of the public, we have the brown act. That means the Small Business commission, we cannot interact with each other outside of this and talk about agenda items outside of did i just get disconnected . The purpose of this hearing, at least in my mind want was to gather information and to take that information and what i would recommend is that today, we were given a lot of information and theres been a lot of written Public Comment that has been emailed to us, as well, which i have not had the chaps to read all of those emails yet and there was quite a bit of Public Comment. Rather than making a motion today and recognising, manny, that youre correct, its an urgent issue, but i think we need to take a little bit of time to digest all of the information that came in and as well as the written comment. What i think we should do is to try to set up another meeting as expeditiously as possible, recognising the urgency of the matter and that, of course, is not entirely up to us. There are scheduling issues and we ar have to get approval for special meetings. What i recommend is that we digest the information that came in and then have a followup meeting where we could have staff collate is list and thats how we can assemble all of our suggestions and items in a way that doesnt violate the brown act and collate a list and gather that list up together and then we can talk about as a commission, we can talk about what our recommendations would be to the Economic Recovery Task force and we can make our first set of recommendations. And i say first, because im imagining between now and october, we will have an ongoing series of recollections that we will make. We will get new information. Well have new things that we want to respond to and we will have new ideas and we will hav have it will be a shifting dynamic landscape and well want to respond to it. But as our first series of recommendations, i know that there are many on the Economic Recovery Task force and there are many on the board of soup supervisors that are interested in were what very to say. Im encouraging the fellow commissioners to take our time and move through this as quickly as possible. We need to digest what weve received today and work up through staff what we will discuss in our next hearing. That all sounds great, but i think the goal should be by the end of the next hearing, we have our list of recommendations. I think a month is too much time before we provide those. I would completely agree. I would hope that hat th at thef the next hearing, theres a document that we can submit, as a letter to the Economic Recovery Task force. Can i empower you or can we empower you and the dominican regina based on what was said from the commissioners and word smith is in the next meeting. It may take time for them to collate and finalize it and get it ready. Yes, i think that is a workable plan and im seeing notes here from dominica. And feel free to make it on the channel if you have notes. I am sending a reminder to everyone to keep their to activate their voices on the meeting. Ok. Just to be clear, my proposal is that sharkky dominica and reggia take what has been said and come up with a draft of proposals that we can spend the next Commission Meeting, week of may 11th. If you would be willing, i would love to have your involvement in collating that document and as Vice President , i think she should have the ability to weigh in on whether she wants to participate in that document and if she chooses not to, then i would we cant restaff, ask if one of the other commissioners would like to participate and make a decision from there on the best way to move forward. Im happy to do that. Ok. Well, then, is that a workable plan for generating a collated draft for us to review in the next meeting . This is regina, yes. Good. And we have a good plan, then. I confirm with my commissionecommissioners that tf the essence and no time to waste. Everybody has made great points that we need to get on ground now. Yeah, yeah. Look, i think its also important to highlight the work of the commission, which i think has been extraordinary. We have been moving as quickly as we can and i think quite effectively and maybe punching quite above our weight and so, i agree with you that we need to move quickly and i wanted to let the public know that we have not been moving slowly up until now. And that the public should know that we are moving very aggressively and not being shy about advocating for Small Business on all levels that we can as much as the charter allows us to. Hi, commissioner. Im going to interrupt and remind everyone that we still have commissioners reports. Also, remaining on the call are commissioner ortiz and huey. If we lose one more commissioner, then there wont be a quorum. Next item, please. Item 4, commissioner reports, allowing president , Vice President and commissioners to report on recent Small Business activities and to make announcements that are of interestininterest to the smalls community. Commissioner ortiz. I wanted to report back to the latino recovery to address all of the issues impacting Small Businesses and the latter resources. inaudible . I wanted to comment on the virus hitting the commission the hardest because that is a vulnerable community. And i do think that its appropriate that we make sure that Community Gets enough attention to that we can establish some level of equity. So i appreciate your advocacy there. This goes into the employees they furloughed and how much longer to last to get some hard data from all of the merchants on valencia so that we can provide that information where its necessary, to get a good snapshot of how Small Businesses are going and were calling it the merchants reality check. And one thing to note is that valencia corridor is one of the busiest in the city with some of the highest rents, commercial rents in San Francisco. And a huge number of consumerfacing Small Businesses and so, it is a good snapshot on whats going on and so, i hope to be able to report on some of that data for the next one. Obviously, were still pushing people to th to complete that s. To you think that will be completed by the time of the next meeting . I do. I am wondering if the results will be available somewhere on line they can be digested by Commission Members prior to the meeting . Absolutely. Wile get it all done by next week. Ok. That sounds good. Any other commissioner reports . This is steve and i just want to say what everybody has been doing is great and these have been hard times and the one thing im very optimistic about is well be able to open up so soon. Were going to do new items, arent we, on the agenda here . I dont see that on the agenda. We didnt get it on the agenda. I just want to manny, i want to put out there, because i would love to be working with some of that, because the one thing that we really all have to talk about now is the opening up and that will be a big thing and i think some of the speakers today gave me some ideas and my head is just rolling right now with all sorts of crazy stuff with this, but i do think that theyll start slowly opening up and we need to be ready for that. We need to be sooner than later, but i think week by week, youll slowly see stuff and we really need to be on top of this. Two thoughts about that and one is, as we start to open up, ive spoken with several Business Owners and theres a lot of even within specific segments, theres a lot of variance and i observatio spokeo different gym owners and theyre both Small Businesses. You know, one, everybody can go to the gym whenever they want and the other is a very small gym that you can only go work out with the private trainer and theres only two people in at a time. And what i think, something we need to think about if we start to reopen up and whether the commission is advocating for i is one concern i have is painting with a broad brush or doing one size fits all criteria. For example, looking at gyms, saying it would be upsettable founderstandable for policy maks to open up gyms last for health concerns. We have to remember that its not one size fits all and that concludes my report from what ive been hearing from the community. And youre absolutely correct. Its definitely not a onesizefits all and thats what worries me, because theyre going to do it as a onesizefits all and we have to look at individuals. And i think that is what the commissioner was speaking to, which is that weve got to start with our ask and let them come back to with whats reasonable. With we havbut we have to be ase chartered advocate this city deposit, we havgovernment, we hs aggressive as we can reasonably stand to be. By the way, we need to be loud about this, too, as commission, and as a whole. Thats right. And we have to be loud and we have to be out there and make those phone calls and just be in their face on this one. Commissioner becames, your leadership oveadams, yourleaders given us a perspective and any guidance you have on that front would be well received. Thats why im here. You know, im working for a landlord now and i will tell you, its different than a bank and a lot of stuff that was even said earlier, you have to treat everybody different and its just were in a new world, folks. And it came quick. So thank you for talking about the survey and i think that that data will be extremely valuable. Not only valuable for the commission, but it would also encourage that i know that the valencia emergence encourages many and i think we need this data moving forward. And then i also want to express my appreciation to the commissioners for really talking about the nuance in terms of dealing with the opening and not one size fits all. So it will be very helpful to know that for us as offices were communicating and working with Small Businesses to know that we have that support and so right now, its an unofficial support, because theres no specific action on it, but that may be something to propose at a future date. So thank you. Great. Well, certainly its a challenging time to be on the Small Business commission for many of us that recently joined, my goodness. And what a crazy time. So, are there any more commissioner comments before we move on to the next item . Any members of the public wanting to make a comment on item number 4 . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. And next item, please. Sf gov tv, show the business slide. We will end with a reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. And that the office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters, continue to reach out to the office of Small Business. Next item. Item 5, adjournment, action item. Is there a motion . Motion. I take my hat off to the generation before mine and you can ajourn the meeting, steve. Motion to ajourn. [ laughter ] motion by Commission Adams to ajourn the meeting and seconded by commissioner utiele. role call . This motion passes 40 and meeting is adjourned at 1 39 p. M. [ ] thank you, earn. Everyone. Pho good afternoon, and welcome to the land use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board o board of supervisors. I am aaron peskin joined by supervisor safai and on my left by member dean preston. Our clerk is ms. Erica major