Transcripts For SFGTV LAFCo 20240713

Nine. Best practices call from quiet location, speak clearly and slowly, turndown your television or radio. You may submit Public Comment be in the following ways. Email to myself. If you submit Public Comment it will be forwarded and included as part of the official file. That concludes my announcements. Thank you very much. Can you please call item 2. Approval of the lafco minutes from the april 17, 2020 regular meeting. Thank you. Any comments from my colleagues . Seeing none. Lets open for Public Comment. Any members of the public to comment on item number 2 . Madam chair, no callers wish to speak. Thank you. I would like to make a motion to approve the minutes of the lafco meeting of april 17, 2020. Could i have a second please. Second. Supervisor mar. Roll call vote. The motion to approve the minutes. Commissioner fewer. Aye. Commissioner pollock. Aye. Commissioner haney. Aye. Commissioner mar. Aye. There are four ayes. Thank you very much. Madam clerk, can you please call item 3. Consideration and approval of the proposed lafco budget for fiscal year 20202021. We have mr. Bryan goebel, executive director presenting. Thank you, madam chair. Good morning, commissioners. Today i am bringing you a proposed budget which needs to be approved by the end of may. At the last meeting you asked me to bring two proposed budget options, one a significant increase in our budget for the general fund. Another would be a status quo of the lafco budget. The first option the general fund request would be under 7 84,000. Status quo would receive the amount that we are statutorily required to receive each year from the general fund which is 297, 342. This is because of uncertainty abuse of the budget situation. Commissioner mar asked to talk about the impact if the commission chooses to move forward with the status quo budget. This is the general fund balance over the years. Lafco has not had an increase in 10 years. We receive the same amount every year if from the general fund 298,000. We do expect carrying over to next budget as you can see in the column at the bottom that is our general fund balance. To the right in the right column you can see we are going to have about a 28,000 carryover to the next fiscal year. For those not familiar with lafco, i want to give a brief history and mission of lafco. Our lafco is unique. Most lafcos in california oversee special districts. Ours was formed in 2000 with a voter petition drive to create a municipal utility district. Over the years we worked primarily in energy issues. In 2007 we were assigned oversight of clean power sf. It would not exist without lafco. We led to the creation of clean power sf. Lafco is successful at exercising special studies powers. We have that authority under the act which governs all lafcos. We are allowed to initiate study os issues that impact Municipal Services. These are advantageous to help the city assess Municipal Service needs. In 201920 we did important projects. We commissioned the most representative study of on demand workers. Today as you will see we present a report offering a slate of recommendations on how to improve the working conditions on demand workers. We continue to derm avenues the city can take to curtail labor abuses. You heard a report last year about the troubling amount of disconnections, power disconnections in San Francisco, especially in neighborhoods that have suffered historical burdens. To do the special studies work, we have had to raise the money. In this fiscal year lafco raised 365,000 from five foundations, biggest from the ford foundation. We worked the bay and the casey foundation, San Francisco foundation, the family foundation. Through that fundraising we were ability to double the budget in this fiscal year. That money is the biggest source of funding. You can see where the general fund money falls in here as well as work order from the cca. That funding under 200,000 for clean power sf is to cure and will carry on in the next fiscal year. With increased resources for lafco, the significant increase that we are asking for, we will be able to carry on our work that we started in this fiscal year. We are hoping to do another round of Research Related to on demand workers and companies. We want to have an Engagement Process for recommendations we present today to vet those with a variety of stakeholders and city departments. We would like to Commission Additional surveys. The findings presented today, the broader survey of on demands workers was about halfway into the data gathering when it had to be suspended because of covid19. We hope to work to Cross Platform level data on worker trips and earning. We didnt get to do that during the initial phases of the survey. Of course, there is the work on public bank pending legislation, providing a consultant to support a Public Bank Task force. You will see in the presentation today from the lafco Research Associate recommendations that involve engaging with communities of color to traffic covid19 assistance from banks and organize listening sessions with limited English Proficiency communities how Crisis Response has affected bans responsibility. There is a Communications Plan to allow the work to increase Public Participation and engagement. Also to provide additional fundraising capacity. Significant amount of my time was spent fundraising this year. We have a slight increase in Legal Council budget because of increased workload and more item to review. Looking ahead in the next fiscal year clean power sf. This happens regardless of option one or two. We have that money from the p. U. C. We will manage and work with Renewable Energy consultant to provide improved oversight. We will have expertise working with staff to really strengthen our oversight role. We will develop and manage r. F. P. , hire another consultant to dive into the report on power disconnections in San Francisco. As we think longterm i would like a funding strategy to ensure it is supported after the m. O. U. And after the funding is gone. This requires no increased resources to do this work on clean power sf Going Forward. Speaking of clean power sf. This is the work order balance. We have under 200,000 left in that fund. Here is the first option. Increase resources for lafco. What does that mean . Two fulltime positions. Executive officer currently works as independent contractor. This would make the executive officer a fulltime city and county employee. We would hire a fulltime policy analyst and provide money for Labor Research and Communications Plan. The total increase we are requesting from the general fund would be under 487,000. Total request under 7 84,000. Budget option two. Again with the status quo budget. I propose most of our work focus on clean power sf. No additional funding required for this. If we go forward with this option we have money left from the amount we raise from private foundations for the survey team. There is funding there to do additional work. I am trying to derm what the scope of that would be. Moving forward with the status quo no funding for public bank. Limited staff capacity to fundraise for special studies, limited staff capacity to conduct further Labor Research. We could bring in Research Associates from graduate classes. We have been successful at this to work around it. Because of delays in the citys budget process, regardless which option you choose to move forward to, lafco will operate on the status quo budget july 1 through september 30. That is because the budget process is delayed. The earliest to get additional funding would be october 1st. These are the two options i bring before you today. Option one increase resources for lafco, allow us to follow up on the work we have been doing this year versus option two. Status quo budget no fulltime positions, move forward focusing mostly on clean power sf with no money to support the Public Bank Task force. These are the line items for each option. You can see budget option one, two, and then what the contingent appropriation would be if you approve budget option one. These are the numbers. For the first column most increases for the fulltime positions. They are for the public bank consultant, Communications Plan, budget option two status quo budget. Working within the amount we are required to get every year from the general fund. Column three shows the contingent amount if the citys budget process moves forward and lafco is favored in that process. We would receive that money after the citys budget process is complete. With that, commissioners, i am happy to answer questions and get your feedback. Thank you very much. Any comments or questions for mr. Goebel . I have a question. Mr. Goebel, thank you for presenting option one and two. That is helpful. I want to ask two questions. First is whether the sfpuc has talked about whether or not there would be a new m. O. U. For our clean power sf work Going Forward. The other is did you do the math quickly on what our spending was this past fiscal year when you count fundraising plus money from the general fund. It seems like we werent operating at status quo budget this year because we had fundraising. Is that the amount that would be with the fundraising and the general fund amount . How that differs . It looks like only about 100,000 difference in that option one budget. Thank you for that question. The first question about the m. O. U. I am in conversation with the Public Utilities commission. They michigan it may not be they think it may not be necessary to extend the m. O. U. And appropriate the money to lafco. We are investigating right now. I have been talking with mik mikeheims at clean power sf. They support lafco receiving the money. We are trying to figure out the best way to move forward if it is allow us to spend it moving forward. That is for the 200,000 . That is correct. Are there any discussions to earmark money to receive either i guess that would be like a change an addendum to the m. O. U. That would be for an additional amount . I was thinking after 200,000 is used it makes sense for our ongoing work with clean power sf that we receive additional funding from the sfuc. I have not had any discussions with the p. U. C. About future funding Going Forward. If the commission desires for me to initiate those discussions, i would be happy to move forward with them. So on the e on the expenditure. We spent the allocated amount 298,000. We have about 23,000 left of that. The total amount we raised for the survey and study 365,000. That has all been paid out to the survey team. Just the craziness of switching to covid19 survey and suspending the broader survey. We are trying to figure out what is in that pool of money. I hope to have an answer soon. I dont have an answer today. The 365,000 did you say. Thats correct. I am sorry. I dont have a calculator handy. Let me add that up. I will do the math on that. 639,000 total that is minus the 23,000 carryover, 639,000. The proposed option one budget was do you remember . 700 . Let meet put that back up on the screen for you, commissioner. These numbers are different than the staff memo because i had to revise these numbers. 150,000 difference if we were to continue with option 1. We are on track to spend at least i am just sort of thinking Going Forward if we were to do the type of work that we just did that without any additional fundraising we would need an option 1 budget. For the commission my colleagues to decide. I want to point out i know we were spending a lot more than the allocated amount from the general fund. Yes. You are absolutely right. I would like to mention that lafco has not had an increase in the 10 years it has been in existence. It has always been at 297,342. We have not had an increase even though the budget of the city and county of San Francisco has grown tremendously over the last years. We at lafco have not gotten an increase. I want to say on that line item budget about the executive director. You may recall that we had an employee before that was actually city and county employee, and that position was eliminated. Mr. Goebel has been working as a contract employee. It was part of the intent, i think, of our board here to actually secure a more stable salary for mr. Goebel that also extends to benefits and other retirement protection. That is an increase in that budget, which i think is, quite frankly, warranted. Any comments or questions from any of my other colleagues. I will put this up for Public Comment. Can you please see if there is anybody that would like to speak on item number 3. There are no callers wishing to speak at this time. Public comment is closed on item number 3. I think todays agenda reflects incredible things that lafco has achieved under the leadership of our executive director. The analyzing equity issues in the current program. It is my hope we can continue this program that is dependent on the city budget. I propose budget option one with the recommendation any increases in the latch could budget lafco budget are on the increase in funds in the city budget. Once the city budget is adopted lafco will need to revisit and make final objections. The board of Supervisors Budget Committee did hear a presentation on the updated request and the city is facing say significant deficits over the next two years. We are waiting for more information to come. This allows us to be prudent and have flexibility if we are able to secure funds. Any comments or questions about this . Madam chair. There is a caller who would like to speak. Would you like to reopen Public Comment . We can hold that thought about what i just recommended with option number one with the recommendation increases in the lafco budget are contingent on the increase in funds in the final city and county budget. We will open Public Comment again to hear from the Public Comment speaker. Any members of the public on the line to speak, please dial star nine now. Good morning. I came in late. Are you discussing the preliminary recommendations for food delivery drivers . Not at this time. We are discussing the budget for the lafco committee. Thank you. My apologies. I will defer. Thank you very much, caller. Any more Public Comment . I am curtis. I want to say our coalition approves the funding for a Public Task Force as well as executive director. I know there is a lot going on with the city and the budget, but i think we are one of the wealthiest cities in the country. I support the funding of the task force. Thank you. Thank you. That completes the queue. Thank you, public speakers. I would like to comment on what he said during Public Comment. I want to say we are facing a 1. 7 billion deficit. However, i would like to remind everybody that we will be going back to a 2018 member budget. Although we will have a deficit, we will still have a 10 billion budget. It is a larger budget than some countries. I want to pu put that in perspective. That is why i am proposing option one and we will deliberate that with the rest of the supervisors. I think we are not from a city that doesnt have a lot of income like fresno or modesto. We will still have a significant budget. Also, we have a reserve. I would like to leave options open. I make the motion to approve option 1 with the recommendation that any increases in the lafco budget contingent upon receiving an increase in funds in the final approved city and county budget. If there are no objections, i am asking for a second. Thank you, commissioner haney. Roll call vote, please. On the motion. Commissioner fewer seconded by commissioner haney. Commissioner fewer. Aye. Commissioner pollock. Aye. Commissioner haney. Aye. Commissioner mar. Aye. There are four ayes. That being. Could you, madam clerk please call item 4, 5, 6 together. Item 4 presentation and discussion on the findings of the Lafco Commission survey of on demand ride hail and delivery workers in San Francisco. 5. Presentation and discussion of the u. S. F graduate Class Research and recommendation on on demand Delivery Services in San Francisco. 6 presentation and discussion on lafcos recommendations to address problematic labor issues in the on demand economy. Dial star 9 to speak. A correction on the previous handout for the access code. The phone number for the call is 408 4189388 access code 625466705. Press pound and pound again. Then press star nine. Today presenting on items 4, 5, 6 we have our executive director bryan goebel. I think we also have the professor Chris Brenner and survey leader and researcher. Mr. Goebel and mr. Brenner, the floor is yours. Thank you. Good morning. Bryan goebel executive officer. As you know, last year, lafco contracted with a Research Team led by uc santa cruz to conduct a representative survey and study of ride hail and food delivery drivers. The survey team is a unique partnership between jobs with justice San Francisco and the Education Fund and the drivers cooperative. The goal was the give the city good data on this very vulnerable work force. Today we have that data. Now this. I am pleased to announce the survey is complete. Not without challenges. A lot of hard work went into this. We have produced troubling findings about the vulnerable work force in San Francisco. These are findings that will inform your policy to help improve the working conditions and lives of on demand workers in San Francisco. I would like to introduce chris beenner from uc santa cruz to present the findings. You can see the presentation now . Thank you for that introduction, mr. Goebel and commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to present this work to you this is a collective effort. It represents the collaborations between the university and Community Partners. It is a pleasure to work in partnership with mr. Goebel in this project. He is a thought partner in helping us conceptionize the survey. You have the full results of the survey today. What i want to do in a short period is highlight for you the key findings. One of the things to stress in the method is that we were trying to get a representative sample of the work that is done in San Francisco by on demand workers. I want to stress that it is a representative sample of the work, not of all of the workers. There comes up with studies finding a higher proportion of people working parttime or a few hours. This is a small part of their work. That doesnt represent is bulk of the work being done. We wanted to get a representative sample of the actual work being done in the city. Rerecruited through six apps uber and lyft and two around Meal Delivery door dash and grubb hub. Two doing grocery deliverience take cart and shipt. We recruited in a way to reflect a representative sample of the work done in the city. For the ride hailing, we had tremendous data from the county Transportation Agency showing the geography of pickup and dropoff of customers as well as how that varies by time of day and day of the week. We were able to adjust the sample to match that geography and variation in time of day and day of the week. Then for the grocery delivery and food delivery, we had a data set of the geographic location of restaurants and Grocery Stores in the city. We were able to divide up the city to 11 different neighborhoods and sample from all of those different neighborhoods. Even though, as mr. Goebel said, we had to stop the survey 60 through what we hoped to get. We gathered date take from the beginning of february through the middle of march. We had a total of 64 3com pleated surveys from the six apps and representative across the city. We worked with the drivers seat cooperative in the pilot stage. I will mention that work. We were able to followup that the more representative survey with a supplemental Online Survey to get a sense of the impact the covid19 pandemic has had on the work force. I will present a little bit of that. The full findings are in the materials you have for this meeting. One thing is just how diverse this work force is. It is predominantly male. Tremendously diverse. 29 asian, 23 hispanic 22 white. Na over states the percentage of nonhispanic white. The number who identified as white indicated from brazil or other places. 56 are foreign born. People from incredible diversity of companies, brazil 14 , afghanistan 7, 6 china and 6 mexico. Then if you look at the age range of people doing this work. It differs significantly between those doing the ride hailing on uber and lyft and those doing delivery overall. The blue is 25 to 34 years old, the Largest Group within the food delivery. In ride hailing you have many people who are 45 years or older doing that kind of work. As we will see subsequently they have been working longer in on demand work as well. We asked general questions. People are living in difficult economic circumstances. 21 with no Health Insurance. 30 are using Public Health insurance there medical or Public Access such as covered california. We asked people and this is a survey question the Federal Reserve question does. How would they handle a 400 emergency payment. 45 didnt have resources on hand to handle that kind of emergency payment without borrowing. 15 receive some form of public since food stance. Food stamps, supplemental security income. We expect that to be higher if there were not such a large number of foreign born. We didnt ask about documentation status. We know a significant portion of those are probably undocumented and following through many cracks in our social safety nets. We asked people general questions about all of their work on different apps, platforms the key message for most of the people in San Francisco it is not a gig. It is fulltime work. When we asked people how many hours per week do you work on average for all of the apps . You can see that for 50 of the population they are working 41 hours or more. For over 70 of the work force they are working over 30 hours a week typically for all of the different apps. When you asked what percentage of last months total income was from platform work, half of them it is 100 . It is the only work they are doing. For 70 to 80 it represents over half of their income for the last month. One of the questions is how important is flexibility and the opportunity to choose your hours. This is framed as a choice whether people should be independent contractors and employees. We didnt want to ask people that specific question. We wanted to get a sense of what is a priority for them in their work. We asked them instead to rate the following job qualities. Indeed having a flexible schedule is a very high priority. It was extremely important or very important for nearly 90 of our respondents. Fair pay was as important. High levels above 60 or 70 it is very important or extremely important. Predictable pay, and access to Health Insurance and paid time off and workers comp, unemployment insurance, health and safety protections. They go on with the employee status. It is important to recognize that perhaps these arent tradeoffs. It is possible to get the important benefits of being an employee and the protections that provides with the ability to have flexible schedules. There were interesting differences between the ride hailing drivers and those doing meal and grocery delivery. The ride hailing drivers are more established. One way to see that is how many hours per week do you work on average for your current app. That is what we focused on in the survey. For the ride hailing about 60 are working for more than 30 hours per week for that single primary app they worked for. That is closer to 40 for the delivery workers. When you ask people how long have they worked for their current app . The differences come in. In the ride hailing category, over 50 of the survey respondents had been working for that company for over two years. In the Delivery Companies that was only 15 . Part of that is the industry of food and grocery delivery is newer, not well established. It represents the younger work force and more physical work with food delivery hopping in and out of the car and going up steps to deliver to apartments or things like that. Lets talk about earnings. The key message here is very low earnings for most of the people in the industry. I want to spend a little time on this charm which is one this charts the median weekly earni earnings. Before expenses that was 900 in ride hailing and 500 in delivery combining food and grocery delivery. We cant take the total earnings at face value because drivers and delivery people have expenses to be able to do this work. You have to figure out ways to subtract the expenses to get real earnings. We tried this in two ways. One, we asked a series of questions about expenses they had in the previous month. We asked them to give named dollar amounts. We would duct that from their earnings. We ask them to estimate the number of miles they drove for work. Using the irs figure 57. 5 per mile duct the Service Costs on the vehicle. In the first method of deducting named experiences it drops to below 700 for ride hailing and 330 for food delivery. Based on mile lane it is 350 per week for ride hailing and 200 per week for food delivery. What is more disturbing we estimated the percent of people who actually earned zero dollars after fully deducting all of estimated expenses. In the first method as much as 7 are earning nothing by the more expansive mileage expenses 21 . How is it possfo possible for to work for nothing . These are hidden expenses you dont see when you are driving. It is wear and tear on the car and that shows up in Emergency Service a couple years down the road. Very concerning. There is unpaid time that people have as they are waiting for an order to come in or drive request we ask them to estimate what percentage of their time was unpaid time. The medium was 20 of the time for ride hailing and delivery. I will remind you even though we werent able to do a full effort with drivers cooperative we did have data from the pilot study that shows it is possible to get real data, not just estimates of the amount of paid apand unpaid time as well as geography of where people are driving. We hope to continue that work to get much stronger and more reliable estimates of the paid and unpaid time and how that might shape peoples real earnings. There are other work challenges that exist that people face, including nearly half of workers across both categories that work 12 or more straight hours, at least several times each month. A third sleep in their car before, doing or after the work. Sometimes or often. Threequarters say they have a problem when they have to use a bathroom but had no nearby access. In the subsequent interviews we heard the strategies people use for that in trying to build relationships with hotels or restaurants where they can pop in quickly to use the facility. That is an important thing to consider. 43 of ride hailing drivers felt harassed or felt unsafe by customers. One of the things that emerged from th the survey is understang the varieties of ways that the automatical go rhythms programmed in shapes the types of work they are doing. We asked if they were penalized for declining certain job offers or if the Rating System affected. They said they did. If they are independent contractors they should have the ability to select or not select jobs offered to them and the customers themselves could have the ability to accept or not accept their offer of a job or delivery. When it is the algorithms driven by the app s shaping those Job Opportunities it shows the ways the companies are controlling the work practices of delivery workers and drivers themselves. 18 of all delivery workers use a bicycle instead of automobile. 9 use an electric bike. These people also have expenses that are rarely reimbursed by their app. Only 33 had no purchases they had to make for work. 33 had to purchase protective gear, a rack for carrying larger orders, 30 had to purchase an insulated box and they were not reimbursed by the Platform Companies. Safety is a manning or concern major concern for bicycles. They said they felt unsafe or combination of cars in bike lanes, poor quality roads, delivering on roads not met for bicycles. 32 were threatened on the bike while delivering. We saw potential to expand bike delivery in the city. Some were using the bike for economic reasons, they couldnt afford a vehicle. 70 preferred delivery by bike or walking. 83 said it was quicker to use a bike in San Francisco. This was one of the questions that we were asked if they were provided with a financial incentive to purchase an ebike would they switch . 39 of delivery workers currently driving would switch from driving to ebike. 31 might. 25 of the ride hailing drivers said they would consider switching to ebike delivery if they had an incentive for an he bike. Quickly to sung rise impacts from the covid19 summarize the impacts from covid19. Unsurprisingly these workers on the edge prior to covid19 pandemic are really suffering in the current circumstances. We were curious whether people were able to move from ride hailing to food delivery. We found that about 20 of the people or half of the 41 doing delivery had made that switch. A higher number had stopped working because of concerns about health and people were clearly suffering economically as we have seen across the labor market in these unprecedented experiences of unemployment. One of the key questions we wanted to ask were there Platform Companies helping provide personal protective equipment or advice how to be safe . We found that 43 the january companies the App Companies were doing nothing to protect them and 12 not enough. 9 thought the apps were responsive to the virus. This was the second and third week of april. We have seen increases in services and support since that time. The slow andy layed response is a key part of the concern in this situation inputting the drivers and customers at unnecessary risk. We also asked what actions should Public Officials take in response to covid19. The highest priority was providing free sanitizer gloves and protective equipment and emergency financial assistance. In these times enforcing laws at workers miss classified of contractors have access to unemployment like paid leave and other benefits. This was critical many people even though they are eligible for unemployment under the federal cares act had a hard time documenting income. Companies might provide paid sick leave, it was only offered to those who documented that they had covid19. We know the difficulty in doing that with the limited testing that is available. To summarize the key points from the study, this work force is predominantly people for whom it is close to fulltime work and primary source of income to diverse work force 80 color, 56 immigrants. They struggle to make ends meet and it is made worse by the current covid19 crisis. We believe . Very substantial portion of the work force are estimated to make less than the equivalent of the San Francisco minimum wage. These are estimates but i think it is strong evidence that there is a basis for real concern here. This work force doesnt receive benefits that would be entitle to employees under the San Francisco laws and they are particularly vulnerable in this crisis. We cant underscore the importance of policymaking ensuring that existing laws are enforced for this work force as well as addressing the economic safety and Public Health concerns facing this critical work force. This was a pleasure to do this study. It was the first of its kind in the country with this method that can be replicated around the globe. I will turn it back to mr. Goebel. Thank you. Thank you so much, chris. I want to thank you and the survey team for your hard work on this survey. It is the first of its kind of representative survey of the work on demand workers are doing in San Francisco. No one else has done a survey like this. Madam chair, would you wish to ask questions or should we proceed with the next presentation . Lets ask if there are comments or questions from my colleagues. Any comments or questions . I also want to say thank you. This is fascinating. I think some of this. I assumed a lot of this. When you see the data, it reinforces what i assumed about this work force and what the majority of the board has seen about the work force. To get it from the participants themselves is fascinating. When we talk about a wealth gap, we talk about how the mechanisms of how we allow businesses to operate, quite frankly, perpetuates the wealth gap. We are also seeing this even more clearly with the covid19 also in the disparities. We can see how these companies allowed to operate in this way are contributing to the huge wealth gap that we have and the greater divide. Lets take comments or questions from colleagues now about on this item specifically and the presentation. Colleagues any comments or questions . Supervisor haney. This is extraordinary. It was interesting to me to see there were so many people who felt that free access to protective equipment was so important during this time,anticly because we have passed ordinances that should require that. Was there parts of the study that i guess this is sort of implied that they were not being provided with gloves and masks and things they needed . We passed the ordinance that required companies to provide that. One of the concerns was the companies were going to argue or define employees in a way that made it so they didnt provide this for the drivers. Was that something that seem to . Any part of the study that suggested they were denied that . Yes, and we did the survey and a number of followup interviews. Of course, we are not in the minds of the executives of the companies themselves. We know they are contesting ab5, which narrows the scope of being classified of an independent contractor. Many of the drivers thought the reason why they werent getting the support in that way is that the the companies were providing that personal protective equipment then that would give a clear indication they should be employer of record. We think it was part of the slowness in responding had to do with the legal challenges. It was putting their financial concerns in front of both Public Health and the health of the workers themselves. One of the things is that they are in an enclosed space with a tremendous diversity of people from different places and potential for spreading the coronavirus in that context. We heard drivers having all windows open and airflowing in as a way to prevent the spread. Many people were saying they were not getting the support. They were buying equipment themselves, masks hand sanitizer, trying to clean cars, not reimbursed for those expenses either. Any other comments . Commissioner mar. First of all, thank you, chris beenner, and the Research Team, my former colleagues at jobs to justice for your incredible work on this groundbreaking study that is going to provide so much Important Information here in San Francisco to policymakers as we look at how we can support the growing number of workers in the city that are working for appbased companies. This is groundbreaking. It will have a big impact nationally to push the conversation around workers rights. I have a few questions. First of all, did you look at lt where the workers or drivers lived . Whether they are San Francisco residents, bay area residents or further out . Iif you did look at that, are there any sort of is there a conclusion or analysis on differences for San Franciscobased drivers versus those coming here to work from other parts of region or state . We did ask the zip code of residents for the survey respondents. We have that data. I havent had a chance to analyze that yet. We do know that a substantial portion of the work force live outside of San Francisco. That is a higher proportion for the ride hailing work than the food and grocery delivery. That is a higher percentage who live and work in San Francisco. We got stopped half we through because of the pandemic. We havent had a chance to do a full analysis of the geography. We will Going Forward and i had have more to share in future meetings. A question around the earnings of the drivers. I know it looks like in your presentation you focused on weekly earnings. One of the main concluding points is that it appears many or most of the drivers are making less than San Franciscos minimum wage. Do you have any estimate of an hourly li wage for the drivers taking into account the mileage and unpaid time that they are just driving but not being paid . We asked for a estimate of number of hours. Figuring out the true expenses is difficult. That is why we were excited to work with the drivers to show the working time and the paid and unpaid time and mileage. We hope to raise additional funds to do that work Going Forward. One other thing is that the fact we dont have a registration requirement or a licensing in some way of drivers or delivery people in the city as a place like new york has or seattle making it that much harder to track and understand the hourly wages because if we had that system in place it might be an opportunity to get that data from the companies themselves. Certainly from research we would love to have that licensing and registration process to get access to the data. I think there are Public Policy reasons to consider that as well. Thank you. My final question is around the punitive or retaltory actions that the appbased Companies Might take if drivers decline offers for work. I know you had one slide around that. Most extreme would be de activation. Can you talk about how prevalent of a problem this is . I have been hearing from drivers about how unfair they are treated and they feel forced to stay on the job for fear of being deactivated. The de activation is most extreme penalty half of the delivery workers and a third of the ride hailing drivers said if they declined a certain offer it appears the app didnt offer them a job or offered them fewer jobs or some period of time after that. It is penalizing the income earning opportunities. There may be a number of reasons why they wouldnt accept the offer, maybe driving too far away or some other concerns about offering adequate compensation for what is asked for. The other way is that they were threatened with de activation because of some action they took. Others were actily deactivated, less than half thought the app handled it fairly. We do think that is a very significant problem. Particularly in the in depth interviews people were responding to say, especially those working two years or more, that th thal go the algorithms e changing. The companies are trying to optimize. It is in the interest of the companies themselves. Asking for some k9 of transparency in those algorhythm processes and information how they are structured is something many respondents would appreciate. Thank you, chris. Any comments or questions . Yes, this is cynthia pollock. I want to say thanks to mr. Benner and the survey team at jobs for justice. The findings are, as commissioner fewer said, something we thought for a while but this puts it out there in terms of facts. I wanted to ask if you had, for example you mentioned that new york has i know they are requiring companies to compensate drivers for the times they are circling to wait for a ride. They have a registration process you mentioned in new york and see a little and whether or not there are specific policy recommendations that you have that lafco could take to the San Francisco board of supervisors. One is the registration process, the other is i am thinking that we should require the data from the companies themselves the City Attorney should demand the workers are classified to be compensated at least to the San Francisco minimum wage, and the onus should not be on the drivers and the delivery workers themselves to provide the data but the companies to do business in San Francisco should be required to provide that information to the city. I just wondered if there was a list of policy recommendations that you in coordination with jobs of justice and also the workers themselves have that we could take to the board of supervisors and the City Attorney . I think, commissioner, you brought up the next two items. I dont be have the agenda in front of me. I dont have the packet. I appreciate that. I will say two things that might not be covered in the next two items. One is the way new york helps t enforce it is really limiting the number of people registered as drivers in the city. Using the data they get from the companies to track how much of their time is unpaid time versus time that they have a customer in the car. If that percentage of time goes over a particular threshold, then they can fine the companies for having too many people offering services. This is important. It came up in the covid19 survey where we thought more people would be doing food delivery work. There is a surge in demand for grocery afternoo and food deliv. What is happening. There is a flooding of people trying to do the work. People have the app on all day long waiting for a job offer and they might get one, two, three. When the overcomes in if you dont respond in a few seconds, someone else snatches it up. Having a mechanism to regulate the number of people doing this work so it matches the appropriate demand for it is a critical thing to make sure people can earn a sustainable livelihood in this kind of work. We want this information to be utilized and responded to locally, but i wonder if lafco and the survey team have plans to provide guidance to other cities and municipalities that have a large percentage of on demand work . We are making the results public. The issues that commissioner mar raised and the details on the method. We are in touch with researchers doing work in new york and San Francisco as well as in los angeles. We have not been approached directly by anyone yet to do direct work with other cities. We would certainly be open to it. Any other commissioners . Any comments or questions . Madam clerk, would you suggest i take Public Comment per item . Since we called 4, 5, 6 together . It is up to you if you want be to take them separately or together. I think people have been waiting. Public comment for item 4. Any members of the public to comment on item number 4 . Speakers. Go ahead. For those callers wishing to speak please dial 408 4189388 access code 625466705 to line up to speak press star nine now. Please proceed. Madam chair, two callers wish to speak. Good morning. I am happy to speak on behalf of the report. I am sherry murphy. I am a minister in the east bay. Today i speak as a lyft driver on behalf of item 6. In the past three years this is a primary source of income. I have driven 12,000 rides. I want to thank the commission for consideration in these unprecedented times. I urged the commission to accept the report and recommendation on how to address the problem. This includes delivery workers. Since the recession of 2008, as a black woman i know how important it is to have job benefits and Labor Protections in place. Most of the workers we are talking about in the report are people of color. They are on the front line in the crisis and hardest hit economically. In march i was making approximately 10 an hour, i was risking my life. I should not have to face the disease that has the potential to secure me to secure my home and pay my bills. It is urgent for the city of San Francisco to accept the report and recommendation for people like me an equitable opportunities so we dont have to compromise our health for livelihood. It will support drivers but those we come in contact with on a daily basis. There are stories of people still working and are struggling because they work even though they may be sick and exhibiting symptom. Or for those who have been exposed but cannot stop working because of income loss. The city can prioritize enforcement of 85 and these recommendations and investing in resources in San Francisco office of labor standards enforcement. Go ahead. I think the last speaker got caught off. Thank you for supporting our work and this study. I want you to know how much of a difference it is making for workers. In the lawsuit by the attorney general, the state attorney general c ited the study. It was in the chronicle today and sf examiner. It is making a difference because there is so much conversation about drivers. From the drivers speaking out today from the study, this is now you can see what these drivers want from drivers. What the drivers experience from drivers. This is part of the work and thank you, chris, on this. Thank you. Next qualler. I am on the board of the taxi workers alliance. My comments are not representative of them but i want to say a lot of taxi drivers are now doing food delivery as well in conjunction with their driving or instead because of the inability to use the airport as income source, lack of performing arts events, concerts and sporting events and the hotels are closed, tourist destinations are closed. They have to find ways to make money, considering a lot of drivers have to come up with a medallion loan which is something that is important to deal with. You have dealt with the issue in the past and there is going to be a problem when the credit union asks for these payments. Regards the study, i work with caviar. They have different rules than other food service deliveries. They do not penalize you for rejecting orders. They also did allow me to obtain the necessary cleaning supplies with a 5 shipping fee. What i got was a huge box of gloves, sanitizing solution, wipes, and 10 masks. The problem i have with these people that i support, you need to have proper registration or regulation of the food delivery people is that the city has very little oversights over these drivers. With can cabdrivers they are closer to the city and they also are familiar with the streets and with the taxi driver they have the ability. That completes the queue. Public comment on item 4 is closed. Thank you for all of your help and all of the Community Partners and jobs for justice. This is, i think, groundbreaking. Not only that. It calls for a call to action. Madam clerk, please call item 5. We have called it already. Thats right. We have bryan goebel the executive officer, kelly mcbride, graduate students. Here we are to the next item 5 with recommendations. Thank you. Madam chair before we move from item 4, for the record, there is no action taken on item for . Yes, no action is necessary. Thank you very much. Thank you, madam chair. You have heard the findings. Now we are on to the recommendations for how to address the problematic issues in the survey. For the second year in a row, lafco partnered with the university of San Francisco urban and Public Affairs graduate program to produce research to regulate the on demand delivery in San Francisco in the time of covid is the and beyond. The class of 16 students was led by doctor mic bride. These are the class that produced the recommendations last year, some of those students have become legislative aids. We had 16 students working on this project during this selling esther. Doctor mcbride is here with three of the students to present the findings of the research and recommendations. I will turn it over to doctor mcbride. I am politics professor at the university of San Francisco. It is my pleasure to work with our masters of public and urban affairs students. To give you a sense of process. I started meeting with director goebel late last fall and we started brainstorming what kind of research and specifically policy research would be most helpful at this time. We identified the deliver reindustry as something that was the unregulated wild west. We thought there had been a lot of progress made in thinking about the t and c companies and research on how to regulate t and c. We did think the delivery industry because it was so rapidly expanding had very significant impacts on community life. This is was an area that was right for more research. We began by thinking about labor regulations, environmental impacts and traffic impacts and difficult impacts on the restaurants industry that the delivery industry was having. Because of the development of covid we started to realize how Central Health and safety was for understanding the delivery industry. Basically in the space of six weeks sudden rewait a vaguely annoying thing to something absolutely essential to keepingg people fed and cared for. Before i pass this to students, i wanted to say that we wanted to take seriously the assumption that increased regulation might impact jobs. Increased regulation at the local level might end up decreasing Job Opportunities for people who very much need them. We did have a group of students who spent time investigating what happened when other localities did increase regulation of on demand workers. We looked nationally and internationally at examples. In london ange and in germany. Sometimes the Larger Companies left the city but that there were always Smaller Companies that moved in to that market opening. Therefore what we saw as it increased regulation could increase the biodiversity of the kinds of Companies Operating on demand workers. I will turn it over to kendra to present the findings about compliance systems. Good morning, commissioners and supervisors. I am kendra. We conducted a letterra tour review examining the compliance and certification looking at environmental, automobile and Consumer Product industries. The city has a number of items to consider when designs an effective compliance system. We would recommend two elements of this system. First a ratings system. Second a certification system. Then we want to address two points for consideration when applying the system. First the role of public agencies and second language that clearly defined the structural benefit of certification. It allows exchange of communication between participating firms, companies, partners and consumers. In Performance Measures and improvements are shared between businesses within industries. Externally they are to the public and consumer. Because of the information sharing it can create a venue for Competition Among businesses. The benefit of participating in this system really includes a positive brand name certification to publicize their participation and claim credit for producing positive behaviors. Next the certification process would lead to a rating which is then advertised to the public and consumers. It would incorporate a number of performance including health and safety, employee protection, traffic regulation and compliance and environmental impact. From these components would determine the level of certification rating and allow consumer joyce to reenforce the regulatory process instead of under mining it. The Rating System can act as Performance Management system to result in increased Company Accountability standards and public transparency. It would allow firms to have a positive effect on their impact wheel providing that higher level of certification. The two points of certification to up sport this Rating System. First the city public agencies should provide Financial Support as needed. There are a number of costs that can be a barrier of smaller firms competing against uber and lyft. Incentives include reduced costs and tax incentives, grants and tax abatesments and fee waivers. The last point is that we recommend that the language within the certification system is clear and that the advantages and benefits of participating are well defined and advertised. To ensure the certification prevents inefficient low performing firms from achieving high ratings. The language must be clearly defined. Those in the certification systems highlight longterm financial benefits as keyen be r incentive ever incentive to joining the certification system. Now, i will turn it other to ryan powell to address the permitting system of this compliance system. Thank you, kenda. I am ryan. Good morning. I will present on key findings related to the permitting process. To start we will go over how we can utilize existing regulatory structures and bodies to implement a permitting process. We recommend that utilizing the San Francisco municipal Transportation Agency or Public Utilities commission as Viable Options to institute a regulatory process due to their already administrative capabilities. We researched the food trucks and delivery vehicles and that would be communication for delivery drivers. We want be to highlight that extracting fees to the permitting process will be able to fund the administrative process as well as bring compliance and Rating Systems enough funding. From our research is there recommendation the permitting fees should be born by the companies as opposed to the workers. When we invest investigated s born by the workers. We suggest the companies should take the brunt of the costs up front and moving forward we would dive into how t and t companies are regulated by the San Francisco airport. Understanding allow sfo regulated to mitigate traffic, i know traffic is an interesting thing to think about in the modern era. Following covid we will experience traffic and we believe bryans a permitting process we will mitigate the process with abundance of vehicles on the road. Furthermore, we sawho sfo regulated the drivers. They were able to gather data. That is a huge, huge source of information as to how to further regulate and mitigate drivers was a something that would be very important moving forward to the future how to mitigate gig economy workers. The strongest recommendation was permitting. There is a strong requirement for paul employees to be in compliance with ab5. They need to be in accordance with the california state law and using this example to ensure that workers that were previously not in the gig economy now classified as regular employees would be something that we can move forward to use permitting t to ensure compliance is met. To round it off we would like to communicate the importance of having a sliding scale in the permitting process to ensure that smaller businesses who employed delivery drivers are going to be in a level Playing Field with larger Delivery Companies. This could be mounted in a different way with a sliding scale based on the amount of employees companies have or the amount of Revenue Streams coming in. The sliding scale would ensure smaller businesses we able to compete with larger businesses to create a healthy ecosystem. Finally, when we talk about the fees and Revenue Streams from permitting, we feel that could go towards benefit things for drivers and delivery workers in the current era we are living in, one which would be a fund to go towards many different uses that would be applicable. To comment more i will pass it off to ricky trend. Thank you. I am ricky. I am here to discuss health and safety policy recommendations for delivery workers in San Francisco. I will outline three major components regarding health and safety. First is that we propose a surcharge for Health Insurance fund for delivery workers. The reason behind the surcharge is that it would be on all delivery workers in San Francisco. The money would go to the Health Insurance fund to supplement under the assumption that a lot of these workers will have Health Insurance plans covered by their respective employers. We advise the funds from the Health Insurance fund would be supplementary if they have any other costs. Second is that since they are working closely with the Restaurant Industry that we recommend delivery workers should be trained in food safety and hamming regulation handling regulations. Currently the city has serve safe. They should be trained in food safety and handling and this would not only ensure safety on consumers using the service but workers in the service as well. The last component will be system communication between the department of Public Health and delivery workers in San Francisco. We propose this system of communication between the department of Public Health and delivery workers because after once a delivery worker is certified they can register their number with the dph and once the dph obtains the certain amount of numbers the department of Public Health will be able to contact all delivery workers within San Francisco at a given notice. This will be crucial Going Forward should workers need to be informed of any developing updates, if there needs to be any changes in procedure and guidelines and this will also serve as both ways. Delivery workers that need to gain access to ppe, get tested or if they need to get supplies or food and health and safety they can rely on that rapid and efficient system of communication towards the ppe for necessary resources. I would like to conclude the students presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Colleagues. Any comments or questions . This is cynthia. I just have one quick question. I want to also thank you for the work that you have done on this. This is really important work. I wanted to ask again if you could repeat the two agencies you thought could be implemented for the certification process. The two agencies you identified. Thank you, commissioner. We decided that the s. F. M. T. A. And. [ inaudible ] were Viable Options for the permitting options. S. F. M. T. A. For permitting for the ride hailing and sfpuc for which workers . Our research was surrounding delivery drivers. We recommend that it would be up to your discretion to decide which agency would be the best fit, either or. They are administrative qualities and capabilities would be sufficient in providing that type of permitting process. Was it also considered to have a special department to do this . I am thinking the air bnb certification and how a department was set up specifically for that . Is that something you looked at i wonder if it would make it. [ inaudible ] the research we conducted we compared to food trucks permitting for large delivery vehicles for that matter. That is how we came up with uses sfpuc or s. F. M. T. A. I think it is important to look at both options. There will be the followup work to these studies and these reports based on the questions that we have today in our commission meeting. If there is, that is something that i would be interested in learning more about. Thank you. Questions or comments from colleagues. Thank you so much for this. I think the certification idea is not that hard to do. We are already doing it, like we do a Green Business certification so people are proud and there is an award ceremony. You can market your business saying if you shop here we are a Green Business we have met these measures and people feel pride in that. This could be the office of labor and standards. May i ask the presenter to take down their screen so we can see the commissioners. Thank you very much. I am thinking maybe it is the office of labor and standards. Ideally what i think is when we talk about food delivery or on demand Delivery Services, ideally it would be big companiesna have Delivery Service such as safe way or whole foods they would hire their own employees. They are represented by Union Representation and they could be rolled to the regular work force with the protection. For the other restaurants and on demand Delivery Services, i think this needs to be. We are extending this Delivery Service. I feel like it is going to be growing. When we talk about the cannabis businesses. Much is delivery. New york has been delivering food in restaurants. You can get anything in new york a long time ago by on demand delivery. We are just learning here. I think the certification thing is the idea. I think it is excellent. I think there has to be marketing attached to it so that people who would engage in these on demand Delivery Services want to know insured that their money is going to workers that are paid a fair wage, that there is safety concerns that are met, they have health cover age. I think colleagues who are on the board of supervisors, i am wondering if this is an idea you think we should bring forth to the board of supervisors. I would love to hear some input from you, also. Chair fewer. This is commissioner haney. In terms of the role of the s. F. M. T. A. They told us there are certain things they cant do because of regulations. When it comes to this sort of delivery and their ability to implement regulation, is it within their authority legally . Are they preempted . It all makes sense to me. We have always been under the impression our hands were tied as a city for regulation. For the researchers is that part of something you looked at in terms of what the length or the boundaries of regulation that the city can be providing over some of the recommendations that you have . No, we looked at existing regulatory bodies and processes that were in place and made assumptions based on that. We looked at models from other cities. There may be some special per mutations to the San Francisco regulatory environment. I am sure there are. You would know them better than we do. Commissioner main ne, that is a great commissioner haney, that is a great question. This industry is unregulated. The city has an opportunity here to step in and regulate this industry. To follow the labor laws. In terms of ride hailing, the c p. U. C. Has not yet determined if it is going to exert it authorities under the labor side of things. That is another opportunity here on what we are suggesting in this report is that the city asserts that it has control to enforce the labor laws and that is not under the purview of the p. U. C. For delivery they are unregulated. On the labor side for ride hailing, i think the city has the authority to sepin. I think that this is an unregulated industry that i get that this is the approach the students have taken is an approach of sort of a carat approach. I also think we need a stick approach. It is so unregulated and we talk about enforcement, there has to be a stick, you know. I think this would comment the stick very well. I dont know what that stick would be or that regulation would be for enforcement. I think a package together with this with maybe enforcement and some regulations around it but yet this opportunity to be a good player in the business. San francisco wants to reward good players. We would participate in boycotts and in the same way they would be very open to actually feeling as though they want to use this service but they want to feel good about using the service. None of us want to exploit people that is a general feeling among the culture in San Francisco. This is a fit for the culture of our city, too. This is why i think it is something we could really explore on. Supervisor commissioner haney. I think this would actually necessitate a conversation around this data. I am asking, mr. Goebel, you send all reports to every member of the board of supervisors so they have this information, too. As we Start Talking about reopening and recovery, people say how can we get back to where we were . Quite frankly, there were problems the way we were and this is one of them. This is very timely as we start to reopen. How can we then reopen in in y that is better than we were. This is such helpful information. Thank you so much to your students, also. At this time lets take comments. I have one comment. I wanted to thank professor mcbride and kendra, ryan and ricky for all of your work on this. The policy recommendations you put forward around regulating the delivery industry in San Francisco are really great. I am very interested in working with supervisor fewer and commissioner haney to bring these forward for consideration at the board. I did have a similar question supervisor haney had about our ability to enact any of this an at a local level given the challenges we faced in trying to enact any real substantive regulation on the Ride Hailing Companies due to preemption by the California Public utility commission. It is good to hear, mr. Goebel, that it is your understanding those preemptions, c pu issues we faced with the ride hailing Companies Might not apply to the food Delivery Companies. Thank you, commissioner mar. The p. U. C. Is having a rule making process on the labor side of things right now. They have not made a determination on that yet. That process is underway. In the meantime we feel the city could assert its authority until that process is concluded. On the delivery industry side, wide opportunity there. Thank you. I did want to state i have been working with supervisor mandelman in looking at local labor regulations on the Ride Hailing Companies. We have been working with the office of labor standards enforcement and the City Attorneys office as well as labor advocates and drivers organizations as well. That is work we have been working on for a number of months now. It is really exciting to have these new policy recommendations for the Delivery Companies put forward today. Thanks again for all of the work on this. I would like to also have a discussion on whether or not some of the students who worked really hard on this if they would like to see it go through the process and be involved in the process of actual legislation, if they would like to continue this and go deeper and learn a little bit about the processes of bringing the recommendation to actual legislation. I think there could be an opportunity for the students to continue to work on maybe on an intern capacity. It could be interested after all of their hard work to actually see those in San Francisco been fifth from it. We would be happy to explore the possibilities there. That would be valuable to all of us. If there is no more comment from colleagues. Lets open up item 5 for Public Comment, please. If you wish to comment please call the number on the screen. If you are already on the line please dial star nine now. If you have not already done so. Are there any callers for this item . There is one caller wishing to speak. Caller i appreciate the students tackling this situation. The only thing they didnt quite understand is the state tuc over site over tncs and the fact that the state restricts what the cities and counties can do to regulate tncs. I think based upon the proposals that the board of supervisors should request that they ask for legislation to allow San Francisco to do registration like new york does. That would be a great opportunity to do that. Regarding food delivery, i think that the Environmental Health division of the Health Department would be the best place to regulate food delivery workers. Like they do restaurants. They regulate restaurants and in restaurants. Considering food Safety Training through the Health Department would be the place to do that. The tnc with the m. T. A. They would need the same requirements taxi drivers go through, fingerprint, background checks and drug testing to be regulated by the m. T. A. Thank you. Thank you very much, caller. That completes the queue. Public item on 5 is closed. We are now on item 6. Our executive director has a presentation. Thank you, madam chair. Almost good afternoon, commissioners. I want to point out that some of the recommendations i am going to present now overlap with some of the recommendations from the graduate class at usf. My hope with all of these recommendations is to conduct further research and come back with a final report to you of recommendations that we think would work in San Francisco because they need investigation. What i hope to do here is put ideas out there. You have heard the findings of demand work. While the City Attorney working with the attorney general has filed a lawsuit against uber and lyft to bring in compliance with ab5, we dont know how long that is going to take. In the meantime peoples lives are on the line and Health Concerns remain. The question is what are other things the city of San Francisco can do to step in to help this very vulnerable work force . What i am bringing to you today is a table of ideas based on the survey findings, interviews with workers, stakeholders and legal research. We wanted to get the process started from addressing the labor abuses from a policy perspective. Every recommendation that i present today requires further investigation, engagement and refinement. There are four categories. Improve Economic Security for ride hail and delivery workers, promote accountability and lawful operations among the companies, improve sift and Health Safety and health and promote Public Health and safety. This is hand and hand with the bigger Public Health picture. How can the city improve Economic Security for ride hail and delivery workers . We know the answer to that already. Enforce city and state Labor Protections for ride hail and delivery workers. Ensure they are making minimum wage and the companies are providing health core contributions and paid sick leave. This is the law in San Francisco. Of course, under ab5, on demand workers are required to be treated as employees and receive the benefits that come with being an employee. The city should prioritize enforcement of ab5 and invest in the San Francisco office of standards enforcement and the City Attorneys office to promote compliance. The city should also be empowered to collect any and all data needed to establish compliance. Delivery companies are unregulated. There is no reason why the city cant receive labor data on a continuous basis. Workers need to be compensated for every hour they are on the clock, not just when somebody is in the car, or when they have a package. You wouldnt package. Enforce ab5, the local laws, give resources to the City Attorney and the San Francisco office of labor standards enforcement to do this. The idea discussed. Require a license for meal and food delivery workers. When you regulate it can improve earnings. With a cap to help reduce traffic and congestion. We dont Want Companies to underpay workers. We want to ensure they are making a living wage. Another benefit talked about ine previous comment. They would have Contact Information to communicate on issues. Contact information of all uber and lyft drivers are required in seattle. The city of seattle did a similar survey and got a huge response, thousands of workers. The city has their Contact Information. I want to be careful with this recommendation. Any kind of licensing facility should not place Financial Burdens on workers or create red tape. It should be developed in couldn consultation with workers. The other idea we have been exploring is we think the city should explore creating a ride hail and delivery Worker Resource Center to educate workers on rights and provide resources to resolve complaints with on demand companies. We have two models similar to seattle. There is a fee and uber and lyft rides. Many ride hail and delivery workers are fired or deactivated with little recourse toward resolving complaints. A center could offer resources. Communitybased organizations could provide information and educational materials on their rides. We think the city should create a task force to explore a cityrun worker owned ride hail cooperative. We know these services are valued by san franciscans and many rely on them. Workers are suffering under the models. They are not sustainable and they argue they cant comply with ab5. What if we woke up and there was no uber or lyft . We think the city needs the task force to explore a city run ride hail cooperative. What if it offered flexibility to give them the protections and benefits every worker should be entitled to. This is an idea worth, moring. Next is accountability and lawful operations. The top of this should be improving city access to company data. We think the city should have a strategy for valid ongoing data needed for setting, implementing and enforcing policy. The city needs to understand the hours, earnings, working conditions of on demand workers which make and many work on multiple platforms. That has to be Cross Platformed. For delivery workers there is no reason why the city cant go after the data now. Some of the things the city would look at. It needs continuous data for implementation and enforcement and wages and hours and eligibility for protections, contact and demographic information. On demand mobility of platform contributions to vehicle miles traveled and agree house gas emissions and the impact the delivery platforms have on Small Businesses. It is very important to note that any data policy should be developed to ensure that drivers and delivery workers maintain their right to independently collect and share personal work data regardless if they are employees or independent contractors. Third Party Intermediary can help with the analysis of data to ensure it is valid and accurate. We have a lot more in the full report which you can read at sf. Gov lafco that we will post on the site. We think they should collect and share information about injuries. Mom payment to healthcare age Workers Compensation insurance. The sick pay insurance is the law in San Francisco. It should look at the Tax Liability arising from this classification in San Francisco. The total amount of unpaid benefits that workers are entitled to under the retroactive enforcement of a b5. Also the social impacts of this long standing practice of nonpayments of mandated worker benefits. Next is improving safety for at based drivers and bike riders. Number one, provide free and accessible restrooms to workers. We are suggesting the dent of Public Department of public works explore a public facility for at based delivery and ride hailed workers with free restrooms that is parking accessible. 77 of the ride hailing drivers and 86 of the delivery workers had no access to a facility. Restroom could be located at the Worker Resource Center i mentioned earlier, but generally make restrooms more widely available to everyone. We asked drivers a few questions. I know from doing this work that they face some of the most hostile street conditions. Cars in bike lanes, weaving in and out of that mess, avoid doors floors flying at you. In the survey 70 on the bikes felt unsafe while doing work in San Francisco. How do we address that . We think the m. T. A. Should do a rapid build out of protected bikeways especially on high injury corridors and busy streets. Especially now that restaurants and Small Businesses are reopening for curb side delivery and pickup, s. F. M. T. A. Should dramatically expand loading zones to help keep drivers out of bike lanes and prevent bikers from getting parking tickets. We also think that it is imperative to expand the citys network of those streets. Make it permanent. It helps eve us and keeps the streets safer for everyone. We wanted to shift people who do the car work in cars and he bikes. We asked ebike questions. If you were given the incentive to purchase the bike would you shift from the car to the ebike . 25 of uber and lyft drivers would shift doing delivery. 39 of the delivery drivers said they would switch to an ebike with an incentive. 31 said maybe. We think this is significant. We are suggesting that the city establish an e bike rebate company in collaboration with bike manufactures and companies. Getting folks out of cars to do delivery on bicycles has many benefits. More efficient delivery, fewer cars on the streets to meet the emissions reduction goals and drivers dont have to worry about getting parking tickets. Our final category is promoting Public Health and safety. It is what the class mentioned earlier. Something we can look at as well. We can mold it into one proposal. I am in the thirdparty delivery. Public health permits. To ensure all food is free of contamination, why not require it for thirdparty food Delivery Companies. I have a great many people to thank for input on this report. Mostly i want to thank dan rail, the Research Associate who did research and writing. The Research Director at the justice Education Fund, survey team and everyone else over the course of the last few years. All of you for input. What i am asking you today, commissioners is for feedback and direction on this. I am happy to take all of the issues and vet these and talk to other city departments and what i suggest is that i come back to you with a final report. With that i am happy to take any questions and get your feedback. Thank you for your great work and for taking what was in the survey and putting that into actionable steps to take. Often we see the reports and there is not a clear path forward. I think what you provided here is really strong and clear path forward for us. I am interested in most of these ideas. I think it is more for us figuring how to do this and where to start. I think most of these things are needed and would address some of the issues we have seen in the survey. We could have a working group on this to support this. We could have you go back and sort of begin to work with the department in terms of what some of these policies or, you know, even some of them are things that could happen right now in terms of support would look like and come back to us. I would just say on ward i do think we can lead the way on this. The urgency to support these workers and also to protect customers and residents. It is about the workers first but also about the health and safety and overall quality of life. Thank you, chair fewer for your leadership and supervisor mar. I am in. Mr. Goebel you mentioned a lot of suggests. I am thinking we would have to categorize them on the things sequentially to do. There was a recommendation to request the bla report also. That is something we can start on because there was a que for those reports. Maybe it would be helpful to supervisor mandelman and i had been work on the most contentious issues on enforcement of ab5 and atbased workers in our city they are going to bring this to the board. So mr. Goebel, maybe you can speak to supervisor mandelman and mar about what they discussed and maybe there are parts of it that the supervisors may want to use and if we need more data, they can use for their research, also. But it seems as though, what you are proposing and what supervisors mandelman and mar are doing compliment each other and they work hand and hand together and i think that would be wise to see what theyve alreadinvestigated and compare. On that, i would like to open up Public Comment. Im sorry. Im so sorry. I have one quick item to add. Thank you so much for this work and these recommendations. As the commissioner who is sitting in the public seat, i would ask, also, that we think about ways to engage the public, whether that is a working group or a task force, just when you look at these options of ways to engage either the collectives who are providing input and the workers themselves and these workers have a seat at the table. And i know that thats something that the supervisors offices and the supervisors themselves really value, public and Community Input into their processes, but i just want to make sure that we echo that in lascoe, as well. Thank you very much. And i believe it was made public, a caller that mentioned an organization that she is working with and so, i think that it would be a great start, also. , to hear about that. We cant legislate that without hearing from people. Lets open this up from Public Comment. Would anyone like to comment on item number 6 . For members of the public who wish to provide Public Comment call 408 4319388 and once you connect, please dial star 9 to speak. Please let us know when the callers are ready. I have one caller on line two. Thank you. Brian, thank you for all of your recommendations and the problem is because the city doesnt have the ability to regulate the tncs based upon state law and cpuc oversight, its a problem. And the fact that theres an uneven Playing Field still going on, that until the city gets the legal right, the legislative authority to do it, it creates major issue. However, i do agree that licensing like the limited number of medallions and the policies of the sfmta have a limited number of vehicles, of taxi cabs on the road. It would be a great idea to create a licensing system to limit the number of delivery people out there for two reasons. One, to allow for enough income for living wage and also for to avoid the congestion on the streets. Once the shelterinplace order is lifted, there will be a lot more traffic on the streets and it will create a lot more stress and problems toward the food delivery workers. Regarding the food delivery in terms of income, the problem with the companies is that they actually try to rely on the customers generous tips and that could be a problem at times. There have been several occasions where the customer did not provide a tip and the delivery fee was so low that it didnt even cover the cost of actually providing the delivery. And so, this is something that should be looked at as the fact that the companies are expecting customers to be generous with the tipping and not make it a briefing. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much and any other callers on the line . Ha dathat completes the cue. Thank you, mr. Goebel. Madam clerk, no action is needed on this item. We did not take action on item number 5. Thank you, can you please call item number 7. Presentation and discussion on the lafco report assessing the Bank Accounts ability in San Francisco during the pandemic. We have kerry yi, a lafco Research Associate. Tell low, commissioners. Its great to be with you again. This past month, ive had an Incredible Opportunity to be engaged in conversations. Beginning this work, ive learned so much and feel like im more curious and excited to explore this in my career. Before beginning this presentation, i want to give a special thank you to executive boss for leadership and support at this work and acknowledge the Community Leaders who gave their time to inform these finds. This research coincided with Government Programs and mandates with covid19 developments and i want to acknowledge the active engagement and service of our Community Leaders and with that, well begin the presentation. This presentation will cover a snapshot assessment of how banks in San Francisco have responded to covid19 and will propose recommendations for next steps. And there are several driving questions for this research and the first are how banks are able to respond to the crisis and the second, how are banks held accountable for the Crisis Response and lastly, where are the gaps and how can San Francisco respond to theme . In adjusting the first question, its important to understand banks operate in a system with banks and other actors. The pyramid visual here demonstrates a hierarchy enables regulators who oversee banks with customers and the general public. In this hierarchy is true where legislators at the top of the pyramid refer to congress. While regulators have the authority to mandate and enforce oversight on banks, legislators can step in and clarify through legislative action the intended roles in society. So to begin what banks are accountable for, we start with the coronavirus aid and Economic Securitys act or the cares act that Congress Passed on march 27th. The cares ability is a 2 trillion relief package pumped to provide fast is direct economic assistance for families, workers and Small Businesses among other actors. The exists infrastructure to deliver Economic Relief quickly, specifically banks were enabled under the cares act to be distributed for workers as shown on this slide and for the general public, via the banks Customer Bank will be explained in the next slide. So they ensured banks in San Francisco were assessed on their participation as distributive for Small Businesses and employees and also under action for Bank Customers. For Small Businesses and Small Business employees, the cares act created the Construction Program or ppp which essentially gave Small Businesses the opportunity to maintain their workforce and cover business costs with a federally covered forgivable loan. The ppp was serviced on a firstcome, first served basis with advantaged them under participating banks. Out of the 45 banks in San Francisco, 38 banks or ppe are eligible as fba qualified lenders as shown in the top line of table and of the 38, 35 banks participated as described in the second line. And in small fonts, youll see the numbers for the Community Banks subslide. Community banks are recognised as being local actors and those more likely to serve low to middleincome communities. Whats significant here is that the difference between the first and the second lines of the table come entirely from the Community Banks subside. So three Community Banks chose for one reason or another not to participate as pppp lenders even though they were eligible and in total, three fewer banks were counted from the 38 total eligible. And the last line of the table identifies banks in San Francisco who deviated from the normal course of action to accept ppp applications from Small Business owners, not in their existing customer base. As the count shows, six banks in San Francisco did not require a free existing banking relationship with the applicants in two of the six offering the service for noncustomers were Community Banks. To provide Economic Relief for individuals, the cares act increased bank lending ability and flexibilities to encourage banks to ease cash flow on affected borrowers and provide other forms of relief through waivers, moratoriums and created protections pentagon th upon ths discretion. They were to defer to Bank Decisions on Loan Modifications related to covid19. Under the cares act, banks were enabled in various ways to extend relief measures to their customers and so for the method here, banks in San Francisco were assessed according to how they publically communicated and offered available customer relief. The transparency rating in the first line of the table refers to the banks public commitments to accommodate customers and the second line unpacks this with the accessibility of the relief measures. The customer relief offering is broken down into the four main processes through which banks make customer relief available. Where relief is offered universally, the bank applies reef learelief to all customers. Where relief is offered upon request, or an optin process, the bank is upfront with what is offered and the customer is responsible for requesting or applying for the relief. Some banks hint at the possibility of relief but dont disclose to what extent and tell customers to directly consult with the bank. In the last category, it doesnt make any relief available for covid19 customer. The end of the table specify ones type of relief extended to Bank Customers and how its being offered. In terms of accountability for the way banks have been enabled by legislators and regulators to be distributive intermediaries, weve seen a Public Mobilization and conessential shift in thcon. This access federal assessments and figure two reflects a difference with those who reflect ppp loans in the distribution. Unfortunately, a solar narrative cant be told regarding bank interactions with the customers. And because information on who receives Loan Modifications and other relief measures are not publically available. The gap is Holding Things available is understanding what goes on in the bank to customer interaction. Studies by the International Coalition found a correlation between helping customers being treatedan. Additionally, since legislators and regulators defer to banks discretionary power, theres no real requirement or consequence for banks who arguably provide fewer flexibilities and allowances. Considering what San Francisco can do to held banks accountable for the customers and for the community, in this first recommendation, i would urge the city to issue a statement of intent or resolution to hold banks account for community accessibility, fair practises and good faith efforts. Its to signal to banks and Community Actors to make concerted efforts as responsible intermediaries and secondly, encourage public conversation that identify common Bank Customer experiences. Given studies that identify racial despairties and Banking Service and access, i would consider a lafco special study to document customer requests and bank extinctions of covid19 relief flexibilities. The purpose for such a study would be to document how customers of color are served by. Bybanks at this time, and approved on a case by case basis. Recogniseing this is not explained by differences, the study could assess the banktocustomer interaction. Another group identified as atrisk of being underserved are disadvantaged and bank interactions is the lep community or those with limited English Proficiency. In this environment where communication with lep groups require additional trans ligs and connecting cultural channels, i would urge policy makers with the lep community to understand how the time sensitive nature of the Crisis Response has affected accessibilities. One way for the stay to increase Public Accessibility is through educating the Bank Customer and i recommend that the city spotlight direct service providers, those providing legal counsel, Work Training on the resources page. In doing so, the city could raise Public Awareness and demonstrate a commitment to hold banks accountable for fair and good faith practises. And in this moment, the services are in higher demand and its important that Community Providers have the comfor capaco meet the need. To highlight an area, i would urge the commission to have a longterm viewin as preserving as aformeddabl affordable housi. So consistent with that, the city should assess the preparedness and capacity of its Nonprofit Network to quickly scale and compete against firms and speculators in order to exercise the right of first offer and right of first refusal. They need to rapidly scale up to meet the need. Considering productions of a covid19 in the housing market, i would urge the city to conduct a preparedness assessment. To close, bank should be accountable because of responding to covid19 and Community Needs tor economic assistance. Though there are gaps in Holding Banks accountable, they can bring transparency and the bank to customer interaction and to protect the community from longterm effects from the pandemic. I urge the commission to consider these five recommendations and to take appropriate action and with that, im happy to receive any comments and field questions. This is valuable information and i think we can do every one of those recommendations and i love to hear from my colleagues, too, and i think that it gets to our equity issues and it gets to act accountability of banks. We are seeing this Banking Industry deny o of course wen leading on the bank initiative, also, but this calls on the need for public banks, too, and how the services that theyre offering and i think what they dont offer and the information they give and theyre the holders of so much information but also the holders of so much financial literacy, but also Financial Resources and i think this is very interesting. Colleagues, do you have any comments or questions for me . Could we have a call for Public Comment on item number 7, please. For members of the public who wish to speak, please dial 408 4189388 and access code 625466 and 705 and for those who have not already done so, please press star 9 to line up to speak. Let us know when the calls are ready. I want to say thank you for this report and reaching out for us. North dakota was the top state in the country that allocated more ppe loans in the country and thats a direct result of the public bank of north dakota. Put so our Coalition Supports the study of lafco studies of a public bank and we urge the body to make sure that the goal of the task force is to provide a clear blueprint of how we get the public bank and, unfortunately, that did not happen with the treasurers task force report. The treasurer had a task force that basic looked into the feasibility of a public bank and, unfortunately, the end product was a report that said a it wont take billions of dollars and this was included with multiple Task Force Members advocating the opposite. So i think its really important that the new task board has clear decisionmaking processes and making sure its fair and transparent. Iti think they did a great jobd personally, when youre an elected official not having to engage with the public like this, you may be resistant starting from scratch. As far as recovery, the existing bank is good and weve talked about creating a resolving loan fund and theres a lot of good ideas and we look forward to working with you all and i think at the end of the day covid19 has shown how inadequate our systems are and had we had a public bank now, nothing would be perfect but we would be quick to getting capital to the people that need it. Thank you to all. Get some rest and maybe you can recharge your battery and come back. Thank you so much. Thank you. I wanted to say thank you for the report and these are a lot of the things we should be doing and certainly ive heard from a ton of people in my district and having to go through the banks who havent already been responsive for something so essential during a pandemic is more evidence, i think, as others have said and we do need greater regulation and we also need to have more opportunities for our own government to step forward and provide support and i think it really underscores the need for a public bank and so chair fewer, i would love to work with you on the recommendations to make sure that they move forward and i just want to thank everybody for their work. Yes, thank you, commissioner. I think that as most people know, my term on the board is to be ended at the end of the year and so we are looking for somebody, another supervisor to take on the public bank issue as we think its super important. I wanted to ask about the gathering of information, so on the slides where you showed how the banks compared oh, i wanted to ask for clarification. When you say Community Banks, are you referring to Credit Unions . They do fit under actors in in space. Actors in this space. I use a definition that the occ and fdic provide guidance for and its not just an assessment of slides. If you see in the full report, expect banks include federally chartered banks so these are also regional banks. And so the criteria thats met for Community Banks and usually some sort of mix of how or where the deposits are coming from and where the loans are extended and in which communities are they being extended to, as well as consideration for bank size. How were you able to gather the information about the services to clients . It was primarily done by an assessment of what kind of assessment theyre making public, so press relief, on their websites and coldcall customer, just a member of the public in gathering the information. There are studies that would further the goal of establishing the municipal public banks with the distribution of ppp loans, wall street, banks really cant be trusted with a recovery. As well, this is a prime opportunity to take charge of our own economic features and come up with the beginning plans for investing in things that we actually need, like housing and Renewable Energy and Small Businesses and public infrastructure. Thank you so much. Thank you, miss fielder. Hello . Caller, go ahead. Good afternoon. This is peter cohen, with the council of Community Housing organizations and just wanted to thank your team for good work on the support. They did reach out to us and ask us about input and i wanted to emphasize the recommendations, number 5 and in the context of where we are now, with this economic crisis and looking back on the Great Recession and what happened in the housing system. please stand by . We have to be able to jump on these properties and we need a plan to do so if this market, as we know the Real Estate Market is like 20082009 is a opportunity for the city to acquire some of these properties before other big players buy them up. Thank you very much. I think my fellow colleagues would like to join me in saying thank you. We intend to share this work with the entire board of supervisors. Would you please make sure this report is sent to every single supervisors office. Yes, i will. Thank you for your assistance. Can you please call item 8. For the record there was no action taken on item 7. Item 8 is authorization to pay lacould intern lea troeh for research assistance. This would authorize us to pay our Research Associate for additional work. She came on in the beginning of our emerging mobility labor study and provided valuable research and help. I ask the commission to authorize me to pay her a not to exceed amount of 9,000. That is what i am asking today. Thank you very much. Any comments or questions from colleagues at all . Seeing none. Open for Public Comment. Any members of the public to comment on item 8 . Please let us know if there are callers on the line. Madam chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Public comment is closed on item 8. I would like to make a motion to approve the authorization to pay the intern for research as an as assistant. Can i please have a second. I would like to second that motion. Thank you, commissioner. Roll call vote, please. Commissioner fewer. Aye. Commissioner pollock. Aye. Commissioner haney. Aye. Commissioner mar. Aye. There are four ayes. Thank you very much. Please call item 9. Executive officers report. A update on r. F. Q. For Renewable Energy expert. B update on the sfpuc. I want to say briefly this is a comment on something that is not on the agenda but related to the previous item. Will do the best to work within the resources to mend the recommendations in the studies you have heard presentations on today. Again, we will be operating on the status quo budget until october 1st regardless of the city budget situation. I will work within the resources that we have and do our best to blend all of that together. The item that i did want to talk about today was our rfk for Renewable Energy expert. We held interviews the friday before the shelterinplace was issued. That delayed the process a little. The scores is complete. We hope to issue is intent to award contract soon and bring recommendation for consultant be to you at the june meeting. This is for the service area to provide expertise to strengthen the oversight role of clean power sf. I want to update you on the m. O. U. That expires at the end of june. The p. U. C. Supports 200,000 left in the fund. As i said during the budget presentation, that is going to fund all of the work we had planned in the year ahead on clean power sf. M. O. U. May not be required to receive the funds. We are investigating not having an m. O. U. But continuing to receive the funds without it. It would be in writing. Anything we agreed to with your feedback we would ensure the funds continue to come to lafco so we can continue our work on clean power sf. That concludes my executive officers report. Than thank you, mr. Goebel. Comments or questions . Open item 9 for Public Comment, please, madam clerk. Please call the number on the screen. Are there any callers . There are no callers wishing to speak. Thank you. Public comment is closed on item 9. Can you please call item 10. For the record there was no action taken on item 9. Item 10 is general Public Comment. Are there any members of the public that would like to make comment . Is there anyone on the line . There are no callers wishing to speak. Thank you. Public comment is now closed. Madam clerk please call item 11. Item 11 future agenda items. Colleagues, any future agenda items . Seeing none. Open for Public Comment. I just wanted to note for the items we have asked mr. Goebel to follow up on in terms of reports and those matters if we could open those up to be future agenda items for the commission. Yes, thank you very much. Any other future agenda items, colleagues . Seeing none. Lets open item 11 up for Public Comment. Is there anyone on the line . Madam chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Public comment is closed on item 11. Is there anything more business before us today . That concludes our business for today. Thank you, mr. Goebel for organizing the presentations today. We all learned a lot. I know it was a long meeting. Thank you. We all learned a lot and i think all of it was so interesting. I want to thank everyone who participated. All of the background and the research on the presentation. Thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned. Is our United States constitution requires every ten years that america counts every human being in the United States, which is incredibly important for many reasons. Its important for preliminary representation because if Political Representation because if we under count california, we get less representatives in congress. Its important for San Francisco because if we dont have all of the people in our city, if we dont have all of the folks in california, california and San Francisco stand to lose billions of dollars in funding. Its really important to the city of San Francisco that the federal government gets the count right, so weve created count sf to motivate all sf count to motivate all citizens to participate in the census. For the immigrant community, a lot of people arent sure whether they should take part, whether this is something for u. S. Citizens or whether its something for anybody whos in the yUnited States, and it is something for everybody. Census counts the entire population. Weve given out 2 million to over 30 communitybased organizations to help people do the census in the communities where they live and work. Weve also partnered with the Public Libraries here in the city and also the Public Schools to make sure there are informational materials to make sure the folks do the census at those sites, as well, and weve initiated a campaign to motivate the citizens and make sure they participate in census 2020. Because of the language issues that many Chinese Community and families experience, there is a lot of mistrust in the federal government and whether their private information will be kept private and confidential. So its really important that communities like bayviewhunters point participate because in the past, theyve been under counted, so what that means is that funding that should have gone to these communities, it wasnt enough. Were going to help educate people in the tenderloin, the multicultural residents of the tenderloin. You know, any one of our given blocks, theres 35 different languages spoken, so we are the original u. N. Of San Francisco. So its our job is to educate people and be able to familiarize themselves on doing this census. You go online and do the census. Its available in 13 languages, and you dont need anything. Its based on household. You put in your address and answer nine simple questions. How many people are in your household, do you rent, and your information. Your name, your age, your race, your gender. Everybody is 2,000 in funding for our child care, housing, food stamps, and medical care. All of the residents in the city and county of San Francisco need to be counted in census 2020. If youre not counted, then your community is underrepresented and will be underserved. Good afternoon. My name is ann moller caen. Im the president of the San Francisco Public Utilities commission. At this time id like to call to order the regular meeting of the San Francisco Public Utilities commission. Todays date is tuesday, may 12, 2020. Roll call, please. President caen . Here. Vicepresident vietor . Present. Commissioner moran . Here. Commissioner maxwell . Present. Commissioner paulson . Present. We have a quorum