Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240712

8882733658, and the access code is 3107452. When prompted, enter one and zero to be entered into the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, please mute the device that you are listening to the meeting on, and when it is your time to speak, you will be prompt today do so. The number and the log in will also be scrolling across the screen. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established. Speakers are requested, but not required, to state their name. Sfgtv, please show the office of Small Business slide. Today, we will start with a reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policy that affect the Economic Vitality of San Francisco. The office of Small Business is your best place to get information about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance during this time, you can find us online or via telephone, as always, our services are free of charge. Before we get started, id like to thank sfgtv for coordinating the meeting and the live stream, and to jane smith for mediating the comment slide. Item 1. Clerk item 1, roll call. [roll call] clerk mr. President , you have a quorum. Thank you. Well, first, i am delighted to say we have three outstanding leaders in Public Service today. Clerk commissioner laguana, do you want me to call item 2 . Oh, yes, call item 2. Clerk item 2, presentation on small basis recovery. Continues discussion on Small Business recovery and rebuilding, presentation, and discussion from the San Francisco municipal transportation agency, treasurer, treasurer and Tax Collector, and the Planning Department on Small Business recovery and rebuilding and discussion of relevant recommendations made to the Economic Recovery Task force. Commissioners, please note, we have a limited amount of time for each presenter due to their schedules, so limit your time in chat. Were going to budget roughly two minutes per person. If we have more time, well circle back. Mr. Tumlin, thank you for being here. Thank you, mr. President. Im going to be reviewing our transportation recovery plan. There is a lot of material that i can present, but i would like some time guidelines about the length of time you would like me to present versus q a, and if theres a specific topic you would like me to address, i can do so accordingly. I think other commissioners can jump in here, but i think probably the biggest item we recommended to ertf was around the shared Spaces Program. Welcome updates about that, but there are a few more items that commissioners would ask questions about. I think they would appreciate an opportunity to ask as many questions as possible, but we want you to convey whatever you think would be interest of us, so well just muddle our way through. We budgeted about 40 minutes for you. Okay. Ill spend more time for details getting into the q a. Ill share my screen. Are you seeing my screen . We are. Excellent. Let me go into there we go. All right. So good morning, commissioners. Im jeffrey tumlin. Im the director of the San Francisco municipal transportation agency, and as many of you know, one of the things that we do as an agency is supporting the overall San Francisco economy. Recovery cannot happen without mobility. People need to get to work, get to services needed, move around, and we face fundamental constraints in our Mobility System, specifically, that our streets are not getting any wider. So we needed to figure out how to let our streets move the greatest number of people, especially for people who dont have many choices. Last week, we saw the greatest congestion in the region since the city opened up, and we are worried that we are going to see the greatest congestion ever in this region. We are working with c. T. A. And other regional agencies, and were very nervous about what we see. Even today, where we think the economy is maybe about 15 open, were within 10 of hitting the traffic levels that existed precovid. It takes only a relatively small percentage shift away from transit towards driving to reach rather catastrophic levels of congestion, and this is related to simple mobility. Driving a car is super convenient. It takes you from any point a to point b, and during this time, you have the ability to have built in social distancing. The problem with driving a car is it takes up more than ten times the space moving someone in a car versus any other kind of communication including a socially distant muni bus or train. So if our streets are not getting any wider, we dont have any ability to move more cars than we did back in january. Indeed, we dont have much ability to move more cars than were moving today. There simply isnt space to support the San Francisco economy except by emphasizing the most Space Efficient modes of transportation which creates a set of conundrums for us in this precovid era. Muni lines that are full of people still get caught in congestion especially in the south of market grid for people vying to get onto the bay bridge. That turns into loss of time for muni, and that turns into a capacity loss and frequency loss for muni because were not able to turn our buses around as frequently. Now this loss of capacity and frequency also creates a Public Health issue for our essential workers because it cuts our ability to offer social distancing on our bus by the same percentage as our travel time losses, and were starting to see this all over San Francisco right now, and were wanting to try to get ahead of the problem really quickly so we can continue to manage our streets to maximize the flow of people and particularly to Pay Attention to who we are serving. So all of our work at the moment for every single line of business at the sfgtv is being pulled into what were calling our transportation recovery plan. We look at each of the stages of reopening the economy to figure out what does the Mobility System need to do in order to do that. Everything from turning the parking meters onto phasing in the meter system to when the taxi fares and other things need to adjust. Everything is oriented around Covid Recovery and specifically our role in reopening the economy. The San Francisco economy cannot reopen without mobility in place, and indeed, our Financial Stability is largely dependent on the return of business in San Francisco. Thats what we depend on, is people doing their business in San Francisco not only from business tax, but from the fares we collect. We also know that now is a really challenging time to be making major changes to the Mobility System, but we have no choice but to make some pretty radical changes. Most of our sources of revenue are down by 80 to 100 . Weve got to make some changes to our system just to survive, but also be able to take our services and deliver them to people who need it the most. Its a hard time to be making changes to the system given that we cant hold a conventional public hearing, and many of the people who we care the most about have the least ability to participate in forums like this. So were trying to invent a series of ways of engaging people to be able to do very rapid change aimed at supporting the Financial Sustainability of the city and its Small Businesses for the people who need it the most. So were trying to take every community forum, either through a communitybased organization or through our board of supervisors offices as well as other techniques in the field to be able to reach out to people who are typically not involved in government services. We want to do more experimentation, meaning try things out on the streets. So instead of going through a year of public hearings and planning processes, to do some experimentation on the streets as a way to get feedback. We are learning a lot from our slow streets experimentation that is informing how were going to move forward from ther there. Were thinking have you quantity thai thinking very quantitatively system wide. For example, should we be measuring our street impact and how our streets serve people . And more importantly, how should we be reaching out to Community Members to solicit their feedback based upon arthur Actual Experience with our experiments in order to be able to either make adjustments, make them permanent or cancel them altogether and move onto something else. So today, were going to be talking about how were going to use those different techniques to address those challenges around biking, transportation, neighborhood corridors, and commercial demand. As most of you know, covid has hit muni really hard. Back in april, as a result of the successful efforts that we did in order to probability our right lane in order to protect our vulnerable workforce, we needed to cut about 60 of muni hours. We eliminated the rail system and retreated into a position of radical resiliency, throwing all of our resources at the muni lines that served the most people, that concentrated on residents and neighborhoods that had the least access to services and to employment. Like focusing on our major institutions, like the hospitals, and doing a period of adjustment to ensure that no one was way too far from muni services. And this radical resiliency was w what allowed us to survive. We have the lowest rate of covid among our workforce and passengers. Weve had a very small percentage of our workforce catch covid, and all of them recovered, which is very different from some of our sister communities. The geography of San Francisco mobility and the geography of our San Francisco workforce is very different than San Francisco general. The neighborhoods are mostly empty, but our commercial districts are full of activity, and its coming back even greater in our neighborhood commercial districts. So we focused service where it was needed the most. Even in a time of service set backs, we had to increase our level of Service Delivery on critical corridors like mission street, like the 8 and the 9 serving Visitacion Valley and all of the shaded areas on this map, which are socalled areas of concern, concentration of lower income neighborhoods and people of color. Making sure that people had service was extremely important to us. Weve also maintained everyones health based on the c. D. C. S covid guidelines, but i want to make you aware, were having to pass up a lot of passengers as buses reach their capacity of limit, and as many of you know who take muni, were experiencing severe crowding. We need to find ways to protect the safety of our passengers rather than relying on something as simple as the distance of our passengers. We believe that the United States is the only country that is only for social distance on Public Transit. Almost all of the asian and European Countries have focused on more distant and effective distancing strategies. We cannot move more people than were moving today without social distancing. We lost about 30 of our Service Hours due to direct impacts of covid. We gained back some Service Hours due to the increase in congestion. Were worried were going to lose more of those gains and suffer even more congestion, and the social distance goals in transit result in another twothirds service cut. So all of that adds up to between a 70 and 80 service cut, which is the equivalent of the loss of all of the traffic lanes on the bay bridge, golden gate bridge, richmondsan raphael bridge, and san mateo bridge. It is about the loss of capacity for 600,000 people every day, and this is going to stand in the way of our economic recovery. That said, we are looking at solutions. Part of the solution relies on the data of the system that we had duriwe system travel time that we had during the shelter in place. Interestingly, we achieved zero travel time savings on the corridors we had only commercial travel lanes because our last decades of investment in travel lanes in corridors really worked. So one of the questions is should we be extending our transitonly lane network in order to allow our protected Transit Network to be protected from congestion and to allow those streets to move more people and particularly people with the fewest choices. So were going to be talking to the board of supervisors in the form of the sfcta commission today. Well also be talking to the m. T. A. Board tuesday of next week about advancing emergency temporary transit only lanes on our key corridors as a Pilot Program that would be designed to sunset 120 days after the end of the state of emergency. So were starting the conversation with Community Members right now. Were looking at doing some temporary installation starting in july, and were proposing to use this temporary installation as our process for Gathering Community feedback, for measuring the results, for measuring the unintended consequences, collecting significant data, and then, at some point immediately after that or within 120 days of the emergency order expiring, going back and doing a more formal process for either pursuing legislation for making those transit lanes permanent or adjusting them somehow or removing them if they didnt work as we had hoped. This is a very different way of working compared to how government conventionally does its programming. Typically, a transit only lane planning would take between two and five years of Community Analysis and detailed workshops and arguing. Were proposing to do a detailed twotothreemonth analysis. So our First Tranche would be getting some assistance on mission and places where congestion is already starting and we know its going to get worse in august. Looking at pieces of masonic and presidio and putting some upgrades on lanes near laguna honda and bosworth. There are chances were going to take on this project. Were going to want to look at having the peak parking tow away on sacramento and clay streets perhaps be all day, or on 19 avenue, having a conversation with caltrans about having an h. O. V. Lane on 19 avenue in the curb lane. So not easy questions, particularly on the time horizon that well be working on. We also know that Public Transit will be hobbled due to the financial crash for years to come. Our parking protected Bikeway Network in the south of market and our slow streets, particularly on streets like page and lake and sanchez street, as well as streets throughout the sunset have been wildly successful. Our slow streets in particular are attracting people on bikes and skate boards and scooters and walkers and wheelchairs in a way that weve never seen before, and particularly in a way that matches the actual age, ethnicity and neighborhood demographics of the areas that theyre service. So one of the questions that we ask is should we connect our investments together in order to allow all san franciscans of all ages and ethnic groups to be able to get to their neighborhood commercial district and to their Employment Centers in San Francisco because the advantage of biking and scootering and wheelchairing is they have exactly the same geometric space efficiency as muni does. So heres our existing network of facilities that actually attract a broad array of users. As you can see, this is a deeply disconnected network. Its like as if the interstate highway system in the United States randomly turned into travel roads. So weve been trying to make recent expansion in the last couple of months, that weve installed in the last six months or intend to. This is a much better network, but its still super gappy. Weve done the work thats easy but not the work thats necessary in order to pull these streets into an interconnected citywide neighborhood and one that serves the neighborhoods, again, with the fewest mobility choi choices. We need to make sure San Francisco have multiple mobility devices. This means we need to not only expand bikes and scooters, but getting those devices to people with lower income. And it means, you know, engaging further and making sure that we can expand the neighborhood and have networks feel like these services are actually something for them thats useful for them and indeed yields with the tradeoffs, such as the loss of parking that comes with the establishment of bike shore stations or the potential spillover of traffic from one street to the next street if we were to advance our slow streets program. Were spending a lot of time in our neighborhood commercial corridors. The first thing we did was invest in 450 neighborhood and curbside drop off zones so that people could do their business. That has been significantly successful, and now, were investing in the shared Spaces Program. I believe as of this weekend, we had 385 applications for various versions of shared spaces, and a lot of merchants already investing in their shared spaces in advance of the permits actually being available. We are looking at basically having a program of trying to say yes and making adjustments and corrections as we go along, because again, the Mobility System doesnt work if Small Businesses are not are not successful. We need to make sure that all of the needs of daily life are available within walking distance of all san franciscans, and we need tax dollars flowing again. So we need to look at when we bring back parking meter enforcement. We know that it is extremely important for Small Businesses that motorists be able to find a space within reasonable walking distance of businesses. As ive been Walking Around San Francisco the last couple of days, its time to start enforcing the meters because parking congestion is getting pretty severe in many neighborhood districts, and its our policy that the right price for parking is the lowest price that ensures that one or two spaces are available on every block. Were also wanting to ask all of you when it is time to start having our meters enforced evenings and sundays. We dont want to impose this upon you. Our interest is really in making sure that Small Businesses are successful, and, as a part of that, making sure that customers can find a space at 7 00 at night in order to go to a restaurant, or on sunday afternoon, to go to church. By the way, were asking some Big Questions of the region and selecting a lot of data. Were fortunate that were not expecting very high rates of Office Occupancy for some time in part due to elevator capacity and in part due to the fact that office jobs are more readily converted to telecommuting jobs compared to any other job in the district. This allows us some time to catch up, but it also gives us some time to manage our capacity. Should we establish a toll as the lowest price that clears the queue from neighborhoods backing up from the east bay and use that revenue to expand choices to people who have the fewest choices. But in all of this, the biggest question is how hold should we be . We are in a state of emergency, and things have dramatically changed. We know again that the economic recovery is dependent upon rethinking mobility and the bold changes that were facing. Are we ready to repurpose streets in order to Better Service business customers . To reprioritize streets to better serve customers . And are we ready to address these challenging tradeoffs and to mitigate the tradeoffs in a way that creates the least harm for the most people and, again, take advantage of the increasing mobility in this era . So thats a very quick presentation, and im happy to take any questions that you have. Great. Thank you, director tumlin. Commissioners, do you have any questions . Yeah, thank you, director tumlin. That was a great presentation. Really enjoyed it. Can we get a copy of that, regina or jeffrey, in the next few days . My question is as the area starts to reopen, and youve opened up some other lines, like the masonic lines, what about other lines . Because as people are starting to move around ive been hearing from a lot of the Small Businesses that youre trying to get to their neighborhoods where they work, and youre just waiting on bus lines to open up. I dont think people appreciate what a financial disaster sfmta is facing, and were not alone among agencies. So were planning to do another small tranche of meeting like restoration in august, along with reopening the rail system, but we still have 50, 50 muni lines that are shutdown. We do not have a path for restoring all of those lines for at least two years, and yeah. Its things are bad, and were expecting them to get worse. Okay. Thank you, but a great presentation. I appreciate it. Commissioner dooley . Yeah, i have just a quick question about the elephant in the room, which is t. N. C. They certainly are contributing enormously to congestion in this city. Any thoughts on where were going to go with that . Yeah, so as you probably know, municipalities dont have the authority to regulate ride hails, uber and lyft, so we are working with the state and particularly the California Public Utilities Commission in order to help make sure that municipalities have the right basically the right to have ban authority. We believe in a role for ride hail, particularly for first and last miles to transit, but we want to make sure that ride hail expands their services to people with disabilities, which theyre currently not doing, that they help us to reduce traffic congestion, that they help us to reduce total miles travelled, that they help us make the system more efficient rather than less efficient, which is what theyre doing right now. Are you going to be talking about limiting the number of t. N. C. S in the city . Ive heard estimates of 40,000 a day coming into San Francisco, which is contributing a huge amount to our congestion. So i my pressure regulation really focuses on outcomes, so if there is any Mobility Providers that is helping me to make the streets more Space Efficient, that is great. If theres any Mobility Provider that is helping me to serve those less well served, whether its a matter of income or geography or ability, thats great. I dont think we need to reduce the numbers to private investors for the public good, but to do that, we need a clear definition of the public good. Because i dont see any other commissioners lined up to speak, ill jump in. I want you to be bold. This is a onceinalifetime opportunity to reassess transit at the ground level, and i hope youll seize that opportunity. Im sure i speak on behalf of all the commission, we very much appreciate your commitment to equity. Came through at numerous points in your presentation. Thats so critical right now, and its so easy to overlook in a wealthy city like ours, so thank you for your efforts there. One question that came up on twitter last week, the shared Spaces Program is not currently on the sfmta permit page. You may want to have us consider putting the shared spaces permit on the permit page. A quick question. With respect to the transit only lanes, i can emergency that youre trying to balance travel time with the reduced capacity of the vehicles because theyre at onethird capacity. Have you im just wondering how you balance, say, a fullsized muni bus versus a smaller format or smaller vehicle choices i guess where im leading this is would there be an opportunity for there to be much like with uber and lyft and with the bicycles, would there be opportunity for private vehicle operators to operate in these transitonly lanes with vans or small buses if talk to me about it is that limited solely to buses or, you know, do you think that theres the potential for plexibility in what flexibility in what a transit lane means . Clerk just so you know, its 11 40, and the treasurer is on the line, as well, just so you know for time management. To what degree are we encouraging or discouraging private traffic shuttles . From a pure outcome perspective, they allow us to move more people, but theyre also controversial, so its hard for us to filter out them without filtering out, for example, ucsf shuttles. Right, right. And it comes to mind particularly with respect to people with disabilities and their ability to move in this environment. Ubers and taxis are allowed in our transitonly lane. Dominica, i respect the time, but i am going to allow commissioner ortizcartagena the opportunity real quick. Go ahead. Director tumlin, i just wanted to make sure, as commissioner or president laguana said to make Information Available in more than english. Also, ive seen on city websites, the translations for permits and things of that nature, they dont work, and our community usually fills out things on the electronic side. Make sure that theyre available to communities of color. The shared transit spaces is currently shared in spanish and chinese. When they translate on a mobile device, those functions dont work typically on city sites. Oh, thank you for that. Were making note. We will now move thank you very much, director tumlin. We very much appreciate taking your time to present. We well now move onto Jose Cisneros and amanda help me out with her last name, dominica. I dont see that amanda is actually here to present. Okay. Welcome. Hi. Okay. You have the floor. Okay. Great. Hello, everyone. Im really happy to be here. Jose cisneros, San Francisco treasurer. Im happy to talk about what our office is doing to support Small Businesses. I think, for all of us, it feels like forever ago when the shelter in place came out in march, but i think weve taken a lot of steps in that time to move things forward. So can we launch the presentation . Why dont we do this so we took many actions to provide relief, and we wanted to figure out how we could accommodate taxpayers who were not at ho who were at home. Many were seeing disruptions in their homes and workplaces. We wanted to do everything we could to provide shortterm relief, longterm relief, and maybe permanent relief and all of that, so im excited to be here to talk with you about that. I just want to start with reinforcing that weve been working for years to make to provide Better Customer Service and make it easier for people to work with our office. So now, essentially, 100 of the filings and payments that people need to make to our office can be done remotely, and we worked with the city leaders to see what we could do to provide relief during this very difficult time. While we did consider pushing this back, we did realize that it defers revenue to the city, and this would be a lot of work, but we did that with the help of the Mayors Office, Controllers Office, and even other part of the city leadership, so if we can go to the next slide, please. Our initial actions were followed by an array of additional work to provide relief and assistance to asmal businesses. So we started by deferring business taxes and fees for Small Businesses. Youll see on this slide, the first slide was the deferral of the first Quarterly Business tax payments. This benefited approximately 8,000 businesses who would have paid in that First Quarter quarterly deadline an average of 5,000 due by the end of april, which was the deadline. This relief was offered to businesses to Small Businesses only, and that was defined by businesses with up to 10 million in annual gross receipts. And the action that was taken for those Small Businesses was that they could defer that payment that was due by the end of april of this year until the end of february of next year, february of 2021. So again [inaudible] was deferred until february of next year. We also worked with the Mayors Office and others, on the second line, to defer Small Business payments for approximately 11,000 businesses in the city. This was a 14 million revenue for the city that was due by the end of march. That entire 14 million revenue collection was deferred until the end of september of this year. What i think is really good is these licenses license fees that are found on the unified license bill affect many businesses hardest hit by the covid shutdown, such as restaurants, food businesses, bars, many small retailers, hotels, and tour operators, so i think we are really glad to be able to make that happen. We also, as you see, on the third line, took time to delay Business Registration fees, which is paid by currently the nearly 90,000 businesses that are registered in San Francisco. Those fees annual renewal Registration Fee is due at the end of may, typically by june 1 each year. It brings in 49 million of revenue to the city, and that due date was extended and deferred to until september 30 of this year. So Business Registration fees vary according to the size of each business. They can range from as little as 1,000 per year to tens of thousands of dollars for a business, depending on its size, and all of those payments have now been deferred to the end of september, the same as the license fees. Can we go onto the next slide . Another major event, tax event that businesses were impacted with, and individuals, were property tax payments. As many of us know, there are two significant property tax payments due each year. One is september 10, and the other is april 10. The april 10 property tax deadly clearly landed right in the miding of the covid shutdown middle of the covid shutdown, so we wanted to see what we can do to help people impacts. San francisco was only one of two of the 58 counties in california that took action to extend the property tax deadlines for all property tax payers. By partnering and working with the board of supervisors on legislation, we extended the property tax deadline the standard april 10 property tax deadline to may 15. So over a onemonth extension to all property tax deadline in San Francisco. The delay helped individuals and businesses, and at the end of the day, by the time we reached the may 15 deadline, we were still successful at collecting nearly 99 of the payments due. At the same time, we created a solution for tax payers who were unable to make their april 10, or for us, may 15, property tax payment due to impacts from the pandemic. We are allowed, under state law, to provide relief from penalties for nonpayment of the deadline due to such impacts, so we created a link on our website that will allow anybody whos still struggling to make their property tax payment on time, relief from penalty, which essentially gives them an extension of this deadline by going to this website that you see on your screen, sftreasurer. Org covid19 sftreasurer. Org covid19 sftreasurer. Org covid19property. What the application said was particularly for Small Businesses with an approved covid19related waiver that were unable to pay their property taxes that were due on april 10 or in our case, may 15, because of that covid crisis, they have that extended to may 6 of 2021, so a oneyear extension to pay that property tax payment without incurring any late fees. This payment will be in place for the december 10 payment due later this year, as well as the april 10 payment due next year if their Small Business is still experiencing covid19 related impact. So i just want to be clear that weve done everything we can under the state law and the Governors Office to provide relief to Small Businesses. Can we go onto the next slide, please . So knowing that money was tight for many people, we actually suspended various activities that you see listed on this page, starting with with the upper right. Changed our bureau of delinquent revenue practices. Weve stopped many collections activities for the duration of the covid19 crisis, and this includes bank levees, and small tax collection items. Weve temporarily suspended the collection of obligations owed to zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and citations owed to the m. T. A. Our office of Financial Empowerment is housed in the Treasurers Office and advocates to strengthen the Economic Security and mobility of area residents. Our office is uniquely situated to assist those hardest hit by the downturn, and weve been doing exactly that. We used our programs to online and our online footprint to amplify city resources meant for Small Businesses and workers impacted by covid19, and we did a lot of that via social media. This included one most about insurance that went viral with over 1 million hits. Our staff spent money hours connecting local workers to emergency state, local, and federal resources. When the government rolled out the paycheck protection program, we moved to survey local banks about their participation in the program, about their responses to covid19 related to consumer and Small Business impacts, and bank survey results are currently being gathered and synthesized to create a report on how banks have responded and to make recommendations for the future. Were also developing a website with covid19 resources, including listing relief available from local and National Banks and credit unions. We worked with the Human Services agency and u. S. Bank to disburse emergency funding via prepaid cards to lowincome san franciscans who were experiencing Food Insecurity during the pandemic and assured them that the cards were easy to use and nonpredatory. Weve repurposed that platform so that the city could receive donations to help in the covid19 response and recovery fund. To date, that platform has collected nearly 30 million in covid19 donations. Im proud to say that our Customer Service team has adapted to remote work, and were responding to taxpayer calls within a 24hour period of time if not faster to understand how these changes provide relief to them and what the obligations and changes are now. Were also in the process of implementing an appointment system so that taxpayers will be able to schedule a time to speak with our Customer Service staff directly and not have to file a question remotely and wait for an answer. While much of our work has been to respond to the extreme circumstances of the health and economic crisis, we also have several programs uniquely situated to provide services to residents. Our smart Money Coaching Program offered through the office of Small Business empowerment is available to individuals across the city who received emergency cash payments. These are oneonone cash coaching appointments and video appointments, which has made them even more accessible during this time. Our kindergarten to graduation program, which weve launched more than ten years ago, available to all kids in our Public School district, understandably saw deposits from families decrease in march and april, however, weve noticed that deposits have rebounded in may, and were excited about families still being able to take advantage of that very beneficial program. Our financial Justice Project has worked with city departments to ensure that fines and fees are not an additional barrier to peoples basic needs, and much of what weve done in partnership with our local courts, with the m. T. A. , with many other city departments, including the library and others, is either adjust the amounts of fines and fees to make them more directly correlated to someones ability to pay or even eliminate fines and fees to provide services more successfully. Ill point to the cash late fees at the library. Theyve all been eliminated in order to increase access to our library resources. We know some of the most difficult days and months for Small Businesses are still to come, and im eager to work with all of you to find ways to support Small Businesses in our city, and with that, im happy to answer any questions. Wonderful. Thank you, treasurer, for the excellent presentation. We appreciate all your work. Commissioners, do we have any questions . Commissioner adams . Yes. Great presentation, treasurer cisneros, and i do want to compliment your staff on call times. Ive heard from several, several businesses, people not being able to pay fees and stuff, that when they do call your office, theyre speaking to live people, and its really made life easier, so i really appreciate that, and everything your office has done. My question is, do you have a percentage of people who have not paid fees yet or do you have those numbers . I do not have those numbers. Weve been doing our best to make sure that businesses or individuals know that the deadline has been extended. Weve even delayed putting up the portal that allows people to pay fees because we dont want people who havent heard news of the delayed deadline to pay by habit and then find that they were out of the resources and have to go through a refund process. That could take weeks, causing themselves to be short of funds in this very challenging time, so were still looking at when well open up those portals so that people can make those payments. Were trying to be sensitive to that. Wed love your thoughts and guidance on that, if you come up with any thoughts or recommendations how we can handle that. But we want to make sure that were not over connecting people with opportunities to pay who may not have heard that they have an extended period of time to pay, and theyre just making it out of a lack of awareness of that. [please stand by] leading up to the may 15th deadline date. We were concerned like other years that we could see thousands of individuals show up and make payments in person. So we were very gratified to see that across the three days only 150 people showed up and paid in person. And so what that really showed us was that when the circumstances, like were dealing with now, are in place that we find that nearly everybody can deal can meet their obligations and deal with our office remotely. So the struggle that were still dealing with Going Forward is as we come across these future dates, the september 30th deadline for what will be the annual Business Registration and the unified license, that we firmly believe that everybody can deal with that remotely. But were just curious as to and wed love your feedback and now or at a later time, whether its important to open up the office for inperson payments. Im guessing that there might still be a meade for that. And we a need for that. And we want to meet the needs that taxpayers or individuals might have, but were also trying to do everything that we can to keep people safe. And serve people in a way thats best for them. So were still looking at, you know, what is the best way to serve the public and the taxpayers for these upcoming deadlines. Theyre still a few months out. So it might be nice if we could continue to dialogue and get your feedback and help on figuring that out. Great, thank you. Commissioner. Thank you very much, commissioner. And thank you treasurer cisneros. Good to see you. We have an issue of communications to our Small Businesses and the office of the treasurer and Tax Collector is the first and the biggest place where they come in. One of our recommendation says to have an opt out where people who register for businesses or pay the Registration Fees are opted into communications between the office of Small Business and them. And so thats more of putting it on your todo list as something that we think that is important to better communicate to our Small Businesses. So an opt out, i would just like to say that per the previous discussion, whether you open up to inperson is one thing but keeping it easy online with an online portal and an online setup is really important and its something that this pandemic made us do. And i highly recommend to lean into the online digital bill pay. And theres proposed legislation to actually waive fees instead of pushing them out. And id like to ask you, you know, how you said that its 49 million roughly and 1 14 million these bills. Is this a huge amount of money for the city . How much money are we talking with a percentage of the general fund . Thank you. Those are Great Questions and great comments. Thank you for that. The Business Registration fees for the number that i had when we could verify this is the Business Administration fees for all businesses, which is large and small, brings in 49 million each year. Or currently each year to the city. And license fees bring in 14 million. Got it. So, again, that would be to your point, thats a conversation that could be proposed and wed have to have it at the board of supervisors and then with the mayors signature for those things to be changed. And one more thing, thank you very much, treasurer cisneros. What a mess, the mayor announced that 138 million sitting in a bunch of accounts would be put back into the workers pockets. Its now june and that money has, you know, it has not materialized in the way that we were promised. It sounds like its because of a lot of the complications of all of the different accounts and where it is and where the money is. You know, this is i have to just say on behalf of the Small Business community that there should not have been 200 million of unused money and 140,000 separate tax accounts. Where does it come to getting the money back into workers pockets and back out of the accounts that the city is monitor something. Great question. Theres attention paid to that, rightly so. And i read some of the newspaper articles myself. We dont collect those funds or manage those accounts. And i believe that and im not an expert in the details of where they are and how they were set up, and my understanding is that they were set up as the law passed by the city leaders proposed. And they required that they be set up. And, unfortunately, i hope that those same leaders can come together and figure out a way to make that money accessible and used in a way that benefits the people. It sounds like wed have your support in pushing that to happen it sounds like . Im not a policymaker and i dont tell them what to do. I implement what measures they pass and what the voters pass. But i understand where youre coming from. Thank you. Commissioner ortizcartagena. Commissioner ortizcartagena treasurer cisneros, thank you. And i want to also piggyback on the commissioners comments that you look at the h. S. O. But my main question or recommendation is, yes, we still need access to come in and to pay the bills. Weve only been a champion of the Latino Community and you understand that people normally and the elderly that theyre not sometimes technically savvy and we still need to come in. And thank you for keeping your eye on that because you understand. And i am with having payments online but we still need that access to come in person and to pay. And so look at that from a cultural and an equity line. Thank you, treasurer cisneros. Thank you very much for your comments and the input. We find that very valuable. We have already set up our offices with the safety provisions. We now have glass dividers and partitions. And all of our Customer Service counters. And so both our taxpayers and our City Employees are protected as much as possible. But we want to provide the service that allows our folks to comfortably and to successfully to deal with our City Services and our office particularly. So, please, keep that information coming. Thank you. Thank you. And i will we have two minutes left with the last couple questions here. Treasurer cisneros, do you happen to know what percentage of business taxes are paid by Small Business . I dont off the top of my head but we could easily figure that out. It varies and we have dozens of different types of taxes. The business reg and the grocery receipt tax and payroll tax and some Small Businesses might paying collecting and remitting the hotel tax. The parking tax. And then, of course, then theres tons of fees. So i think we could get you the information back on that. Wed love to have that information if you could. And any information that you have on how youd like us to define Small Business would be helpful. We generally stick with the california state definition which i believe is a hundred employees or less. Or 15 or did they raise it 25 million in revenue or Something Like that . But 100 employees or less is sufficient for most cases. Do you have visibility into unemployment numbers as part of t. T. X. . We dont work with that. The Controllers Office is the one that looks at that and we could prefer you to ted eagan, our city economist. Okay. And i want to echo the commissioner yekutiel comments about making permanent some of these online services. They make life a lot easier for the business owners. So the more we head that direction, i think thats good. And then finally, in our memo to ertf, we have asked that the loss of taxes paid due to the gross receipt and unsecured property taxes, were looking for as much demographic information as possible about that. And so as i mentioned Small Business is a hundred employees or less. But to the extent that we could have that broken down even further we are interested in by industry and then i. C. F. Code and the commercial district and then in terms of the employee sizes were interested in one to five, six to 10, 11 to 25. You know, were trying to get a sense of where the pain is most concentrated. And it seems relevant as we are facing the citywide budget issues, you know, where does our employment come from and where does our tax revenue come from. Where do we need to apply our efforts and what is the highest and best use of our efforts. Thats what were trying to get at. So i appreciate you coming in and i appreciate your time. We are over. So thank you so much. And i think were going to move on. Director hillis. Bye, guys. Good afternoon, i am here. President laguana wonderful. Perfect. A pleasure to meet you online virtually and hopefully someday in the future in person. And if you have a presentation, please feel free to make it. I do. And dan cider is here with me, the executive director of the program. And hes going to help with the presentation as well. So thank you for having me. Many of you i have known and worked with over the years. Both as i sat on the Planning Commission for eight years and i worked for the city and the office of workforce, economic and Workforce Development for over 15 years. So im looking forward to working with you all. And when i took this position Small Business and the future of our neighborhood commercial corridors was certainly a big priority for me. We saw significant vacancies before the pandemic and in our process and how we fill those and how we permit those i know is an interest to all here. Its become obviously extremely critical since the pandemic and our expectations is that there will be more vacancies in our commercial corridors in the future. So i appreciate your work on that. We need to fix our process. I mean, we need to make filling a vacancy and getting a permit for these uses in Small Businesses overthecounter and as easy as we can make it. Its an issue of equity currently if youve got to go through the process. If youre appealed or you need to go through a discretionary review process, it could take a year or more. And its extremely expensive to go through that process. Last week our two weeks ago at our Commission Hearing we had a discretionary review where an ice cream shop that wanted to open in the mission was kind of being opposed by a fellow ice cream shop. There were over 65 Public Commenters and it went on for hours. I mean, this was for a permitted use. So we realize that theres an issue. Weve got to fix. And youve all helped us in the past with implementing that as well as anticipating the currently of the onestop permit of 49 south van ness that were looking forward to i continuing those improvements. Your letter addressed a lot of the issue issues that is on thet for november that is going to address. So i thought that we would take the majority of our time and kind of walk through the provisions that are in that and if theres any questions on that. Because its on the ballot, nor you or us can advocate for it so were going to be objective and just kind of give you factually what it is that will be before the voters in november. So, dan, are you know you able to pull up the presentation . I am doing it right now. Can you see my screen, everyone . I can. I think that were good. So the Mayors Initiative ordinance was submitted with the department of elections last tuesday. And it will be on the ballot in november. Its 98 pages long which gives you some sense of the complexity of our planning code and theres 52 neighborhood commercial districts that are named in the planning code in this Ballot Initiative applies to most of them. Again, our comments will be objective and just kind of give you the facts about the initiative. So next slide, please. So the initiative generally affects the planning code. But it also kind of takes a broader view and brings in other agencies as well. It creates a streamlined review and inspection process so that principleally permitted uses is a target for the citie cities to approve those in 30 days. Were hoping to do this for more plannings overthecounter it. Establishes a policy to allow Table Service for restaurants within parcels which they currently cant do. And we want to continue to balance that with our desire to make these open to the public. And it locks in the provisions in this initiative for three years from passage and after that, the mayor can change it. Next slide, please. So one of the major things that it does is eliminates neighborhood notification for principleally permitted uses in districts. Currently if theres a change of use, you would notify the community. This would take about 30 days for the actual notification but in reality this process could take anywhere from 90 days to six months. So this is going to drastically shorten the timeframe for permitted uses to occupy a space. Next slide, please. And finally the second biggest provision in the initiative is it removes restrictions on specific uses in most neighborhood commercial districts. So our activities like studios and camps for kids around arts and social services and philanthropic facilities which it changes the definition which ill describe later will be principally permitted uses in commercial corridors. Nonretail sales and services, which are primarily office spaces, would be principally permitted on upper floors in permitted uses on the ground floors. General entertainment, things like arcades and bowling alleys, movie theatres, community facilities. Weve got two definitions of restaurants. And restaurants and limited restaurants can serve alcohol. Limited restaurants cant. Animal hospitals. Retail professional services which are insurance agents. Most of these are principally permitted on the ground floor. And all of them will be principally committed where theyre currently allowed by c. I. U. And where theyre principally committed theyll continue to be principl principd they will continue. So a big shift to allow them to be permitted on the ground floor in the commercial districts. That, coupled with the noticing provisions i think that we believe will cut the permitting process down significantly. Next slide, please. Theres some smaller provisions in the ordinance. This one would allow new workspace type uses in connection with eat asking drinking usage in districts. They can be accessory uses during the daytime or principley permitted with things such as cafes. Next slide, please. And kind of responding to some anticipated closures of bars and entertainment venues, this would allow tempary uses in those spaces for up to six years. Allows to avoid potentially a lengthy repermitting process when they want to revert back to nighttime entertainment or bar use it. Allows topup retail in vacant commercial storefronts. These are currently permitted in xiftding retail spaces. Next slide, please. It eliminates the requirement for Outdoor Activity spaces so this is table and chairs for a restaurant. For example, in the rear yard space. We currently need a conditional use. The initiative would allow those the right as long as the use is between 9 00 a. M. And 10 00 p. M. It wont apply to bars. It does eliminate some restrictions and this is fairly technical, and in the use that currently get their restrictions based on neighboring n. C. U. S. It will fix that provision which has caught up some Small Businesses. Next slide, please. And then finally changes some definitions. So as i alluded to before it expands the definition of social services and philanthropic facilities to both allow for the office uses associated with those uses to be allowed on the ground floor. So what this is getting at is potentially allowing some nonprofit type organizations to occupy ground floors, both providing Onsite Services but also their related office space. And it expands the definition of bona fide eating establishments. To add some additional methodology to that. Currently the standard is kind of a percentage of revenue from food, alcoholic beverages and this will allow a broader gross receipt standard that other jurisdictions utilize. And i think that is the end of that presentation. Again, we want to continue to work with you on things that may not be addressed in this initiative, but i think that it does cover a lot of the concerns you had in your letter to the Economic Recovery Task force. So im happy to answer any questions that you may have. President laguana wonderful. Commissioners, any questions . Commissioner yekutiel. Commissioner yekutiel thank you, very much. And we look forward to working with you over the coming months. Obviously, we cant speak whether we support or dont support the ballot measure. I have two questions. One, the ballot would be on in november, were currently bleeding bleeding Small Businesses you know, in our city. So what are you working on between now and november . And what do you think that you would work on if it doesnt pass . Yes. So most of what this changes or will that we have in our planning code so, you know, we are certainly trying to expand our program and just process permits quicker. We recognize that, you know, this process cant be as long as it takes for many Small Businesses to get through it. So supervisor peskin had an ordinance before or a commission a couple weeks ago that would kind of require us to process c. E. U. S associated with Small Businesses and neighborhood commercial corridors. In kind of the timeframe that were supporting cp3 permits. So we will continue to prioritize these. We recognize that its critical to get vacancies filled and the businesses back up and running. If the Ballot Initiative doesnt pass, you know, i think that many of the things in the ordinance are things both you support, your staff supports, we support, and our commission supports. So well be potentially looking to implement those by changes to the code if the voters dont pass them. Okay, my second question is about fees. I dont know about the other commissioners but my business is one of the most recent to have gone through the planning and the permitting and building process. And it is very expensive to get all the fees paid and necessary to start a Small Business in San Francisco. Understanding that a fair amount of those fees might go to actually supporting the budget of the Planning Department, and also understanding that were going to need to get much more were going to have to be providing a lot more incentives for people to create and start Small Businesses over the coming years, are you prepared to reduce the size of the Planning Department and eliminate fees completely to start a new business for the next year or two . I think that certainly looking at our Fee Structure is critical. I can tell you that our budget is primarily fee driven. Weve got about 42 million of revenue from fees every year. That make up about our total budget of about 50 million. And over the last couple months we have seen a pretty big reduction, about a 6 million reduction, in our fees as a result of the kind of lack of activity in the real estate world. But we are looking at our Fee Structure. Weve got analysis underway currently. A lot of what we do is dictated by kind of state law in where we can collect fees. So were looking at our Fee Structure in, you know, looking at who is paying and how we can kind of reconfigure where were charging fees. So were in the midst of doing that. And we anticipate that being done in the next couple months and can bring forward the legislation to kind of right size our fees. Amazing. And the last thing is that we mentioned it in the proposals to the Economic Recovery Task force and i also look forward to seeing your recommendations on fee restructuring. I think that will be super important. I dont know if you mentioned discretionary reviews and you talked about neighborhood notification but we brought up how sometimes d. R. S are used to stymie competition and hold up a business. But i didnt see anything about holding them back. What is your thought on that and what is your process on it . So eliminating discretionary views would take a Voter Movement to do that as well. Its also the ability to appeal to the board of appeals. What we can do, you know, barring a kind of change by the voters, is prioritize discretionary reviews that are appealing things like what we saw the other day just the opening of a Small Business. So internally we can prioritize and try to push those forward and get them before our commission and weighed on or approved or whatever needs to be done. We cant eliminate that process. But we can certainly work with the elected officials and others to figure out how to make it easier. Thank you. President laguana commissioners, our team. Thank you for the presentation. It was very great and it was very thorough. I have been advocating throughout this process and throughout all of these days and months. Im very concerned with equity and throughout the presentation i didnt hear mention of the cultural districts. And were really worried, especially in the mission, that awfltd work that youre performing and that the various departments have done to make sure our cultural districts stay intact will be unintendedly gentrified because of this. At speed that we are moving i see the unintended consequences of gentrification. With all of the money that would be available, a lot of investors are going to focus in the mission. We already have people speculating and keeping commercial tenants on monthtomonth due to the commercial moratorium. People havent paid their lease, and in addition to all of the vacant storefronts in the mission it creates the perfect storm. With all of the businesses shuttered throughout the city, the people that could get investors, theyll flood into the mission and just devastate and create more gentrification. I havent seen anything, and i have been mentioning it and been detailing this in every meeting that i can, and im very concerned that were not focusing culturally or equitably throughout this process. And yet again i do not want to delay this process. I just want to have sensitivity to certain neighborhoods. Its a great question and one that we brought up during this entire process in developing the initiative. So, one, id say that, you know, our process is an equitable one. If youve got resources and if you can hire attorneys and you can kind of pay rent during a fairly long fee process or a d. R. Process, you know, thats not equitable. But i should also state and i forgot to mention this and i apologize the provisions that we talked about removing restrictions for c. E. U. S especially, dont apply to a couple districts. And those districts are ones where we are working kind of in concert with the neighborhood organizations in doing a ton of Community Development work. So the mission n. C. T. , the 24th street and c. T. And the soman c. T. Are areas that those provisions dont apply to. And we recognize that these are neighborhoods where were invested in, and the city is invested in and were working with the communities to help to shape and develop neighborhoods to prevent displacement and gentrification. So in those districts, the provisions i talked about dont necessarily apply. So the 98page ballot, its somewhere in there . What happens is that every n. C. T. Is kind of a named district in our code and thats the reason that its 98 pages. So irving street has its own provisions. So we had to go through, you know, the Mayors Office had to go through and make changes to each of those districts to make things permitted where they were fee used. And we left those provisions in place on 24th street and mission and in soma. please stand by and the plann those areas. Are those going to be eliminated or are they going to be exempted . For example, north beach. Director hillis yeah, i think north beach gets a little complicated because theres an overlay of an s. U. D. On top of the n. C. And dan, i believe if youre here, you can clarify this. The ordinance does not touch the s. U. D. Overlay. Good afternoon, commissioners. Dan sider with staff. It does not affect the s. U. D. Areas. Thats one of those areas that has further constraints on top of the s. U. D. North beach remains unchanged from a use perspective through the initiative. Okay. Thank you. Dominica, the can you just verbally say what the instructions are for calling in . Im still getting feedback from members of the public that arent able to access the Public Comment line. I know its scrolling across the screen, but maybe just verbally say it, as well. Commissioner laguana, while were waiting for that, can i just ask one more quick question . Absolutely, please. Director hillis, youve heard some of my fellow commissioners talk about this, again, not displaying pro or con against the ballot mesasur, but obviously, we want to make sure that certain communities are being focused on it, and at the same time, if we come up with a solution and carve out the corridors that people want for services in, it reduces the efficacy of some stuff. How many neighborhoods are left . Director hillis well, again, we have 52 neighborhood commercial districts. The only ones that are carved out are mission street, the 24 street n. C. T. , and the solano n. C. T. Those can be changed by ordinance, as well. If we want to finetune them by city ordinance, those not singled out by this initiative could be changed by ordinance, too. When i was looking at the planning process, a lot of questions asked about why it took so long, because it took for it to get on the agenda and then for Planning Commission to vote on it. How do you propose to change the Planning Commission process so that thats not a pinch point . Well, if were taking c. M. U. S and prioritizing them, that takes a significant amount of time of the Planning Commissions agenda off their agenda so we can focus on other things. We also have the ability to prioritize whats on our agenda, and certainly housing, filling vacancies in neighborhood corridors, and departmental priorities are on our count. Okay. Thank you, director. Director hillis thank you. So how does the Planning Department im just checking to make sure no other commissioners have questions. How does the Planning Department look at Data Collection and analysis i guess let me rephrase my question. Sorry. How much of the policy making is under your control versus, say, the board of supervisors or the mayor . How much flexibility do you have with the Planning Department in terms of setting policy or recommendations . Do all of these require some legislative activity or can some of these be done just out of your office . Director hillis most of what you recommended in your letter would require changes to our code. Okay. Director hillis so so most of it would need legislative fixes. Things like reducing fees or eliminating fees, changing some of the these processes, whether you need a c. U. Or not right. Director hillis most of that is by code. Would that apply to relaxing restrictions on exterior signs or allowing temporary exterior signage . Director hillis yes. Do you know, was there anything in the ballot measure about signs or signage . Director hillis there was not, no. Okay. So in terms of data and i guess their where i was headed with this is a persuasive argument in terms of moving the ball forward is understanding where the baseline is and then understanding where we want to get to. One of the things that we advocated for the department was collecting data on storefront vacancies. I guess that would be the most relevant to you guys. Do you guys collect data around vacancies what is your policy around Data Collection in general . Director hillis yeah. Storefront vacancies, well do that for a specific neighborhood corridor, but its not something we normally do on a regular basis. On just our Data Analysis capacity, the inventory of storefronts in this city, which then, hopefully, we could use and piggyback off other data sources to fill that in, whether a storefront is vacant or not, but currently no. All right. And then for you in your job, what sort of data do you look at that matters to you . What sort of key metrics are you looking at when working for the Planning Department . Director hillis well, certainly how long things take in planning process and certainly how it relates to housing and permitting. Those are just key managerial and data points; how long does something take to get through our process. I cant say we have perfect data on that, but its something were building our capacity to do because not only does it affect our Small Businesses, but it affects how quickly we can get housing and affordable housing. So one of the things the ballot promises was a 30day turnaround on permits. How do you plan to accomplish that when the current turnaround time can be ten months, a year or more . Director hillis yeah. Our hope is that most of these uses will only require an overthecounter permit, and hopefully kind of given what weve been through in the last couple of months, that overthecounter could also be done remotely. So were hoping with the relaxation of noticing provisions, the relaxation to jump through potentially a c. U. Hoop, those permits that can be issued over the counter, which we believe, then, we can meet the 30day time period. Were going to have to work with other departments, too, and thats going to be a processoriented and management exercise, but i think we can do that. Im encouraged about that ability to do things remotely. Is that an articulated priority for your department, trying to move things online as much as possible . Absolutely. And i think now, there is also the pandemic. We are operating at, you know, 95 capacity in doing it remotely with all phases online. Were working with the Building Department to make sure that what they do and we do, we can smoothly integrate, so theres issues with that. But our hope is that a result of this, what weve done to overhaul our processes, with the permitting Center Opening at 49 south vanness, that we can make improvements to processing time. I would imagine that going online would give you better visibility in turnaround time and more transparency with respect to what process it went through and who worked with it and so on, so that would seem like additional benefits. Do you plan to continue with this . Do you plan to make this the plan Going Forward . Absolutely. We still intend to make Services Available in person, but everything that were doing remotely and online, well want to keep. With respect to director tumlins comments earlier, it certainly seems to whatever extent we can keep people from making unnecessary trips will probably help us with the traffic jams and congestion issues, as well, so every little bit helps. Director hillis absolutely. Commissioner dooley . Hi. I just wanted to say i really appreciate these changes because i know my own business that ive been trying to open, its been 2. 5 years that weve been paying rent, and we finally got our c. U. , and now, we dont even know when d. B. I. Is going to allow us to build out the interior. So, i mean, that was just an enormous financial expenditure of renting the space for 2. 5 years, and its still not open, so please, you know, continue with what youre doing because its been a nightmare. Director hillis yeah. I served on the Planning Commission for years, and often, wed see projects that werent controversial, and there didnt seem a need to go through this process, but it was a process that they had to go through. It didnt seem there was any policy objectives to go through this process, so were working on that, as well. So i know, director, we have a Public Commenter on the line. Were going to allow them to make the comment, and commissioners may have additional comment. I know you have a hard time in 16 minutes, so i want to let the Public Commenter do so. Hi, commissioners. My name is robert stuckman, and i live in lower haight. Im calling in because a couple of weeks ago, i listened to an item at the Planning Commission about an ice cream shop opening across from another. In that hearing, Public Comment flooded in. I counted 61. By the time i finished posting my play by play, by phone was blowing up with notifications. I saw my thread being retweeted by san franciscans, urban planners, even politicians all over the country, and nobody could believe that San Francisco was having a debate over opening an ice cream shop. Tens of thousands of people read through the thread that i was posting, so its my belief that the delay from our planning process is detrimental to the entire city. You know, the delays from this process cost the new ice cream shop tens of thousands of dollars and months of time, which is frankly shopping. After that meeting, one Small Business owner messaged me on twitter saying a Small Business review cost him 200,000 in operating costs caused by the delay. So its clear that our planning process deprives neighborhoods of affordable stores, and its true, the only businesses that can survive is one with investors and deep pockets. So i support every effort to make it easier to open a Small Business. I think the ballot measure is a sensible one. This will help Small Businesses and nonprofits alike and artists, so i am in full support if we can reform the permit process times from seven months to one month. Thank you. Is there any other callers . No other callers . Public comment is closed. I want to add that the ice cream imbroglio mimicked the great falafel fight in that the concerns seemed to stem more from a similar competitor opening the space than any legitimate planning issue at least thats what it looked like from the outside. So i was relieved to see that the ice cream fight was resolved unanimously. As i recall, the falafel fight was a much more narrow win, so i think its good to see progress on this issue. Its way too hard for businesses to get started, and its way to hard for them to do business in the city since i joined this commission 1. 5 years ago. It is great to hear your comments and your attitudes toward this and your commitment towards making it easier for Small Business. I think one thing that this crisis has revealed that maybe wasnt front of mind for a lot of people is the huge contribution that Small Businesses make to our economy and our employment levels. I think we employ roughly 45 of all employees in the city, so it is really important that we make progress on these issues, and i appreciate your efforts there. Is there any other commissioner comments . Okay. Director, thank you so much for your time. We really do appreciate all the work youre doing. We appreciate the update on the ballot measure. We will get the presentations that were given to us today up on our website so that the public can review what progress has been made and what has been done. To you and director tumlin and treasurer cisneros, its been an unbelievably challenging time to have these responsibilities, and i think i can speak for all of us that were deeply grateful and proud of the work that you guys have all done, and all our city leaders, including the board of supes and the mayor, we have a lot to be proud of in the city. So thank you for your service, and thank you for your time today. Director hillis thank you very much, and happy to come back any time. Okay. Great. We look forward to it. So do any of the commissioners on the Economic Recovery Task force want to provide an update on their work with the Economic Recovery Task force . Anything they may have learned or observations . This would be directed at commissioners hui and ortizcartagena as well. I defer to commissioner hui and commissioner or tee catizcart first. Commissioner hui . Theres so much on my mind. Ive been focused on the shared Spaces Program and seeing how we can ave. Out little plaza like areas within our communities and within some of our corridors . Its a little bit slow going just because it does require for everybody to really want for this, but im trying to kind of sell a dream right now, where i think last commission meeting, you really inspired me in terms of talking about how we can reenvision our city, and so i think with those types of conversations, the more that we can have, you know, maybe some tangible mockups and renderings to be able to show m merchants i feel at this point, im pitching a goal to people, but i do feel like the goal, the outcome is going to be beautiful for a lot of our businesses. I think the outcome across the board in general what ive been doing is also the same kind of thing, is really encouraging people, encouraging merchants to really think big and wide and deep and really see, like, what could be. And so i think we have a little bit of a breather, but at the same time, we can think about what we want everything to look like. This time the time, and weve got to do it, so i encourage that of the Merchant Associations, as well, because i think that theyre going to really need to be the ones who do a lot of the legwork in helping people. The other piece that i wanted to say was im also pitching the same dream for Small Businesses. I think we have the opportunity to create some networks and tap into our Small Business networks to provide more services and Consulting Services for our Small Business community, so i think im trying to piece together some sort of im talking to the Economic Recovery Task force to piece something together for legal, accounting, as we move towards even the c. U. And revisions, or as we move towards changes in things, merchants will try to figure out how they can either comply or utilize the new legislation or the new benefit. So i think thats pretty much those two pieces, and then, weve been working on opening up retail, making sure that everybody has their understanding of whats happening, and what else is there . And i did learn a lot in regards to the dental reopening that i think we can use in other sectors. Thats pretty much all i think i can remember at this point. Thank you. Thats fantastic, and i appreciate you sticking up for that vision. Its really going to take everybody echoing that, and its also a callout to the architects and artists and dreamers out there to join that conversation and jump in and help their businesses. Ill tell you, its been sad to see all the boardedup windows, but ill tell you, its a brite spot to see how many of those boarded up windows have been painted and decorated and graphics. It just makes you realize that we have a lot of opportunity here to make our city more magical, and this is a golden opportunity to seize that. Whatever we i think one of the jobs of our commission is to help get that mindset out there to the public and to the Small Business community. Yeah, i think its right to call it a mantra because im going to keep repeating it until its true. Commissioner ortizcartagena, go ahead. I really think the Economic Recovery Task force collects a lot of Important Information outside of meetings. I want to give a shout out to the director of oewd. We want to make sure that theres not unintended consequences and artificial barriers to people of color, so watching everything from an equitable lens has been my mission, but i dont want to hinder anything. Im a fan of this new fresh sense of speed and urgency that the city is partaking in. I love it, but i just want to make sure that theres not unintended consequences. Thats definitely partnering up with city leadership behind the scenes. Weve been doing a lot of work outside of the ertf, but its because ertf puts us in contact with all the key stakeholders. That allows me to go back to my office, set appointments up. I feel like its a voice where the street and the ground people can definitely have their invoices all the way up heard. Thats been great. One of the other things is making sure that theres not artificial barriers for the program. Monolingual and technology. Even though its easy for people that are tech savvy, its harder for people that english is not their first language, so holding their hands when theyre going through the process. Also, making sure that we dont have unintended consequences by speculators. The moratorium, the unintended problem that people did not pay their lease, theres a lot of speculators that can have the opportunity to rush certain neighborhoods like the mission, and we want to make sure that we have the capacity and resources to put that off and offset it, so thats really been my work. Not to slow down anything, because i dont want anything to slow down, i just want to make sure that were looking at it through a cultural and equitable lens. You know, i just want to publicly acknowledge what a leader youve been on this, commissioner ortiz cartagena. Youve had a big impact, and i want to let the other commissioners know, and the public, as well, that after our last meeting, you reached out and followed up with oewd regarding making sure that share spaces was more equitable. As you know, ive we were able to connect, and director torres was, my understanding, wonderful, wonderfully responsive, but that conversation, that was you getting that conversation started, and im grateful for your efforts and advocacy. I think its critical, and a reminder, and its easy for people to forget when theyre worried about their own businesses and their own lives and their own jobs, so thank you so much for being that advocate, and i will back you up every time to the ends of the earth on making sure that space is more equitable. I agree with you on the insurance. I think the city should negotiate some sort of bulk rate on behalf of our residents and businesses that arent able to afford it. The monolingual issue is an issue. We brought it up to director tumlin, and its our efforts of bringing it up that allows it to be addressed. He wasnt aware of it, so that was a nice moment there. The Technology Issue is something that i actually worry a lot about, because as we move so much of our services online, on the one hand, it saves time, it saves energy, it saves space, but on the other hand, you have folks that arent technology so farravvy, just arrived here certainly, i arrived here with nothing but a backpack, and it was several years before i had a savings account, let alone any money to put it in. I think thats something we have to keep a close eye on because thats where our vibrancy as a city is going to come from. For myself, i will echo what you said about ertf. Most of what happens on ertf is outside of the actual meetings. The meetings just primarily update. It just seems like its a platform for people to connect and get together. Its useful and has been a useful platform for triggering and starting a lot of conversations, including our own memo, which was impacting many of our directors. I think this is successful towards its goals, and it has been a useful way to help get information out and help get people talking to each other. Commissioner laguana . Yes. Have you guys talked about the petition to move up the opening of indoor bars by a month at ertf, the one that the mayor signed and scott wiener signed and matt haney talked about . The answer is no. Ertf is as i was kind of starting to explain, our way of communicating with ertf is through platforms. There is not an opportunity, like, to get in a room and have a conversation about these kind of things . Do you know if thats being talked about on subcommittees within the city . Thats what im hearing about, is that bars want to be able to open safely. Well, i know that director dick dickendrizzi has an update for us. Director, do you have any updates for us . Yes, director dickendrizzi. The update that i wanted to get to first is that the mayor did issue an update today, and as ive mentioned in a couple of the previous meetings, our office has been working with the professional service sector, so the mayor sent out an announcement that, of course, this is pending state approval on the variance, that hair salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors, piercing parlors, and bars theres going to be guidelines for bars being able to open up outdoors, in addition to indoor booths and outdoor swimming pools will be able to open on that point, how can we be of service and useful, and what happened if we get to if there was a 15 increase in the last week in the United States, so maybe this is the wrong avenue and place to talk about it, but i just wanted to bring it up. It might be a good idea for us to start figuring out what a contingency plan it for that. And commissioner yakutiel, thats an interesting perspective. So perhaps we might want to bring up before you the department of Public Health because i also, just the engagement that our office has had with the Business Community and working on the guidelines, businesses are very committing to ensuring that they are doing everything that they can, not only to to protect the health of their employees and their customers, so ive thats very encouraging. And so i think as much as we can support the messaging, both as to our businesses and and the city, to our constituents, you know, the better off that we will be on the longterm. Totally. Director dickendrizzi, i totally agree. It might behoove us as a commission and an office to create the same amount of social pressure that there was to fall into line for shelter in place. I feel like it is now on us to prevent a second shutdown in a lot of ways. Not completely, but if we dont want a second shutdown, then we need to make sure that were taking this stuff seriously. I have to report that i was in hayes valley to check it out and go shopping. Let me tell you, you could not go into a shop without getting doused in sanitizer, without people encouraging you to wear a mask. We need to take it upon ourselves to make sure that this stuff is being enforced. Commissioner, i just want to say that this is an appropriate and timely question. Youre not being a kill joy at all. If anything, youre being a joe preserver, in that, you joy preserver, in that in some parts of the country, people think that it is the shutdown that caused the economic problems. We have social distancing and other protocols that are designed to mitigate and reduce transmission. With that being said, ill say that despite governor newsoms order mandating that masks be worn, i have seen i was driving along ocean beach, and i saw crowds of people, many of whom werent Wearing Masks. I saw people not Wearing Masks in other sort of closed settings, and so i do think that youre right. The burden, for better for worse, fairly or not, is going to be on many of our merchants and Small Businesses to enforce this social protocol and to make it standardized, to make it something that everybody adopts, to create that social pressure. We need it, and if we dont get it, were the ones that are going to suffer the consequences. So i really thank you very much, and miriam is putting up her hand to speak. Commission commissioner zouzounis, im sorry. Hi, everybody. Thank you for that presentation and for all the comments. I do agree i guess i wanted to just kind of flag that moving people in the direction that they need to go right now for resources is definitely paramount, and i dont know if anybody else is still experiencing some backlog with you know, where they dont want to necessarily wait until a ballot measure relieves a lot of these backlogs. What is what is kind of the resource that were presenting to business and small Property Owners right now who are waiting on permits or even just scans that are waiting in d. B. I. Or whatnot . Well, it sounded like director hillis was saying many of these changes he could not make without action from policy makers. So i dont know what resource we have other than to educate Small Business owners and encourage them to engage with their supervisors. Perhaps director dickendrizzi, do you have any ideas on that . Yeah. This is director dickendrizzi. So there are some backlogs with d. B. I. S permitting process. My recommendation is because we do have a small group of folks in oewd who are helping to assist with businesses through this process, so commissioner zouzounis, if you know of specific businesses, then i would have them contact us, and we can put them in touch with the folks at oewd to help them getting through this process. I will say, too, just to bolster and add to that [inaudible] i believe we always have the option of issuing a memo or a resolution to the board of supervisors, encouraging them to adopt this bit of this policy idea or introduce legislation around this policy idea. We can really flag it and draw attention to it. Now i want to be judicious around that. I dont want to ignore our suggestions, but, you know, im certainly open to using that tool in our tool chest to raising this as something requiring more action. I think commissioner yakuitel echoed this, and commissioner zouzounis, and i echoed it, as well. Were talking about september, and my goodness, thats a long time away. If we can move faster on some of this, why not. We just want to make sure that we have our ducks in a row in the sense that were advocating for something thats you know, that we do it in a way that helps move it forward, so any other commissioner comments, questions . Hearing none, item is closed. Next item, please. Clerk item 3, approval of draft Meeting Minutes from june 8, 2020. Action item. Commissioners, any questions . Seeing none, any members of the public who would like to make comments on item number 3 . Two members are listening. Nobodys queued up. Okay. Hearing none, Public Comment is closed. Do we have a motion . I make a motion to accept the minutes. Second. Motion by commissioner adams to approve the Meeting Minutes, seconded by commissioner dooley. Roll call vote. [roll call] clerk okay. Motion passes, 60, with one absence. Okay. Next item. Clerk commissioners report. Well ask president , Vice President , and commissioners to announce Small Business activities and items that are of interest to the Small Business community. Action item. Commissioners, do we have any reports . Commissioner dooley . I just wanted to give you an update because we have launched a very successful small Spaces Program in north beach, and first, i want to thank commissioner adams for mentioning about having the Merchant Association provide the insurance which has saved everyone, all the Small Businesses, a huge amount of hassle . And the Business Association paid for 100 barricades to be rented for three months so that we could expand our our shared green spaces into stockton and union now. So the bottom line is its all about your Merchant Association. Get them involved. Weve been down there. We put up the barricades. We pay for what needs to be paid, and that is really the pay to go. Talk to your supervisor directly. North beach has come alive. Yes. It is extraordinary what it has done. It has definitely led the start for the city. I think one thing that im hearing from merchants in other districts is theyre not even aware of the shared Spaces Program, so i think the first half of the battle is just letting people know it exists, and weve got to get the commissioners engaged on this. I was encouraged when director tumlin said they received 385 applications, but i was also i feel like theres no reason that shouldnt be 1,000 plus. So weve we have our work cut out for us. But commissioner dooley, i know youve been an incredible leader on moving that forward, so thank you, and north beach is absolutely leading the way, and i hope we can emulate your success in other parts of the city. I havent seen any of that in my district, district 7, so id like to see more progress there, absolutely, so thank you very much. I was wondering if, perhaps, on our website, we could even i could send photos of north beach and how theyve implemented it, whether that would be helpful to other neighborhood districts to see something up and running or if you know, i dont know if we would be the best spot for that, but i think people need a little inspiration right now. Yeah. I think that would be really welcome, and if were able to pest it on the web side or regulation, a reason we cant, then i would agree, and commissioner adams has pointed out that he has photoes from te castro, as well. Lets do it. Id love to have best case examples of shared spaces. I think this is one of the biggest opportunities thats coming out of this and could be a huge silver lining, so i want to do everything we can to celebrate whats working and help other businesses and other districts see, learn, and observe, especially know when people just arent moving around the city at the same pace that they were. Yeah. This is director dickendrizzi. We can send them as an example in our eblast. I also want to encourage north beach and castro in our district of merchants to also work with the sfcd so they can highlight what different merchant areas are doing, so it helps to support and how youre doing it, so it helps to support those merchant areas that arent as developed as the castro and north beach. So just want to encourage that, as well. I also wanted to give a quick shoutout to c. D. M. May. North beach received a grant from them to help set up our shared spaces, and apparently that is something that is available for members of the cdma. We deeply appreciated getting that, so contact your cdma representative and get that along and get that grant. Commissioner yakutiel, are you trying to Say Something . You look like you may be on mute. Maybe, maybe not. Okay. So any other commissioners reports, updates . Okay. Ill add a couple reports of my own. Over the it has been a busy couple weeks. One of the things that came up last week was dr. Aragon was seeking a variance from the board of supervisors that would give him more flexibility. This is a variance from the state of california, governor newsoms executive order, and this allows dr. Aragon to have more flexibility with opening more businesses sooner, and this is something that will enable San Francisco businesses to get back in business quicker. In order to obtain the variance, we did need unanimous approval from the board of supervisors because the county has to attest that their Health Director will follow certain guidelines with respect to when they open up the accelerated opening. It was not at all clear that we were going to have unanimous approval. There were some questions in some corners about whether the board has sufficient input, you know, whether it was being handled appropriately. I want to commend the two communities that turned out in Public Comment. One would be the tattoo shops, and the other would be the physical fitness studios. You know, it its really, as you guys know, Public Comment can be really impactful when Public Policy makers are making decisions. These two communities, who our office has been working with to help guide them through personal services, we just simply told them that this hearing was coming up and might be relevant to their shops opening. Oh, my gosh, did they turn out. It was 2. 5 hours of Public Comment, and it was extraordinary, and i think it did make a big difference. The variance did pass unanimously, so dr. Aragon did get that flexibility, and that will be helpful in making sure that all our businesses open up quickly and safely. Of course, safety is the top priority here. The other thing i wanted to let the commission know is that we have heard about, at a previous hearing, supervisor mars right to return legislation. One of the amendments, you may recall that theyve increased the threshold from 10 to 75 employees. We pointed out that Small Businesses include 100 employees or less. Ive read one thing that increased that to 100 employees or less. Ive heard that its scheduled and proceeding, but my understanding, as the legislation is currently constructed, it would not impact Small Businesses, and the larger Business Community has has not weighed in. Thats it for me for reports off the top of my head. I know there were other things, but its hard to remember them at the end of a long hearing. Ill do one more call for any commissioner reports. I have one. I dont know if commissioner adams already mentioned this, but if youre to honor pride, we are a group of us, ben davis are illuminating the Pink Triangle where the Pink Triangle is unraveled. For the first time, we are illuminating it so itll be a beacon of pink light goodness. So theyre still raising money to do it. You can help illuminate the Pink Triangle, and i think its going to be something that the city is going to be proud of. I just wanted to take a second on public t. V. To announce that were illuminating the Pink Triangle, and it will serve as a beacon during pride month. Thank you, commissioner yakutiel. Fathers day was quite meaningful to me. As someone you know, i grew up with foster parents, two dads, and they have now been together 35 years, so it was a special fathers day for me, and i look forward too seeing that pink triang triangle illuminated. I like what they did with the bay bridge. Im an exrock star. I like light shows, im all about it. And then, you know, one other thing i wanted to mention briefly is next monday, were having a special hearing about delivery asks and special use. I know its been a long meeting, but today, we had four agency heads, and we were obviously pressed for time fitting them all in, and yet, this legislation has to come before the board, and its a balancing act between do you have people sit for three, four, fivehour meetings like this or do we split this off to a separate meeting, and that seemed like that could safely be split to a separate meeting. It sounds, from what ive been able to ascertain, that the various stakeholders have been doing a good job at talking to each other and working out an agreement that everybody can live with. Im just as time challenged as everybody else. I know what a drag it is to constantly have to be showing up. Those of you that made it, i appreciate it. Those of you that didnt, i completely understand. Its just what we needed to move forward. I appreciate everybodys patience on that. With that being said, are there any members of the public that would like to make comment on item number 3 no, number 4, right . Number 4. Nobodys in the queue currently. Okay. Great. Seeing none, Public Comment closed. Next item, please. Item 4, commissioners reports or item 5. New business. Allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration. Discussion items. Manny, did i miss you before . Did i call you . Im sorry. I see you in the queue here. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was old. Okay. Commissioners, any new business . Okay. I have one item that its an idea i had coming down the pike. I wanted to get your guys feedback on this. This came out of a conversation i had with director josh arce who was telling me how he got sort of engaged with City Government and policy, and he said he was, you know, doing a bit of the activist stuff and sending emails, and then, he was he was advocating for environmental stuff, and he sent an email to a mutual friend of ours, adam wehrbach, who was a commissioner with Public Utilities commission at the time. And adam responded yes and josh said that was the first time that any city official had spoken with him or interacted with him, and it made me think about our power as commissioners and that we are city officials, and we do have this ability to have a big impact and influence on other people who are trying to figure out how to contribute to Public Service. So i had an idea, and i mentioned it to commissioner zouzounis, and she liked it, so im going to mention it to you and get your feedback. What do you guys think of doing a Mentorship Program where, you know, perhaps and of course completely voluntary, no obligation, but perhaps identify somebody, each of us identify someone to, you know show them the world through our eyes, see what its like to, you know, walk them through what were considering when were on a commission. How we view politics, how we view the city agencies and city responsibilities with an eye towards creating that next generation of business leaders, so the next folks that will come behind us and maybe perhaps, as we move onto other stages of our lives i certainly dont intend to be on the Small Business commission the rest of my life perhaps this would enable somebody to join the commission and be able to hit the ground running and really do a better job. So im curious as to what you would all think about that in mentoring folks . I think this is also a way explicitly, through personal work, kind of uphold to that commitment to equity that weve been talking about recently. It would be an opportunity to give folks who otherwise wouldnt have that experience a chance to engage. Commissioner dooley . Ive been doing that for quite a while now, and both for people that approach me, knowing that i am a commissioner, and so i spend time with them, explaining it . And also, there are younger folks that i know through work or whatever that im mentoring in terms of theyre interested in being involved in city hall. For example, this fellow would be a perfect person to be m mentored, and, you know, im all for it. I was imagining i think we all sort of engaged informally, and obviously, i commend you for what youre doing. I love that you have a candidate, i was imagining something maybe a little more formal and public that could be on our website so that they could get some recognition as being engaged in that process, and maybe that might instill a sense of accountability in terms of actually, you know, this is somebody im sorin i sponsoring, and im damn well going to make sure theyre involved because im vouching for them. I dont know what this looks like. Ive never started a Mentorship Program. Ive never participated in one, ive never been mentored by anybody, and i appreciate the support, commissioner dooley, and if anybody if anybody has any objections, let me know. Otherwise, well talk speak with director dickendrizzi and dominica about how we might go about rolling Something Like this out. Commissioner adams . Yeah, i think its a great idea. Ive been doing something similar in the castro when i stepped aside on the board. The thing is, you cant just do it forever, and if you want things to happen and be fresh, you just have to you have to mentor those people because then, theres not any consistency in that, and im a full believer in that. And, you know, im i dont want to embarrass anybody, but i do recall when commissioner zouzounis was elected Vice President , unanimously, i might add, she spoke how she very much valued your mentorship. I also did. Im going to cry. Thank you, commissioner adams. I just want to make sure that were exercising our pull power as a commission our full power as a commission and also making sure that were balancing a bench that can not only replace us but also bolster what were doing right now and get that out to the community. So any ways, that was my can i say one thing . I support this idea, and i think its going to help us work with more commissions. I know ive spoken with youth commissions that are interested in starting a business. Definitely, the immigrants rights, human rights who has built into them the relationship with the office of racial equity, so i think this could be a good move of in all directions. When i came here, i had close to nothing for more than a decade. When you come here, the quip about the first dollar being the hardest dollar to make is absolutely true. I think anything we can do to help people starting out and give them a boost up in finding that next step, im all for it. Its what im here for. Its things like that is what makes me excited about Public Service to begin with. Its why i volunteer on this commission, and i think its in keeping with the Mission Statement, which i think is still being drafted. Director, do we have an update on the Mission Statement . Yes, being that i didnt have the directors report, but yes, the Mission Statement is being drafted. We are targeting for the july 13 meeting. Great. Great. Great, great, great. We may want to, in whatever way is appropriate, check in with the commissioners before the meeting and reflect their input and not just show up with something and tada, here it is. Correct, correct. And if, for any reason, because of escalated on escalated bringing businesses back, that that might delay, then to ensure that process, then the goal would be to finalize it on the 27th. But definitely with the plan of being able to have input from the commission first. Wonderful. Okay. Great. Any other commissioner new business . Okay. Are there any members of the public who would like to make comments on item number 5 . Nobodys currently queued up to ask questions. Thank you. Public comment is closed. Next item, please. Clerk item 6, adjournment. Action item. Do we have a motion . I move. I move. Fast on that one. I know. Ive got to jump on another meeting in, like, two seconds. Seconded. Clerk motion by commissioner dooley to adjourn the meeting, seconded by commissioner laguana. Roll call vote. [roll call] clerk meeting is adjourned at 1 43 p. M. Thank you, everyone. Hi. Im chris manners, and youre watching coping with covid19. Today, im going to be talking about checking with your neighbors. Start off by giving your neighbor a call to see how they are or if they need help. If they dont answer, dont get anxious. Try again later. Check to see if their car is parked nearby. Are they lights being turned on and off during normal hours . If you still cant contact them, contact your other neighbors and see if theyve had contact with them recently. You can also leave a note in their mailbox, and when you do get in touch with them, ask if theyd like to share their Emergency Contact information. If youre getting groceries for a neighbor, get a mask and sanitizing wipe. Put the groceries by the front door and then move back and call them from the sidewalk. If you need to ring the doorbell, dont use your hand. Use the wipe or paper towel that you brought. When you call, stay on the sidewalk at least 6 feet away from them. As youre talking to them, ask about any other help they might need. Some might need further assistance with groceries or just need to chat. Maybe they might need you to pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy. And as always, as soon as you get home, wash your hands. Heres a quick recap. Well, thats it for this episode. I hope you found it useful. Go to sfgov for hi, im chris manus is sfgov tv and youre watching coping with covid19. Today im going to the gas station. [music playing] now, these are just my stories. Im not a medical professional of any kind. Im a video guy. And the reason im getting gas so we can go to the doctors. If you want to get the most uptodate and definitive information about the coronavirus pandemic, i highly recommend the f. A. Q. That is available at sfgov. Theres great info there. Today im taking two plastic bags and a hair tie and following the new bay area guidelines and im wearing a mask. Im taking the smallest number of items with me. Just my car key, credit card, i. D. , the bags and the hair tie. I dont want too many items to wipe down later. As aleave, i put on the outside shoes ive left on the porch. Can i track the virus inside with my shoes . I honestly dont know. But my floors are cleaner now. When i get to the gas station, i get out of the car, remove the gas cap and put the big plastic bag on my right hand and secure it with a hair tie. There are three main share surfaces here im concerned about touching. The p. I. N. Pad, the pump handle and the button to select my gas. After i use my card, i put it into the smaller bag and stash it. Most gas stations have a paper towel dispenser or maybe there is a piece of paper already in your car that you can use. Once i fill my tank and replace the pump, i walk to the trash can, roll the hair tie up my arm and let the plastic bag fall into the can. On my drive home, im careful not to touch my face. I leave my outside shoes on the porch and as soon as i get through the door, i wash my hands for at least 20 seconds. Next i wipe down my credit card, i. D. And my car key and, as an extra precaution, i wipe down the front door nob and clean the sink taps. Finally, wash my hands again. Thats it for this episode, i hope you found it helpful. Thank you for watching. Light f streets illuminating our ideas and values starting in 2016 the San Francisco Public Utilities commission is xhoefl that light with new led with the did i audits for better light for streets and pedestrian and theyre even better for this vitally lasting longer and consuming up to 50 Percent Less Energy upgrading takes thirty minutes remove the old street light and repeat 18 thousand 5 hundred times while our street lights will be improving the clean energy will remain the same every San Francisco street light is powder by 100 percent godfathers hetch hetchy power in one simple word serious as day turns the meeting will come to order. This is june 24, 2020. Rescheduled budget and finance committee meeting. Im sandra lee fewer, chair of the finance and budget committee. Im joined by Committee Members supervisor walton and mandelman. Our clerk is sandra wong. I would like to thank sfgovtv for broadcasting this meeting