Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240713

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 working with kids, they keep you young. They keep you on your tones on your toes. Teaching them, at the same time, us learning from them, everything is fulfilling. Ready . Go. [ ] we really wanted to find a way to support Women Entrepreneurs in particular in San Francisco. It was very important for the mayor, as well as the Safety Support the dreams that people want to realize, and provide them with an opportunity to receive funding to support improvements for their business so they could grow and thrive in their neighborhoods and in their industry. Three, two, one because i am one of the consultants for two nonprofits here for entrepreneurship, i knew about the grand through the renaissance entrepreneur center, and through the Small Business development center. I thought they were going to be perfect candidate because of their strong values in the community. They really give back to the neighborhood. They are from this neighborhood, and they care about the kids in the community here. When molly molly first told us about the grant because she works with Small Businesses. She has been a tremendous help for us here. She brought us to the attention of the grand just because a lot of things here were outdated, and need to be uptodate and redone totally. Hands in front. Recite the creed. My oldest is jt, he is seven, and my youngest is ryan, he is almost six. It instills discipline and the boys, but they show a lot of care. We think it is great. The moves are fantastic. The women both are great teachers. What is the next one . My son goes to fd k. He has been attending for about two years now. They also have a summer program, and last summer was our first year participating in it. They took the kids everywhere around San Francisco. This year, owner talking about placing them in summer camps, all he wanted to do was spend the entire summer with them. He has strong women in his life, so he really appreciates it. I think that carries through and i appreciate the fact that there are more strong women in the world like that. I met dandrea 25 years ago, and we met through our interest in karate. Our professor started on cortland years ago, so we grew up here at this location, we out he outgrew the space and he moved ten years later. He decided to reopen this location after he moved. Initially, i came back to say, hey, because it might have been 15 years since i even put on a uniform. My Business Partner was here basically by herself, and the person she was supposed to run the studio with said great, you are here, i started new Nursing School so you can take over. And she said wait, that is not what i am here for i was by myself before for a month before she came through. She was technically here as a secretary, but we insisted, just put on the uniform, and help her teach. I was struggling a little bit. And she has been here. One thing led to another and now we are coowners. You think a lot more about safety after having children and i wanted to not live in fear so much, and so i just took advantage of the opportunity, and i found it very powerful to hit something, to get some relief, but also having the knowledge one you might be in a situation of how to take care of yourself. The selfdefence class is a new thing that we are doing. We started with a group of women last year as a trial run to see how it felt. Theres a difference between selfdefence and doing a karate class. We didnt want them to do an actual karate class. We wanted to learn the fundamentals of how to defend yourself versus, you know, going through all the forms and techniques that we teaching a karate class and how to break that down. Then i was approached by my old high school. One once a semester, the kids get to pick an extra curricular activity to take outside of the school walls. My old biology teacher is now the principle. She approached us into doing a selfdefence class. The girls have been really proactive and really sweet. They step out of of the comfort zone, but they have been willing to step out and that hasnt been any pushback. It is really great. It is respect. You have to learn it. When we first came in, they knew us as those girls. They didnt know who we were. Finally, we came enough for them to realize, okay, they are in the business now. It took a while for us to gain that respect from our peers, our male peers. Since receiving the grant, it has ignited us even more, and put a fire underneath our butts even more. We were doing our summer camp and we are in a movie theatre, and we just finished watching a film and she stepped out to receive a phone call. She came in and she screamed, hey, we got the grant. And i said what . Martial arts is a passion for us. It is passion driven. There are days where we are dead tired and the kids come and they have the biggest smiles on their faces and it is contagious. We have been operating this program for a little over a year all Women Entrepreneurs. It is an extraordinary benefit for us. We have had the Mayors Office investing in our program so we can continue doing this work. It has been so impactful across a diversity of communities throughout the city. We hope that we are making some type of impact in these kids lives outside of just learning karate. Having selfconfidence, having discipline, learning to know when its okay to stand up for yourself versus you just being a bully in school. These are the values we want the kids to take away from this. Not just, i learned how to kick and i learned how to punch. We want the kids to have more values when they walk outside of these doors. [ ] roughly five years, i was working as a high school teacher, and i decided to take my students on a surfing field trip. The light bulb went off in my head, and i realized i could do much more for my students taking them surfing than i could as their classroom teacher, and that is when the idea for the city surf project was born. Working with kids in the ocean that arent familiar with this space is really special because youre dealing with a lot of fear and apprehension but at the same time, a lot of excitement. When i first did it, i was, like, really scared, but then, i did it again, and i liked it. Well get a group of kids who have just never been to the beach, are terrified of the idea, who dont like the beach. Its too cold out, and its those kid that are impossible to get back out of the water at the end of the day. Over the last few years, i think weve had at least 40 of our students participate in the city surf project. Surfing helped me with, like, how to swim. Weve start off with about two to four sessions in the pool before actually going out and surfing. Swimming at the pool just helps us with, like, being, like, comfortable in the water and being calm and not being all not being anxious. So when we started the city surf project, one of the things we did was to say hey, this is the way to earn your p. E. Credits. Just getting kids to go try it was one of our initial challenges for the first year or two. But now that weve been doing it three or four years, we have a group of kids thats consistent, and the word has spread, that its super fun, that you learn about the ocean. Starting in the morning, you know, i get the vehicles ready, and then, i get all the gear together, and then, i drive and go get the kids, and we take them to a local beach. We usually go to linda mar, and then occasionally ocean beach. We once did a special trip. We were in capitola last year, and it was really fun. We get in a circle and group stretch, and we talk about specific safety for the day, and then, we go down to the water. Once we go to the beach, i dont want to go home. I cant change my circumstances at home, but i can change the way i approach them. Our program has definitely been a way for our students to find community and build friends. I dont really talk to friends, so i guess when i started doing city surf, i started to, like, get to know people more than i did before, and people that i didnt think id like, like, ended up being my best friends. Its a group sport the way we do it, and with, like, close camaraderie, but everybodys doing it for themselves. Its great, surfing around, finding new people and making new friendships with people throughout surfing. It can be highly developmental for students to have this time where they can learn a lot about themselves while negotiating the waves. I feel significantly, like, calmer. It definitely helps if im, like, feeling really stressed or, like, feeling really anxious about surfing, and i go surfing, and then, i just feel, like, im going to be okay. It gives them resiliency skills and helps them build selfconfidence. And with that, they can use that in other parts of their lives. I went to bring amy family o the beach and tell them what i did. I saw kids open up in the ocean, and i got to see them connect with other students, and i got to see them fail, you know, and get up and get back on the board and experience success, and really enjoy themselves and make a connection to nature at the same time. For some kids that are, like, resistant to, like, being in a Mentorship Program like this, its they want to surf, and then later, theyll find out that theyve, like, made this community connection. I think they provided level playing fields for kids to be themselves in an open environment. For kids to feel like i can go for it and take a chance that i might not have been willing to do on my own is really special. We go on 150 surf outings a year. Thats yearround programming. Weve seen a tremendous amount of youth face their fears through surfing, and that has translated to growth in other facets of their lives. I just think the biggest thing is, like, that they feel like that they have something that is really cool, that theyre engaged in, and that we, like, care about them and how theyre doing, like, in general. What i like best is they really care about me, like, im not alone, and i have a group of people that i can go to, and, also, surfing is fun. Were creating surfers, and were changing the face of surfing. The feeling is definitely akin to being on a roller coaster. Its definitely faster than i think you expect it to be, but its definitely fun. It leaves you feeling really, really positive about what that kids going to go out and do. I think its really magical almost. At least it was for me. It was really exciting when i caught my first wave. I felt like i was, like it was, like, magical, really. When they catch that first wave, and their first lights up, you know their face lights up, you know you have them hooked. I was on top of the world. Its amazing. I felt like i was on top of the world even though i was probably going two miles an hour. It was, like, the scariest thing id ever done, and i think it was when i got hooked on surfing after announcer youre watching coping with covid19. Todays special guest is dr. Steven getnick. Hi, im chris man us and youre watching coping with covid19. Today my guest is the director of the Behavior Therapy Center of San Francisco and Professor Emeritus in counseling psychology at the university of San Francisco. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you. Lets talk about managing anxieties during this pandemic. What types of issues are people facing at the moment . There are a number of issues and i really want to point out that this is affecting everyone and has come on very quickly. So it is normal. If you are not experiencing some anxiety, something is a touch off because this affects us all. I think some of the main ones are our health and worried about getting the virus and our developing serious complications. I think for a lot of people who are single, living alone, in isolation, has been very difficult. I think being in close quarters with people who we normally have some space from now are together 24 7. Thats produced a lot of stress and anxiety. That loss of connection with others. We already addressed. And having kids home. For a lot of people. Yes, absolutely. What are the other problems that they might have . I think without that dynamic, the good things are not a problem. It is the difficulties we have. And when were together 24 7, again its like hooking everything up to an amplifier. So, what kind of problems could be created from working home from home, perhaps for the first time in your career . A lot of people are not used to working at home and a working at home just isnt the same. For one thing, there is a lack of social interaction. Some people find that that affects them greatly. Some people are actually finding theyre getting more work done at home without distractions from work. The lack of structure is probably the most common. We see it here with work at the office. People are kind of watching. We know that our schedule is, suddenly youre at home and you are on your own. Absolutely. If those are some of the issues people are facing, what are some of the techniques people can use to overcome their anxiety . Caller i think there are many. One of the first is how managing and keeping track of your thinking, we think and talk to ourselves a lot. Thats normal. We have a dialogue with ourselves often and we need to monitor that a bit. People tend to ruminate versus problemsolve. That is they tend to worry about all the things that might go wrong. And what i suggest is, look, there are things that can go wrong, but ruminating about the worstcase scenario is not going to be very productive. Sit down, figure out what the things are that you have to deal with and try to problemsolve. I think any of the selfcontrol techniques for anxiety can be helpful. And there are dozens of them. The common ones are meditation, relaxation techniques, yoga, for example and another is diaphragmattic breathing. If you google that, you can learn diaphragmattic breathing in about 10 minutes online. Its incredibly simple and it is a really nice way to reduce anxiety in the moment. Selfcontrol procedures, exercise. Whether if youre fortunate enough to have equipment at home, thats great. If youre not, get outside and go for a walk, keep your safe distance, of course. But you need to be active. Thats helpful. I think people marry be dealing with information overload at the moment. How do you suggest people manage that . I was just going to say that. I think it is really important to kind of limit the information you get. Not in terms of accuracy. I think in terms of accuracy, you want to identify a few sites where people are coming with evidencebased information and scientific information so you can form yourself well. Once youve informed yourself, you need to not be watching all day long. Ive talked to people who are mesmerized from the tv and a it keeps that anxiety going so you need to limit your viewing for sure. This can be stress for people who have economic concerns and worried about their family and friends and loved ones who are essential workers. What would you suggest they do to help manage anxiety and stress . There is a number of things. One of major ones for depression is behavioral activation. Simply, it really means that people will tend to not be depressed as a number of reinforcing activities to engage in. Whether it is hobbies, you read, you listen to music, you crochet, you whatever. These kinds of things are very important so you want to make sure that youre engaging in activities that literally make you feel better as opposed to sitting around ruminating, worrying about the worstcase scenarios that might happen. What about trying to do some selfdevelopment . Yeah. Its a very interesting time. Ive talked to a couple of my own clients who are finding, in a very positive way, that this isolation, while at first can generate a lot of anxiety, particularly if youre just not good at living alone. For a number of people, its giving them a chance to sit back and really think about what is important in their lives, what are the priorities. I think that maybe if there is any Silver Lining in this epidemic, its really forcing all of us to kind of rethink whats really important. Indeed. You know, though, at the same time, there are people who are feeling very lonely at home. How would you encourage them to overcome that . You get online. Facetime, skype, zoom, like what were doing right now. You can stay connected. Its very possible. Most connections are important. We are social critters and we need that connection. I think for people who dont have those options, pull up photos, take a look at pictures of family. You need to stay connected. And its very important. And finally, do you have any suggestions that are specifically for families . Yeah. Well, again, i think one of the interesting things thats come about from all of this, is i talked to families on video is theyre obviously spending more time together. While its a bit awkward, particularly for parents who are in the house working a lot. Its a chance to really deepen relationships and spend more good, quality time together. I think parents really need to step back and kind of plan their day a little bit. Not micro manage it, but have some ideas. Can the family play games together . A lot of people i talked to, theyre even together as a family for the first time. So i think there are a number of things that people can do. I think it is qulaouzful for the families to take five, 10 minutes and say how did the day go . I talked to someone in the phone book before we started who said they noticed what time of day all their anxiety kind of comes together and they start sniping at each other. Now theyre taking a few minutes at tend of the day to say, ok, how are we doing . I think they need modeling good behavior, something you can do within the family, too, to try to thats right. I think thats relevant. Very relevant to how children are going to do. Most of the research from crises, particularly things we cant control showed that children do as well as their parents do. So i think it is important for parents to think about how theyre react aing and they stay calm because whatever they do is modeling, coping for their children. So, that can be very useful. It can also be problematic. When we talked earlier, you mentioned that acknowledging that your kids are afraid is important. Yes. I think that ties to your last question. I think modeling you know, its not incompatible with saying, yeah, you know, mom or dad is a little nervous, too. It means a lot of stuff is going on, but were going to be ok. Were going to stay together. We have our time together. Were going to be safe. Well fill in the blank. So you can do both. You can reassure but in a realistic way that once the kids know its normal to be anxious in these times. Thank you for coming ton show, doctor. I really appreciate the time youve given us. Youre welcome. Thank you for having me. And that is it for this episode. Well be back with more covid19 related information shortly. You have been coping with covid19. Thank you for watching. [ ] [ ] so i grew up in cambridge, massachusetts and i was very fortunate to meet my future wife, now my wife while we were both attending graduate school at m. I. T. , studying urban planning. So this is her hometown. So, we fell in love and moved to her city. [ ] [ ] i was introduced to this part of town while working on a campaign for gavin, who is running for mayor. I was one of the organizers out here and i met the people and i fell in love with them in the neighborhood. So it also was a place in the city that at the time that i could afford to buy a home and i wanted to own my own home. This is where we laid down our roots like many people in this neighborhood and we started our family and this is where we are going to be. I mean we are the part of San Francisco. Its the two neighborhoods with the most children under the age of 18. Everybody likes to talk about how San Francisco is not familyfriendly, there are not a lot of children and families. We have predominately Single Family homes. As i said, people move here to buy their first home, maybe with multiple family members or multiple families in the same home and they laid down their roots. [ ] its different because again, we have little small storefronts. We dont have Light Industrial space or space where you can build highrises or large office buildings. So the tech boom will never hit our neighborhood in that way when it comes to jobs. Turkey, cheddar, avocado, lettuce and mayo, and little bit of mustard. Thats my usual. Mike is the owner, born and bred in the neighborhood. He worked in the drugstore forever. He saved his money and opened up his own spot. Were always going to support home grown businesses and he spent generations living in this part of town, focusing on the family, and the vibe is great and people feel at home. Its like a Little Community gathering spot. This is the part of the city with a small town feel. A lot of mom and pop businesses, a lot of family run businesses. There is a conversation on whether starbucks would come in. I think there are some people that would embrace that. I think there are others that would prefer that not to be. I think we moved beyond that conversation. I think where we are now, we really want to enhance and embrace and encourage the businesses and Small Businesses that we have here. In fact, its more of a mom and pop style business. I think at the end of the day, what were really trying to do is encourage and embrace the diversity and enhance that diversity of businesses we already have. Were the only supervisor in the city that has a permanent district office. A lot of folks use cafes or use offices or different places, but i want out and was able to raise money and open up a spot that we could pay for. Im very fortunate to have that. Hi, good to see you. Just wanted to say hi, hi to the owner, see how hes doing. Everything okay . Yeah. Good. We spend the entire day in the district so we can talk to constituents and talk to Small Businesses. We put money in the budget so you guys could be out here. This is like a commercial corridor, so they focus on cleaning the streets and it made a Significant Impact as you can see. What an improvement it has made to have you guys out here. For sure. We have a significantly diverse neighborhood and population. So i think thats the richness of the mission and it always has been. Its what made me fall in love with this neighborhood and why i love it so much. Hi, youre watching coping with covid19. Today im going to the grocery store. Now, im not an authority about the virus. Im just showing you what im personally doing. To find out the most definitive and uptodate information about the pandemic, i highly recommend the f. A. Q. Available at sf. Gov. Im taking a list and before i leave i put a sanitizing wind and pair of gloves into a plastic bag. Im wearing a mask and taking the smallest number of items with me. Just my car key, credit card, i. D. And the batching im not taking my phone with me. Even if i use it to pay, i either have to touch the p. I. N. Pad or sign the screen anyway. Im concerned about crosscontamination. I dont want to transfer the virus from my gloves to the phone and then to my face. Whin i get out of the car, i put on my gloves and get a grocery cart. The essential workers at my store are doing a great job. Theyre sanitizing every cart and limiting the number of shoppers. Having a cart can help you protect your space. In this store, there are two new science on the floor. Ones directional to encourage everyone to take the same route around the store. The second is to remind shoppers to maintain a safe distance from each other. When im done shopping and ready to pay, i stand in line at least six feet from the shopper in front of me. After unloading my car at check out, i go past the cashier and pack my own bags. That is one less person touching my groceries and less of a burden on the stores employees. I thank the cashier and leave the store. On my drive home, im careful not to touch my face. I leave my outside shoes on the porch and as soon as i get through the door, i wash my hands for at least 20 seconds. Next, i wipe down my debit card, i. D. And car key. And then i wipe down the front doorknob, clean the sink taps and wash my hands again. I wash my vegetables in cold water and remove the package aing from my proteins and other items. I leave the nonperishables in my garage for a few days unless i need them immediately. My refrigerated items get a quick winddown to be on the safe side and, of course, i wacker my hands again. Heres a quick recap of my visit to the grocery store. That is it for this episode. I hope you found it helpful