Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240712

You call in before comment is called, youll be added to the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, please mute the device youre listening to the meeting on. When yothe meeting is limited te minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presenting officer of the meeting and when your time is up, youll hear an alarm sound. Speaker are requested but not required to state your names. Please show the small office of business slide. Today we will start with a reminder that the Small Business commission is a public forum to voice your concerns about policies that affect the economic vitalities and Small Businesses in San Francisco. Our services are completely free of charge and before item one is called, i would like to thank Media Services and sf gov tv and a special thanks to jim smith for moderating or Public Comment line. Item 1, call to order and role call. role call . Mr. President , you have a quorum. Wait withi, you didnt call. [ laughter ] please call item number 2, board of supervisors number 200785 and the existing Building Code, mandatory earthquake retrofit and ordinance amend beg Building Code to the completion of work for tier 4, woodframe buildings to september 15th, 2021. Discussion and actual item, the presenter is tom temrano and legislative aid, mandelman and john martin for the department of building inspection and he will be available to answer questions. Great, welcome, tom, and good to see you again. Welcome, john, and thank you for making yourselves available to present. You have the floor. Thank you so much for having us. Hello, commissioners. Its going to be way you to speak about supervisor mandelmans ordinance. This is to september 15, 2021. 2021. Pair. Sounded like somebody was doing seismic retrofitting. Thats good. So this legislation will allow additional time for Property Owners to complete re retrofit construction on a timeline reduces disruption to our beleaguered and struggling Small Businesses. The re retrofit programme was established in 2013 to establish the resilience of the housing stock. Tier 4 buildings, the final tier to be completed have groundfloor commercial space with residential units above and the current deadline for completion of work on these buildings is september 15th, 2020. And the 1,014 tier4 properties in 2013 are estimated to hold approximately 2,028 businesses. Of these properties, 415 or 41 still need to complete their retrofit work and prior to covid19, Small Businesses in district 8 reached out to our office concerned about a city mandated closure of three to six months to force them to permanently close and a 2020 study looked at 180 tierfour commercial spaces in districts 1, 2 and 5 that were retrofitted prior to the end of 2015. There was a turnover through the course of the retrofit work and now as businesses have begun to reopen, many are asked to shut down yet again to aside the retrofit work as they are trying to establish manyneeded sales and many businesses cannot and will not come back from a second closure. We agree that seismic retrofit work and essential and urgent but the reality is that businesses is Property Owners alike have asked for and need more time. But extending the deadline to september 15, 2021, we are allowing additional time for this work to be completed in the hope that such work can be completed at a time that is least disruptive and costly for the business. Some businesses that are still shut, that time could be now and work could proceed over the next few months. For others, that mean work could occur at a later date. Commissioners, this legislation likely seems familiar to you because in may, the Small Business commission submitted recommendations to the task force. Thank you for the recommendation dance to help Small Businesses help rebuild and recover during and after the pandemic and this is a fun commission, welldone. And one of your recommendations was to extend the tier 4 deadline. So i would like to thank you, commissioners, for your leadership in pushing this important proposal forward and i would like to acknowledge all of the work that the office of Small Business and, in particulato move thisconversati. Thank you. I would also like to thank john murray of the building inspection who is here today to answer any questions for all that he and his office have done in bringing this legislation to you today and, again, commissioners, youre pretty familiar with this since it came out of your recommendations, but im here to answer my questions you might have, as is john from dbi. Thank you, tom, and certainly this is welcomed news. Speaking for myself. Commissioners, do we have any questions . And ill just remind the commissioners that we are reserving discussion until after Public Comment so this portion is just any questions. Are there any questions . Somebody can jump in and correct me if im wrong. With that, well go to Public Comment. Any Public Comment on the line. Nobody has queued up. Actually, i do have one question, commissioner. Go ahead. I love the speed with which youre moving this commission, its great. The one thing i heard from Small Business owners when we went out there and talked to people about, you know, this particular issue of softstory retrofit was, oftentimes, the Building Owner and notified from the city that a softstory retrofit is required, but theres no requirement from the city that the Property Owner alert the tenant at a certain time with a certain amount of, you know, advanced notice. There was some tenants that we spoke to who were told, you know, kind of at the last minute this a softstory retrofit was coming and some were notified a retrofit would come at some point in the next year, leaving them in a state of kind of constant worry. Im thinking specifically of the burnell cutlery, where a softstory retrofit was held over their head for a long time and Small Businesses like the stone pot on 18th and deloris which is told it would have to go through a softstory retrofit with less than 30days notice. Is there any requirement that they let their tenants know in a certain amount of time that a retrofit was coming. That is not a part of this legislation for expediency sake, because the deadline is coming so quickly, our biggest priority was moving the deadline to allow for an extension of time for that negotiation to happen and certainly, the message we have been putting out publically and will continue to put out and have spoken to the Apartments Association and other stakeholders about is that this extension is intended specifically so that Property Owners will communicate with their commercial tenants thats least disruptive and in terms the managing, w messaging, we ht out to our stakeholder groups but there is not a requirement of noticing in this particular piece of legislation. Ok, and then the second question is, how is the city noticing Property Owners that a softstory retrofit is required . Is it through snailmail, email, how are we communicating to these Property Owners . We send them mail notice and we do not email. We generally do things through snail mail when its a large group of Property Owners, just because we dont necessarily have emails for Property Owners. We have to go threw the data generally. And so thats interesting, so the assessor doesnt collect anything beyond the smallmail address. Snailmail address . I can doublecheck that, but i dont believe thats the case. It seems to be up in the air whether well have a Postal Service in the next year and it might be good thinking to start thinking of other means that we can communicate to Property Owners that are more safe and foolproof. You know, speaking of somebody thats a Property Owner, our business owns property in multiple states and i can just tell you that snail mail is not great as a modification mechanism. After the time, commissioner, i get the mail for everyone on my block street sometimes and i dont think should be the only way to communicate. I often get the other tenants mail and more often than not, they get mine. Ive been dealing with this softstory retrofit and dbi publishes a list on its website, or they did awhile ago, that listed every building, commercial and residential that needed this. Thats true, yes. Certainly, theres a Public Outreach aspect to this, but in terms of the direct notification of building own thats we know are subject to this, that would be understandable. We, of course, have email mailing lists, newsletters and all that good stuff, but in terms of the actual specific interaction or notification to affected Property Owners, it would go through snail mail. Do we know there are other touch points between the city and other Property Owners, like the unified licensed portal or the Treasurers Office that are communicating to Property Owners through means other than snail mail that we could kind of jump on . Do we get a regular email from the city on taxes owed or Something Like that . I do not know that. Based on this, we have legislation in front of us right now that is about extending the deadline. Reading between the lines and, tom, you can correct me if im wrong, theres a tight schedule here and, you know, i guess, commissioner yukeidio, i would say the question before is are your questions geared towards wanting to make an amendment to the legislation and i would want to have an understanding. No, i fully support this legislation. My questions are tr trying to te advantage of the bbi and the esteemed officer of the supervisors in front of us and that we utilize this opportunity now but i fully support this leg. Legislation. I fully support what youre trying to do and i will amplify and suggest to tom that he take back to supervisor mandelman that may be wellreceived. One might be all tenants receive notice with respect to any planned obviously, were now pushing this off for awhile so its not an youre emergency. But when we opened softstory retrofit again especially coming into a recovery and so many people will be hanging on by a thread, lets make sure that when the softstory retrofits do happen, web dont pull defeat from the jobs of victory by well, you get my point there. And then, the second thing would be, i think, the city and this is something that ive advocated for in other inconvenient knewsvenuesand mann some form or another, but our communication with Small Businesses needs to be modernized. Snail mail is not cutting it and in this day and age, we have text and we have Elizabeth May and both of those, particularly for something as soft softstory retrofit, i think texting would be appropriate. But if people dont want to opt into that basically, people should be able to choose the modality that best works for them. If its snail mail, sobeit, but we should empower all city agencies to communicate and we should think about, maybe, is there a macro approach to communication with Small Business, you know. In software we have apis so when we switch from one payment processer to another, we dont have to reinvent the entire Software Stack from top to bottom. We have inputs and outputs and, perhaps, city agencies could be inputs and outputs dealing with Small Business so that communication can happen in a streamline fashion. Do very t we have to doublechen Public Comment again. We do not. And through the president , may i just make one comment . Is that absence of the communication structure that you are talking about, my understanding, and john, you can correct me, that once this legislation passes, dbi will be notifying the remaining properties, the 415 that are still subject to complete their softstory. And, perhaps, this could be something that is explored with the Supervisors Office and dbi is sending out a joint message through that letter about, at least doing the right thing and doing early notification. I do know from our experience here at osb, is when our number was a part of the department and Building Inspections males for, Property Owners did read their notifications and we did receive a good number of calls. And so, it is one that Property Owners do Pay Attention to notifications that do come from dbi. Sounds like Property Owners to me. [ laughter ] excellent comments, director. And thank you, commissioners for your comments and feedback. I think thats helpful. Do we have a motion . I would like to make a motion to officially support the legislation presented before us today, to delay the completion of softstory retrofit. Ill second. Great. role call . Motions passes 70. Item 3, board of stoop discovers 200760, the emergency ordinance, temporary waiver of Business Registration for Small Businesses due to covid19 pandemic. Is supervisor mar able to join . Eel bhell unable to join, bt ill be here. Thank you to tom and john from the previous item. We appreciate you coming and presents. So thank you. And we know this is one less stressor between opening and being shut. Small businesses are suffering and we are choosing to eliminate one of those barriers and invest in Small Business community and the workers they employ and encourage them to keep going despite challenges. Supervisor mar and our team is proud to be working with the Small Businesses. indiscernible . The sf chamber of commerce, the sf Council District merchants and president l absoluteaguana,thank you for bro the able. As we open our economy safely, this emergency legislation is just one we have to invest in our Small Businesses and to help them follow low through. Thank you. Commissioners, any questions . Go ahead, william. Commissioner ortizcartagena, please. I have a quick question, what if the Small Business does not open . indiscernible . I didnt quite get the question, but it is ret toe rete and the office will refund that particular Small Business, if that is the question. You got it. That was the question, thank you. Deteriorategreat, commission. Thank you, this is great legislation and thank you president laguana and everybody involved. This is a team effort on everybodys behalf and this is something thats really, really needed right now in this town. Thats it. Thank you. Commissioner dooley. Hi, i wanted to thank you for this also. Ive been dealing with hair salons and theyve received absolutely no relief in any way and theyre pretty upset about it. And so thank you for that. And i also wanted to ask, does this apply toe to new businesses that are opening this year or is this only for people t who were open only during the coronavirus . It was last fiscal year, so january to june 30th. Thank you. Great, any other commissioner questions . Commissioner ye connectiokutiel. Thank you to daisy and supervisor mars office. Its important and necessary and i think it says a lot about San Francisco that in the middle of what will be one of the toughest budget crisis of our financial history, the city is taking the bold step to provide relief to Small Businesses, who doing what the city is asking them to do dutifully and responsibly and arguably are also losing their livelihoods and facing closure. Over 400 restaurants have publically its been publically known that 400 400 restaurants are publically closed in the bay area and this will only continue and this legislation is a deteriorate stegreat steptowards providing. I know the commission and the office, how San Francisco can beesesbethe easiest place to doo reenergize or Business Community. We have a community now as we look at fees and registrations, permitting and the College Degree that it takes to actually navigate the process to open up a Small Business in sanfrancisco and im looking forward to this being a jumpoff point and working with your office to make it happen. Thank you, commissioner yekut irk el anyekutiel. I think this is an entirely attainable goal with how many smart and wonderful people work here. We should be able to manage that. Daisy, issue have a clutch questiona couple ofquestions fo. But any commissioner questions before i continue . So obviously, i know a bit of the backstory and ive been working with your office to try to move this legislation forward and i guess some of my questions are going to be directed at, i guess addressing some of the concerns that we know are out there, mainly that the city is looking at a 1. 5 billion shortfall in their budgets and so, naturally, i think theres some fairminded concern about what the city can afford to do and what it should be doing and how it should be allocating its resources. And so, i guess, the first question is, at the one Million Dollars threshold, do we have a sense of how many businesses this legislation will impact . Yeah, so, you know, we got preliminary figures from our budget and legislative analysts. Of course, its very difficult to determine how many businesses will be operating this year and then also determining how many are actually essential businesses. The figure that i have im trying to remember but i believe it was 12,000 businesses and in the tens of thousands for sure and we cant determine how many are still operating this year. So a substantial number, i think we can safely say, and our Commission Secretary is informing me its in the legislative review that she sent out. And so if one of the commissioners wants to look that up, that would be great. But im take 12,000 for now as just an proximate number. And then, do we have a sense of how many businesses lie in the zonzones between one million and 2. 5 million . So i dont have a particular figure, but i recall its in the three thousand, between 1 and 2. 5 million. Im not sure. Staff will confirm that. Thats the number i recall, as well. So well stipulate somewhere in the neighborhood to three to 4,000 for the purposes of this conversation. Now, that 12,000, is that in an attempt to determine how many of them are essential or is that just all registrations that are under one million in gros gross receipts. Its 13 to 20,000 businesses and that is specific to who would be eligible and that would be the nonessential businesses and the restaurant businesses. Our legislative analysts had to make the best guests on Industry Data what would be included and not included. Its an imperfect science because we dont have all of the granular details that would nice to have in a situation like this. And the controller and, again, as just a general reminder to the conversation, all of this data is pre covid data, correct . We can extra late based on employment numbers and the most recent newspapers i have, director want was it 140 or 160 . I think it was 140,000 or 160,000, if i recall. It is right in there and im pulling up the data an. While im asking that question, or while youre looking that up, do you happen to recall how many employees the typical Small Business employs or to we know that . Based upon the 2019 Business Registration data, by our definition, under 100 employees, 80 of businesses employ ten or less employees. And so that number is those businesses that employ ten or fewer was 41,000, a little over 41,000 from the 2019 data. And so, the rough median is ten employees per business. Thats the median number or the average. Yeah. Right. And we know Small Business employs roughly 40 , give or take, of all workers in San Francisco . I would say, yes, yes. Miss zouzounis is nodding her head. But if we, say, roughly 12,000 well, were guessing 13 to 20 but if we have 12,000 businesses and weve lost 130,000 jobs, thats going to be, roughly, 60,000 employees, six thousand businesses and i think its safe to say weve lost half of Small Business, is where im headed. And that seems to also jive with information were receiving from Golden Gate Restaurant Association and, i think, ultimately, the impact on Small Business, the number im working with right now, i think thats probably most relevant, looking at a failure of closure approaching 50 . Let me tell you where im headed with this. So has the controller given you a budget impact of the proposed legislation at one million . And so, our preliminary office comes from our budget office, not the Controllers Office and their estimate on the lowend and the foregone waivers at 5. 1 million. Now, that assumes that 100 of 2019 businesses are paying their Business Registration and license fees for 2020. And so, we can assume that if were going with the estimate of 50 closure rate, then we can assume its 50 of 5. 1. We dont know. We dont have that data. So 2. 5 million to keep some of the most do our best to keep some of the most vulnerable businesses afloat. And if were talkin talking some between six and eight thousand businesses, we can extrapolate thats 60 to 80,000 jobs that are being protected or helped being protected. And so i guess where im headed with all of this is two things. One, i know theres a concern at the city level, as i mentioned, understandable concern about the impact on the budget but the amount of money were talking about is relatively small and the amount of benefit in a Small Business community is substantial and more importantly, and i think whats really critical and important for all of our friends at the board of supervisors to understand, were not just talking about Small Business owners but all of the o people they employ, as well. But it seems to me while legislation like this wont be determine thattive in whether or not a business survives,ed one o, itsone of the many cuts s a thousand cuts thats attacking businesses, this is one of them in aggregate and something we can do to help. As we move from one million to 2. 5 million, is there a corresponding 150 increase in fee and license revenue, or is that, basically, fairly static up to the 2. 5 million threshold . Do you have a sense of that . Can you clarify that question . Sure, so the license and registration fees that a business with one million in revenue pays, like, whatever name is, let say its a thousand dollars, does the business with 2. 5 million in revenue, is that basically stat nick. Thats information i dont have. We did look at budget impacts at the 2. 5 million level. And what was that aggregate impact . My recollection was that it was around 8 million at the low end, at the 2. 5 million level. And so it was from that original 5. 1 figure of 4. 9 im sorry, 2. 9 million increase to gain an additional three to four thousand businesses . Yes. And so, if we are, again, applying the 50 math, its an additional one, one i and a half Million Dollars to save three or four thousand businesses which i think we can hypothesize that businesses that are north of one million are more likely to employ more people. And so, were really talking about more jobs here, which im deeply worried about as we start to struggle with food security, housing security, people out of work for a long time and the reluctance of the federal government to extend federal unemployment. So i guess this is where im headed with this. And the question ill pause it to my colleagues on the commission, i think so, first of all, daisy, the legislation has my support, obviously, and clearly and the commission will, i think, after Public Comment have a discussion about that, but as we enter into Public Comment, what i would ask my commissioners to consider is whether we should consider recommending that the threshold be raised to 2. 5 million because i know of so many businesses that are above one million in revenue and are not necessarily doing great. They werent doing great beforehand and certainly not doing great now and still very much Small Businesses in every seps of the word. Sense of the word. And then, two, if we do make that recommendation, whether the fees should be waived or whether, perhaps, penalties should be waived, which is, you know, basically amounting to a deferral. And whether that would be helpful in the context of this legislation to be more inclusive, capture more businesses that are employing more people and to help the workers in the city. So thats my thought. But i guess well save that for after Public Comment because that wont be. Before i go to Public Comment, are there any other commissioner questions or comments . Seeing none, any Public Comment today . Nobody has queued up. Great. Ok. Sorry, Somebody Just raised their hand. Wonderful. Ill put them through. Have thank you. Operator you have zero questions remaining. I guess they dropped out, sorry. Ok. If they show up, let me know. Maybe well give them ten seconds. They did come back. Ill put them on. Perfect. Operator you have one question remaining. You have the floor, please. Good morning, almost noon, commissioner and this is amelia from the San Francisco chamber of commerce and i wanted to call in with thing support for this piece of legislation. I think it goes without saying that you all clearly identified this is a great step in the right direction for Small Businesses in San Francisco and not only Small Businesses, but the ones we count on to keep our neighborhoods vibrant and some of the most vulnerable who are not always supported by other programmeprograms available. Theres room for expansion but its a great step in the right direction and even though, issue would say, potential in the big picture of things, small impact to the San Francisco city budget, it is a great investment and i think its more about protecting Small Businesses and those future revenues rather than counting on current revenues that will likely push more and more of us out of San Francisco. So great step in the right direction and i really appreciate supervisor mars office along with the cosponsorship from stefanis office for picking this up and carrying it forward. Operator you have zero questions remaining. Thank you. Seeing no Public Comment, Public Comment is closed. I make a motion we support this legislation and recommend it be expanded to a 2. 5 million threshold with either penalties waived on late payment from a budgeting perspective, the delta between this is a formulated motion. Sorry, let me rewind. Im make a motion we support the legislation and recommend increasing the threshold to 2. 5 million. Second. A modification to increase the threshold to 2. 5 million. Seconded by commissioner dooley. Role call vote. Pair pi. role call . Motion passes 70. So just as a point of order here or from my information, when we make a recommendation, i still want to communicate that we support the legislation regardless. Iin how i form formulated the m, is that conveyed . It is, great. We support the legislation either way but we would love it even more. I think your motion was very clear it is not conditional. Great. Thank you, daisy, for coming and presenting to us. We appreciate your time and we appreciate the supervisors efforts here and were very pleased to support it and you, obviously, have our unanimous vote of approval. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, daisy. Thank you, everybody from supervisor mars office. Presentation, update and support on the sharedSpaces Program, the discussion item, the presenter is robin abad with the appling department. Great. Welcome, ron bin. Robin. I know you have a hard stop at 1 00, but were making good time today and looks like we have plenty of time. So with that, you have the floor. He seems to be still signing on. Ok. Did supervisor mars legislation to go through pass . Yes. We cant talk about this. Sorry. You can ask me that question under directors report. Sorry, yes. Brain fart, apologies. Totally fine. Robin is here so we can continue. I see we have robin here to save the day and keep us from going offtrack. So welcome, robin. Did we just lose him . No, im here. Im about to share my screen and i think it shuts my camera off, but hello president laguana and commissioners. Its good to be here and report back on the status of shared spaces and respond specifically to the points that you provided in your resolution and passed on july 13th. And so, i have a short presentation and then after that, maybe we can take questions and discussion, if thats ok with the chair. That sounds wonderful and perfect, thank you, please proceed. So let chair the screelets. Theres a little bit of a note on our plans to scale up and, then, the bulk of the presentation will focus on an analysis, or at least the preliminary analysis in 2020002 you passed on the 13th. And so, you know, were up over 200 applications in the short interval we were last with you and weve gotten over a thousand applications in the pipeline. About a quarter of those are, you know, awaiting additional documentation from the project sponsor and so these are, you know, things like certificates of insurance and small per permission from your neighborhood to occupy the space directly in front of their frontage, for example. But you can see that roadway, applications are growing, wedges up high and these are project types like what weve seen on grant seen in chinatown for the last two weeks and saw on upper valencia street in the first weekend, this past weekend, closure curbtocurb and other street segments to allow for physically distanced dining and merchandizing. Were achieving that scale to allow multiple businesses to share the space and, so, those, i think, the stories coming out of those projects are heartening because it demonstrates the community and the support that Small Businesses are giving one another in their commercial corridors, you know, really partnering and forming up these shared arrangements to bring the larger projects to fruition. And so even more in the pipeline, some things to note in that roadway column where it says denied, you know, that might seem like its a flatout denial but frequently, we get an application for a road closure and steph will do analysis and well find it makes sense to do something simpler like an extended curbside shared pace, for example. Curbside shared space. So i dont see that as a failure, but we have helped communities find other positions that are lower in complexity, but still just as high in terms of impact. We also mentioned last night, and i wanted to reiterate in addition to roadway closures, physical scale is really important. And so, were working with the Mayors Office, the Planning Department, Zoning Administrator to make sure there are parks lots in areas of private property, which are, of course, regulated by the Planning Department in our land use charter authority. And so, there are other opportunities to do this, as well, on city opportunity, sfmt auyuittuq nationaauyuittuq nat l parkinauyuittuq nationalauyuitae sharedSpaces Program has an equity strategy that has influenced the design and implementation moving forward. And so that will relate back to, again, your resolution. And so, with that, we have identified the pitch point in terms of process and regulatory requirements and you observed, identified a lot of these yourselves in the resolution that you passed and were analyzing where we can streamline even further, the process, and at different places, both within the city and within our Nongovernmental Organization and partners, investigating where we can increase capacity to open up the bottlenecks. Theres always discussion about reducing requirements and thats ongoing. And, then, importantly, we want to make shared spaces a sustainable program, right, its something that was conceived and implemented during this time of acute crisis, but theres broad recognition that its an important thing to have an Outdoor Dining program, a more robust one than before and its probably a good thing for or city in the longterm. How do we make this sustained beyond the calendar year, through economic recovery and future . Ill pause here and are there any questions before we get into the point by point analysis from your resolution. Thank you, robin. I did have two questions. Any commissioners have questions, type your name in and i guess the first question is, i did not see on the slides was a breakdown by district on where the new applications are coming from. Are we having any success in increasing the number of sorry, i must have missed that part. Sorry. Let me rephrase that question. With the new applications coming in, are we seeing any increase in districts that do not have a lot of shared spaces applications, such as d10, d11, d1, which should have more relative to the amount of spaces there. In other words, is any of this equity work having an impact yet . Ill stop there and let you go with that . Thank you for that question, president l asaguana. Its an important one. The efforts are sitting up and getting underway. Were only a week or so into those and i havent performed the Trend Analysis yet, but i dont think that we are seeing districtspecific increases yet, but thats an important thing ill take back to our team to see if we can do more analysis on. I mean, even just looking at the geographic distribution here, we know where we need to provide the resources and outreach. And that is underway. This is one of the ones you make in your resolution which we detailed later. What might be helpful is number of applications received and number of applications approved by district so that we could generate a time series and evaluate our performance at a district level. I just think these districts that were talking about, particularly d10 and d11, we can make a good case for d6, as well and they really need that extra legwork and extra help and they would probably benefit more from this than anybody. And so, the first part of addressing a problem is measuring the problem to see how much progress were making and so, that would be helpful. Commissioner rotizcartagena. Thank you, president laguana. I echo what you just said, as well. I have been getting a lot of feedback. indiscernible . Commissioner cartagena, if you want to type it out and ill check back to you. Commissioner yekutiel, please. Thank you. And my question is about the road closure application and the 12 that were approved, could you have a sense of what the geographic distributions were and the 45 denied, what was the geographic distribution of no . Those so we can see where theyre coming and denied. I do not know the locations of all 12. In all honest city, valencia, chinatown, north beach, some in soma and certainly in terms of the denials, i also dont have a full picture on specifically where those were. I can get back to the commission because thats a great question. Thank you. And i guess i should check in with ortizcartagena. Do you feel you have a good connection now or typing a question . I leave it at your option . Option. Hopefully we get one or the other. A bit about the denials, so i think the refrain youre hearing from several of us, we would like to see district breakdowns so we can track performance. And, also, i want to celebrate your successes here, which are just extraordinary. I had the opportunity to walk down valencia street and it was every bit the Magical Experience i was hoping for and ive since seen a video of people on unicycles, playing violinses and all kinds of kids out there and this just seems like a really great direction for the city to be headed and sighting new chapter and i want to see this replicated throughout the city wherever we can. So one thing that came up for me, you mentioned that the 45 denials, you thought they were curbside was more appropriate and i wanted to convey something that a mem of the public discussed with me over the past two weeks, was a sense that some commercial districts, specifically the mission and the excelsior and d7, that these were denied because of hightraffic speed and because of the hightraffic speed, people didnt want to take advantage of the partlet approach, the parking space approach. And so, first of all, with rest to the denials, is traffic speed a consideration . Number one. Number two, is there a possibility here that we are maybe at this pointe tilted a ly from closure when we should be experimenting with closure on busier thoroughfares . Does this member of the public have the right sense of it . Is that why people arent moving forward . Is that in the outlying districts, is that its been the only commercial activity is happening on high speed ar tea l roads and they cant close roads because its high speed expect sidewalks arent much bigger than sidewalks anywhere else and theyre just locked out . Does that sound right to you . If it does, what do you think we can do about it. Yes. So, you know, there are several factors having to do with traffic and transportation to consider. Speed is one and, for example, parklets, the cities without preexisting parklet programs, its generally encouraged on streets that have a speed limit of 25 Miles Per Hour or less. And thats generally where all of the parklets have appeared on streets with that speed limit and there might have been, you know, a handful of exceptions to that rule, but we replicated that and trans pose transposed. Youre putting people in the roadway and health and human safety is our number one priority. Where specific applications may have come in have been rerouted, i dont have that resolution of the gran us granularity of data. I should have mentioned with roadway closures, that we have to balance economic recovery with Public Transit and transportation needs. And so, in general, neighborhood commercial districts do have buses and transit lin lines rung through them. In cases where there is a bus line running down the street or a charlie plus or lighttrail, we find solutions to close the entire roadway because that would cause disruption to muni, and we have to help people get arent city and that translating into a parking lane project could have been motivated by. So there are a number of things and every neighborhood has its own considerations. Every road has different dimensions, as well, and part of the reason these projects are more complex because there are a lot more sites specific and neighborhood specifics and a lot more outreach is conducted. An. Let me ask you one more follp question and ill call commissioner cartagena. Who sets traffic speeds . Is that smfta or who sets traffic speeds in the city . That is the sfmta and for most of our streets and i believe caltrans on 19t 19th avenue and i can verify that for the commission. Great. So, perhaps, in certain cases, if we lowered speeds to 25 Miles Per Hour, we could then potentially open up more space for shared spaces, hop hypothetically speaking . Hypothetically speaking, yes. I dont know what streets are over 25 Miles Per Hour. Certainly in the commercial districts and residential streets, always in that threshold, i believe. And so i think we would have to look at where, you know, streets are actually over 25 Miles Per Hour. Im not certain about how much of the city that actually is. But, you know, getting back to the larger point, i dont think that guideline is the restricting factor. Got it. Thats kind of what im driving at. Whats the determinating whats the biggest contributor to the problem here . And im sorry here, commissioner ortizcartagena and dooley is waiting. Commissioner cartagena. Thank you. Robin, my question was addressd with what president laguana, with the equity and past equity creating the additional bus stops where our businesses cant participate in the sharedSpace Program because of prior implementations or transit policy expose, again. Again, we need to review that because this is a new day and i would like sfmta to take a hard look at traffic speeds, bus stops and definitely the mission rail line. Thats something we will push for, especially now that the transit ridership is not there as it was once and businesses need to thrive, especially in our business corridors and thats why its important to get that out that president laguana was asking for and suggested. I wanted to know, like, how willing and open is sfmta to change things like this . Thank you, commissioner. You know, well definitely take this back to our inneragency team, and especially the sfmta. I cant obviously speak for the agency and the mirro longterm Transportation Planning that they do, having to change revenue service, et cetera, and to provide service well as revenues dont appear to be anywhere near where they were, with the economy shutting down and, you know, i can appreciate that its a tough balance in the rightofway to provide for Public Transit as well as meet needs of neighborhoods along the way of that transit route. The reality is that a lot of our munibus riders, especially on mission buses are workingclass folks who rely on transit to get the jobs they have access to and pre covid relied on those buses in order to Access Services in their neighborhoods and adjacent neighborhood. And so i completely appreciate that its a very complex balance and a delicate one. With regard to i think there was a suggestion to remove or temporarilily suspend some bus stops and i think thats definitely a question for the Transportation Agency to look at. The Mission Corridor between debose and caesar shavaz, valencia did receive red lanes and i believe that the stops were actually consolidated. There were many more before and they were consolidated and there were fewer. And my understanding is that there are fewer stops now than before the transit enhancement project. I think what youre calling out right now, the economic recovery taking increasing precedence and its foremost in our all of our concerns. And so well take this point back to the sfmta and see what they say about bus lines and the mission. Great. Thank you. Commissioner dooley. Yes. I had a question about when folks are applying for closing streets, how much information upfront are they getting about the requirements . Im just curious how much theyre receiving when they apply to have a closed street . For example, a number of folks in north beach have lobbied for closing, a street that is not wide enough. And are all of those kind of things put on the application . You know, just so that folks know what they can or cant could and what we can move forward on . Thank you, commissioner dooley. Thats a great question. Yes, so there are guidelines on the application that outline the performance criteria and operating parameters, the ideal ones so that applicants can consider those as there may be putting an application together for a hour for their street and now, that guidance is continually updated. You know, this is an Experimental Program and so as we learn more from many pilots, valencia and grant being stop kebeing somekey examples, we cae guidelines and benefit from the lessons learned. And so, the website and the documentation, the guidance continues to be the best place to start from. And now roadway closures are, as i mentioned earlier, theyre much more complex and every neighborhood is different and we cant anticipate all of the issues each time and we should expect that with each roadway closure, theres some sitespecific analysis and development that needs to happen to make it feasible. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner huie. Thank you very much. And i wanted to ask about i think right before we started going spot questions, you had one more slide at the end and i wasnt sure if you had finish. There was one point on that slide that wanted to address. Was it, perhaps, this one, the Sustainability Strategy . No, it was about signage, about having kind of consistent signage. Oh, yes, this was the first slide in this series addressing the points in your resolution. Ok. Perfect, thank you. I was able to go out this weekend and take a look at some of the shared spaces and actually, like, partake in that outdoor space. And so im excited that i got out of the house. So thank you very much for creating this program so that i could finally kind of leave my home. And i had a couple of comments and maybe there are questions, as well. But one, is it possible, because i noticed that there were some situations where there are just a lot of people outside unmasked and in very close kind of social quarters and there were a couple of situations that i witnessed where Business Owners had to come out and actually let people know, hey, i really need you guys to wear a mask. If youre not eating or drinking right now, i need you to wear a mask. And the person kind of felt super helpless. And as another person out, i just didnt quite know what to do about that. And i kind of feel like, you know ive heard from other people, too, in the Retail Sector is there a possibility that we could have very clear consistent signage for every single shared space . Maybe its like a hand sterilizer or something, just a little station with a bulletpointed list, like wear your mask when youre not eating. When youre ordering food and all sitting around, at that point, i believe youre supposed to be wearing a mask, right . And im looking at this and it says wear a face covering. But once people sit down to order, they take off all their face coverings and they dont put it back on until they step out of the area. But i would assume just from logic, that youre not protected just because youre on the sidewalk. I dont know. Im not sure. But i feel like there should be more specific and maybe that sign needs to be on every shared space. Is that a requirement right now in. Thank you for bringing this up, commissioner huie. The city does have the department of emergency management, theres a huge Signage Program that in some ways is multipumped, but in some ways its also for some programs, programspecific and so our staff has been working to develop a sign that is sharedspace specific, specifically so that it can be put in these dining quarters. A. The ideas are to put them on each table or posted within the curbside spaces so that we can help reinforce this messaging around face coverings and distancing from other members of the public who are not within your household or pod. And so, were definitely working on this and it has not been deployed as quickly as we would have wanted. And i wont belabor the commission with the details. But part of it has to make sure that this signage is compatible with the department of emergency managements larger Signage Program. And so theres some conversations that are ongoing to just sort all that out. But its my intention to have signage literally at a reshared space and so help reinforce this messaging. I just really want Business Owners to feel supported when they have to Say Something or when they have to ask a guest to do something, that they feel wellsupported that theres a consciousness about behaviour and wha what to do. I want people to feel like they can come out, and a cultural expectation that you do wear a mask, were not to get in a fight over it and and the Business Owner should not feel threatened by somebody who doesnt want to wear a mask those are some of the situations that are saw this week and that were, like, challenging, i think. This is the business operators responsibility to help enforce but we can make it itsieeasier and more consisten. So theres more the city can do to support the business operators responsibility in that railroa and signage is a ke of that. I noticed, also, that sop of thsome ofthe surrounding areas r neighborhood corridors, i know the Business Owners were conscious about cleaning up trash and debris and things left over from their guests and their customers, but ive noticed that the areas are around some of our neighborhood corridors have kind of an increase in dumping and an increasing in crime, an increase in what else is there . Just kind of graffiti and tagging and things like that. I feel like some of the things, if we could minimize or if we could help to deal with some of those issues, that would also make some of our shared spaces much more, like, pleasant to be in, i think fundamenta. That was something i do plan on addressing later. But i know there are certain businesses that arent even in a neighborhood corridor, necessarily, but they cant even use the shared space because the area outside of their business is so blighted right now. And so, im kind of just wondering if there are conversations with, maybe, the department of public work or other agencies to be able to provide just more of a holistic experience for someone in shared spaces. You bring up quality of life and quality of experience on the street and a lot of these issues, you know, theyre pervasive, citywide, interjurisdictional, crosssector and they require crosssector response and, so, i certainly agree with you that the environment or immediate builtin environment is a part of the our experience and our memory of place and we do see with larger shared spaces activations like those on grant street and valencia street where there are active Merchants Associations and communitybenefit districts, that there is a strong response to those aspects to life out on the street, you could say. And so, it continues to be a challenge for us, i think, as a subsidy, as a whole, and as maybe not a programspecific issue. Thank you so much. Thank you. So robin, i know you asked midpresentation for questions about the first half of the presentation and so, before we move on to the second half of your presentation, i just wanted to make a recommendation, we spoke of, a moment ago, that there is that roadway speed wasnt necessarily a dominant determinative factor in denial. So i would be very curious if there would be a way to track what determinative factors were so that we could begin to tackle those determinative factors if they are addressable at all. Lets take this back to the proposals. As i mentioned earlier, the programs overarching goal is to help everyone who asks to leverage, you know, the public realm for their business operations, to find some solution. And so that might not be what you originally asked for and may have more impact with less for doing Something Else. The volume and sometimes the complexity, that could be something to take awhile if we were to analyze every case and come up with a report. I could ask staff if were noticing any trends and maybe we could drill down into that 45 roadway denial just get a little more detail about how many were converted into other active projects fundamenta. Again just with helping as many possible get spot program and we can further identify any roadblock or thingblocks or thie change. I dont want to say speed limits throughout San Francisco, but if thats an idea, we could obtain that for discussion. If thats not a helpful thing, we dont need to spend time on it. I think you have the right sense of where im headed with this. I dont want to add to your administrative burden. We dont need to be overly granular in evaluating how the program is moving. But i think it would be helpful for the commission to understand what the provid primary obstaclm to be and see if there are ways to thread the needle here and tie all of this together so that we are have a coherent strategy citywide to dial share deal wid spaces. Were aligned on the goals. I think it would be helpful for us because we may be able to reach out, either through the commission or through erts. please stand by the second bucket is what we are about to implement so things underway that you called out in your resolution you would like to see happen. Third are things analyzed or considered, not affirmed but we are looking into with more depth to understand whether or not they are feasible so what is already being done . You know, the commission is concerned with equity. As i mentioned we have the equity strategy doing a number of things, helping us to figure out where we need to if we have a backlog, in a situation room that we are in a backlog which cases we should look at first. That was an equity opportunity. You know, the outreach that i talked about, some increased Technical Assistance with the partnership with oewd. Simplifying prerequisites. I have worked in San Francisco for the last 10, i can say with a lot of confidence this program is probably the most simple and streamlined in terms what we ask project sponsors and applicants to furnish at the outset. We continue to identify ways to simplify those. One was the insurance requirement. Additionally, the insurance requirement is something you have to prove before you are issued a notice to operate. With this program to bring the certificate of insurance into us as soon as you apply you essentially operate. That is one example how they have been i simplified. Better signage. That is being implemented, then the application process being simplified. I can say with the utmost confidence that this program has a lot of tight interagency coordination, perhaps more than other programs. Again, on the subject of equity, we are working exclusively with cultural districts and opportunity neighborhoods on some of these pilots which are receiving a higher level of technicaTechnical Assistance, ed otherwise. What are we working on . Roadway clash yo you closures af approvals. We recognize that the scale of the street closure, there is so much more economy of scale when you move from the sidewalk or parking lane Geographic Unit to a street closure or parking lot closure. That is underway. Applications being approved. For sidewalk and curb side applications, you essentially receive a notice to commence operations upon submittal of your application. What we are working on tightens is the turnaround time for the city to do the formal review and do the formal permit to operate. That interval continues to shorten. We are working to get that down to as short as possible. As part of the equity strategy in those neighborhoods we are deepening our esl outreach and we are also looking at other kinds of activities that perhaps might not be permitted under the Current Health order and stage everof the recovery we are in. The city has to interpret. There are restrictions on gatherings and indoor fitness. There is implications for groups gathering outdoors and special issue. You can have the 20 person yogalas on the walk. We are looking to make that work in future stages of the program. There were other points relating to multi language support. Notably, we are shortly, i hope within the week, going to issue official guidance to help bring folks who have informally installed or constructed wind barriers and platform in the rightofway, which i will note are not currently permitted through shared spaces. There is no way to ensure they are ada compliant, structurally sound and handle wind loadsits so they dont, you know, adversely impact drainage and hide draw lick performance of the street. There are a number of design criteria for the park program that were carefully considered and translated to guidance for shared spaces platforms is what we call them. That is underway. We have heard from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other stakeholders we need to find a way to document these constructions and help people do that in a safe manner. On to the third bucket. What are we looking at in the resolution . We know that staffing requirements for roadway closures is a challenge for our merchants and other groups sponsoring these road closures. Currently their requirement which comes from our Life Safety Department is for the roadway closure barriers to be staffed during all hours of th the propd closure. Valencia street closed 4 00 to 10 00 thursday evening. The Merchants Association station a person at each of those barricades 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th streets on valencia that is unsustainabilit unsustas other groups in the city. We are working on this. The concern is that vehicles, Fire Suppression vehicles, ambulances need to be able to access this streets in case of an emergency, and we are working to specify maybe different kinds of barriers or other strategy so that the road closure signs up at intersections dont impede that kind of access. There has also been recognition that our private sector partners in the Design Community especially, design and fabrication community can be part of the solution and can be partnering with either individual project sponsors or through some structured way to facilitate by the city. Something that i am interested this is someone who has worked closely with architects to bring many of our parks to life. There is a lot of leadership in the Design Community and capacity and we want to figure out a way to connect those folk also. Tbd where we are open to partnership with Small Business commission around this as well. Maybe a program area that the commission would like to frame out or run or facilitate. We are thinking really openly and creatively about how that might look. Also, we started this presentation off with the recognition that this has been a critically Important Program for Small Businesses now and it will continue to be through the rest of the calendar year and has relevance to future stages of economic recovery. This is something the city is definitely thinking about as a a matter of policy. Making not only the shared spaces Economic Recovery Program that is a standing city program but other tools the city has in place in response to the economic crisis. Last time i was here i mentioned that we are putting together an Impact Survey where we will be asking current participants or applicants of the program about how their business was familiared, how it impacted ability to call back employees. All of that data will inform this policy conversation about the potential longterm future of the shared Spaces Program. My final slide. Then we can move to discussion. There are a group of things that give different places within the resolution that are together here. That has to do with resourcing from the city in the form of grants, loans, waiving or providing insurance. I dont need to remind the commission that the citys budget, you know, revenues projections are down. We are all it is impacting the smallest locally owned business all the way up to the city as an organism. Sales tax receipts and income we would generate through Tourism Sector is impacting what we ourselves have available to inturn provide in terms of assistance programs. We are looking at this. It might not be programs or ideas that come to fruition in the shorter term. Maybe in the longer term. We hear you and we are thinking about what is possible. Robin, thank you so much for your time. As you mentioned earlier your partnership. We are grateful and honored to help you on this mission. We have enough time for a few questions here. I will remind everybody robin has a hard stop at 1 00 p. M. Commissioner yekutiel. Thank you for the presentation. Have you heard of any injuries being reported from any of the shared spaces around the city so far . None. How many shared spaces are approved for use right now . There are at least 500, i believe. I should know these numbers. Roughly 500, 513. How long has the shared spaces been around. Six weeks. That is great. Lets hope that it stays that way. The only point i want to make when we made this with other folks today we have an opportunity to utilize this crisis to really rethink how San Francisco shows up for the Small Business community. I would like to make it my goal and i am sure other commissioners goal to make San Francisco the easiest and best place to do business in the country. On valencia street when the city is willing to be bold to support Small Businesses it could have a major effect o on on the outcom. Lowlos a. M. I. Gos had just reopened. Now they had the best weekend ever. They will be able to have a real life in this city with this restaurant. I think we can achieve a lot with the program. Thank you for leading it. Commissione commissioner doo. I mentioned shared spaces for retail. Can we do something more to urge retailers who have applied and received those spaces to use them in some kind of creative manner rather than just have them blockaded with nothing there. I know there are a few merchants that have done a good job, but a number are leaving them closed off in case a customer might come by where they are parking their own vehicles there. It deter the liveliness of the street if there are many Parking Spaces not being used but blocked off. What can we do to inspire people or give them suggestions on how to use that space in a retail manner . Obviously, it is very successful with restaurants, but it is the Retail Sector that seems to be more of a challenge. Yes, certainly retailers are a much smaller proportion of the shared spaces participants at this time. I wonder if that has something to do with regulated indoor retail being possible now when the shared Spaces Program was conceived, all indoor retail was closed. One thing that inspired to see on valencia street this weekend was that restaurants were out with physically distanced tables and patronage was study. Retailers were putting wares on the sidewalk. I think sharing more examples and this could be through photos how it could look like is one thing the shared Spaces Program witcan do. We posted a flicker gallery of shared spaces from around the city. Thinking back to the gallery, not many are retail. Maybe we can up the percentage of the representation of successful retail deployment in shared spaces there as one way to show folks this can work if you are clothing or if you sell whatever it is you might be vending that it can be successful and active. I know that i have seen, for example, in one block in north beach one retail who has done a great job and didnt have to put things to sell on the street. He is a reand designer. He put out beautiful metal sculptures to in a way announce i am here. He cant be putting valuable jewelry on the street unless someone was there, but it really made a big difference. It looked fantastic. It was like an art gallery on the street. I mean there are ways to do it even if it isnt just strictly selling things, just to let people know you are here and what you do and if you just want to come on in. That is a good way to go. Go ahead, robin. Is i should have answered earlier and i apologize for not making this clear. Some of the sidewalk applications are for thequing to block off sidewalk space for patrons of the Grocery Store can wait to enter the store, physically distance from one another. Maybe a future presentation we can call those numbers out as well. Those are retailer participants versus restaurant participants with the sidewalks. One thing, commissioner doo leveledooley, thank you for putg that up. The retailer had puts pieces to draw the eye and beautify the city. When i was walking up valencia street, i want to another highlight retailers. Closer to 16th there is high end leather . Five and diamond . Five and diamond. I make out of the corner of my eye i have seen what they do walking by, but the experience is dramatically different. It is basically they moved the window display to the street. It was cool. It kind of made me substantially more aware of their presence and what they did and what they are doing, and also it was Something Different from just tables and chairs. It helped make the street more interesting. The other retailer i am going to gar bell their name. I have bought tshirts from them before. They went all out multiple racks of clothes. It is like for people afraid to whether you can open indoors. There are people who want to avoid going indoors. Part of our future Success Story is going to be about educating retailers that this is a huge opportunity, and dont let this opportunity pass you buy. It is not just a way to build community. It is not just a way to make the street more lively. It is the way to help your bottom line. Commissioner adam. Really quick. What about shared spaces for gyms . Not in San Francisco but in san diego at a property i am managing, instead of having them inside i set up their space out in the parking lot for them. The other studio i put on the lawn to meet clients. Can we do that here in San Francisco . Have you seen it . I have seen a couple spots in San Francisco. I didnt cant to say anything because i want to support the owners. Thank you for that question, commissioner. The two considerations are space and then conformance with the existing health state and county health directives. Space right now we are mostly sidewalks and curb side lanes increasing the parking lots. The types of activities you are referring to so important and headed by Small Business owners of Fitness Studios and the like, those activities are larger spaces to lend themselves more to those activities. As we see more roadway closures and the opportunity fork packi g lots. State and county Health Guidance is tied to covid numbers. Some places we can have gatherings of how ever many people in a physically distanced way. We have not been able to do that. Making sure those considerations align would make the feasibility for certain parts of the Business Community to run their activities possible. Thank you. Couple other thoughts. Kind of building on what commissioner dooley was saying. I want to highlight cureio on valencia street had architecturally designed customer enclosure withdraw bridge with metal wires, high backed chairs and couches, it wasnt just the standard tables and chairs. You know, i think any time that we can encourage more architectural approaches and more artistic approaches, we are going to have a more successful program, more people will want to come out. Businesses will do better, quarters will do better. To that end going back to your question about how do we incentivize artists and designners in that community, i think, first of all, i dont knew who would to administer the program like this. Design contest just the prize you get highlighted on the website. Winning shared space of the week or Something Like that would be an interesting way to celebrate what works and then somebody applying that goes to the website can look at past winners of the week. I can do that. That is exciting. That is something that wouldnt cost any money at all. Sometimes it is recognition is enough to really incentivize people. This leads to a broader thought i have. With the insurance requirement you mentioned that i love the attitude around we know you are going to get it, we support you, show up later with certification. Are you running into folks that dont know who to go to for insurance . Is that a bottleneck at all . No. Not to my knowledge at all. You cant run a restaurant in San Francisco without caring this level of insurance already. Iit is a matter of adding the city. I am thinking the retailer side. That was a su stumbling block fr those that didnt have this relationship with a carrier. To my willing that hasnt been to my knowledge that hasnt been an issue. Great. It leads to these with respect to these architectural spaces. If there is a way to highlight the architects and designners and vendors that make this happen and make those connections between businesses and the more thoughtful approaches that would be great. One question that came up is whether or not you thought with the increase in receipts be a way to measure shared spaces success . You know, is there a way to get at that number to help highlight it and incentivize people wants to invest more in it . There are a couple ways to do that, methods and, you know, i wont get into the details in the two minutes we have left, but we are going to be partnering with the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. Also, with the Small Business commission to distribute the survey, and that is notoriously difficult information to extract out of Small Business owners. Folks dont want to share gross receipts for the last threequarters. We are looking at proxies for performance or confidence. Number of employees called back, retained, just getting and we hope to measure at several points to have the data set at the end of every quarter perhaps. How many folks have you brought in . Are you conif i department be to call more confident to call more folks back in . Gross receipts, sales tax. We can get that information. Not everyone in the block is participate anything the program. We could get bigger trends. That could be something to report back on the commission on where we are with impact reporting later this summer. Sales tax data would be instructive. That is driving right to the heart of the matter, economic activity. Obviously, if we see an increase in sales tax revenue, that is winner winner Chicken Dinner on all fronts. City needs money, workers need wages, businesses need revenue and people are shopping. I know we have one minute left. Seeing no other commission questions, any Public Comment on the line . Before Public Comment is called you can hospital off. Hop off. I will part with you here. The director has my contact information. Happy to continue providing information as needed. I will loop back with follow up to the commission. Thank you so much. We all appreciate your work very much. We are so excited to help you anyway we can. Enjoy your day. Thank you. Have a good monday. Any Public Comment . Nobody is in the queue to speak. This is not an action item . It could be. It wasnt on the agenda as such. Next item, please. Item 5. Continued discussion on Small Business recovery and rebuilding, commissioner reports on the Economic Recovery Task force and review of Small Business Commission Recommendation and other activities related to Small Business during the state of emergency. Possible action item. Any commissioners like to start . This is regina. I think it would be great to start off with hearing commissioner reports for those participating on the ertf and what you have been focused on, what you have accomplished to date, and what is coming out of the general meetings as well. Commissioner ortizcortagena, i want to put you on the spot to go first. I will have you go second. You are going to call in because your connection is not so great. Commissioner hewitt. Thank you. I was not able to attend the last meeting. I have reviewed the recommendations that we have spoken about. We are on the same committee. Just to preface this, what i noticed is they are drilling down at this point to try to get very specific recommendations. I am not sure what came out of the last meeting. It is not really like a freeforall to keep talking about new issues that arise. It has been these are the set of recommendations that started out in the meeting and now in the subsequent meeting has been focused on drilling down to those particular areas. For me i have actually been very focused. My own community on things happening still. Things outside of the Recovery Task force have taken my attention. It feels like the Recovery Task force has a certain path that they are walking on right now, which is great. Those things need addressed. I think maybe president laguana you can discuss what happened in the last meeting. I want to address some of the things i am currently hearing from constituents. That sounds fine. I think we have commissioner ortiz car tha on the phone now. I will speak to the subgroups. We had meaningful conversations. We had a good group of people from the landlord side, businesses, city. The main break aways is finding a solution for rent. There is no commercial rent control. Seeing how to develop a winwin situation perhaps tax credits or incentives for landlords to update and forgive rent during these crucial times. The other thing is addressing the issue of we have to do something about that. There was 120 million in the general fund when the pandemic hit. That is one of the biggest back breakers for Small Businesses. This is the time. Lets get rid of the crazy legislation. This should be the easiest place in the world to do business. Lets do it. Thank you for the update. As commissioner hewitt said, the cask force has been trying to narrow down the rest of recommendations. There is consolidation happening. A fairly large and diverse set of recommendations is being converted to high level main recommendations with some example categories. On the working group i am on with commissioner huie. How the city uses golf courses, large parking lots, are there ways that this space could be better used to address the current economic crisis that we are all facing . What are the kinds of things to do to make the highest and best use of the space . We have spent time talking about shared spaces. I am pushing hard to extend it three years. I would like it to be permanent. It is so helpful to the city on so many different level. One side benefit i noticed walking down valencia street is even when there are unhoused people who are struggling with Mental Health issues or addiction issues, it doesnt feel as intense when you have a lot of other space to go to, and the other thing that for just like somebody walking with two children as i was. You know, just to be able to maintain a safe distance from other people around you. A Community Coming out, it seems like everybody just kind of being out. You are interacting more as a community. There were so many incredible positive things i saw come out of that that i was blown away by and i think many on ertf feel the same way. Hopefully we will see a lot of direction towards a formal recommendation to extend the lifespan of the shared Spaces Program. We have spoken about rent as well and we have spoken about the downtown area, which has been critically hit. Obviously, many businesses are no longer working in those Office Buildings downtown. Those companies, many of those employees are working from home and that has a corresponding impact on ground floor businesses struggling to survive with dramatically less foot traffic. You know, it turns out from a zoning perspective it is pretty flexible zoning downtown. I was surprised to hear how flexible it is. It is more flexible than in other areas. It still seems like more can be dubtdone to pivot to do what it takes to survive. A cra critical point people are coming to terms with is that solutions are not going to be top down. We have to let people experiment. There is going to be 15,000 businesses out there trying stuff, and a small percentage of the ideas will work. Those will be the ideas everybody else adopts. We need to let people experiment and find out what those ideas that work are so they can survive to help amplify. On the issue of rent. This is really coming up as thee salient issue for personal services who are locked out of economic activity. Hairstylists, gyms, massage therapists, different services, tattoo shops, where there is a Health Component preventing them from operating completely. They have been able to limp along for the past couple months but they are running out of time. We are now getting to the place where they cant afford the rent any more. One thing that ertf has made possible is for people to have communication across different sectors and industries. I have been able to chat directly with folks in commercial real estate and representing landlord groups, as william mentioned as well. Tomorrow i will have a conversation with senator wiener about what kinds of legislation we can make that will have an impact on addressing this issue. Commissioner ortiz, something i would observe is there was a legislation introduced which i wasnt paying close attention to at the time. It was hard to keep up with everything. Senator wiener had sb939 which for essential services would have allowed people to exit leases. That is it. Allow them to exit leases. Pay the rent to date and exit the leases. In new york it is the good guy clause. You paid your bills. Lets say you are one year into a 10 year lease. You are not obligated to pay the next nine years and you cant be sued because your business failed and you cant make it. Unfortunately when the bill was introduced about 40 Small Business owners and associations wrote letters and 400 landlords and Real Estate Industry people wrote letters. That bill died in appropriations or in some committee. I had two thoughts about that. One, that bill may have suffered from a timing issue in that it came about right as the pandemic was hitting the peak and we were struggling to keep our nose a half inch above the water. I heard about the bill but didnt have the bandwidth to support it even with a letter. Times changed. Now, i would be more present and available. I didnt have the cycles available back then. The other soaks observation i. It seems to me many Building Owners and landlords are middlemen team them and the bank. We like to say we own the house or building. Really the bank owns the building and we are the care takers. At some point what hasnt happened yet and what is going to have to happen if we make progress on this issue is that lenders and banks and bond holders are going to need to make a contribution to this process. Speaking from my personal experience with my lenders, they have yet to charge off a single penny in loss. My losses are cattastrophic and their losses are zero. There is room here for banks and lenders to be more of an active participant in helping our economy survive to their own benefit. They are not going to have any customers if we dont find a way to do it. I think there is work around e ertf around that. Commissioner ortiz i appreciate you bringing up htfo. That is right. We sometimes that issue gets to the back burner a little bit because we are dealing with more pressing issues. It was very frustrating what happened with that fund, but i think we have to start tackling that problem. I think realistically we have to find a way to get there in partnership with our friends in labor and the unions and find some kind of something to get them to a degree of comfort realistically if you want something that actually is successful and passes, but we need to start this conversation and start it now. So many partners are constituents that are dying a death of a thousand cuts. This is yet another cut and the money is sitting in the bank account not helping anybody. It is not helping workers, not helping the business, not going to healthcare or housing. It is just sitting there. That doesnt seem right to me. Commissioner adams i think you had a comment. You brought up the bank. In my new job here i am an asset manager of several properties not only in San Francisco but all over the state of california. One of the things that i worked with senator weiner on 949. A lot of it is the banks. It used to work for one and a lot of our lending anything over 10,000 square feet we have to get the banks permission to do forbearance. I have been cutting deals left and right for everybody under 999 feet. That is an issue. It is something that has to be done and changed. I am dealing with 35 restaurants now down in san diego. Some are bigger than others. Everyone is a Small Business. None of these are chains. I can work with some, but others i have to deal with the bank. It is almost as if the big banks are playing games. They dont get back to you. I am hearing this from other landlords, too. My conversations with boma, everybody is hearing the same thing. Maybe Going Forward we can do something just and i am using this time to come up with new best practices. Who knows if this is going to happen again and if it did we need to be ready for it. Pick my brain. I have been living and breathing this for the last five months. I know not to throw the banks completely under the bus. I will throw them a good chung of the way there. They have federal lending guidelines to tie their hands with respect to what they can and cant do and the amount of equity they have and exposure, when they can give forbearance and when they cant. It seems we are shoveling the decks on the ship when we move from Small Business to the assets manager or Property Owner. We have mained the pain from one section to another. At the end of the day, we should go where the money is in terms of making a contribution. Certainly they enjoy profits in good times. They should have losses in bad times like everybody else. They shouldnt continue to profit. It seems wrong to me. Commissioner dooley. I assume regim regina sent yu information on salon owners. It was pretty distressing to hear her say they cannot work outdoors because of the state requirements for barbering and cosmetology. They are in a very difficult situation. Also, as she pointed out, their standards for cleanliness and hygiene are extremely high. The question is the millions of things she pointed out about why being outside is not appropriate, you know. It is windy in this town, it is hard to just keep things clean. You cant bring a sink to the street or into the yard. All of these things are making it so they all feel like they are going to go out of business and the outside haircutting thing is not very realistic. It challenges these people because they are professionals. They need to follow these rules. We need somehow to address the state in this, too. If the cosmetology and barbering people have set these rules in place, then we cannot ask our San Francisco people to violate the state regulations. Point of clarification. The governor issued an order on monday saying hair salons could open outdoors. That is new information. I hear you in that San Francisco is uniquely windy, and it is a challenging environment for hairstyling lists to open outdoors. Tough and the only thing i can come up with is the recommendations for shared spaces to enable them to permit wind blockades. As robin indicated there are ongoing conversations how to do that safely so they dont fall over and kill somebody, i guess. What thing is that more and more there is an aftertitude among city decision attitude among city decisionmakers it is better to let people do what they think is right and fix later in the mix, as we used to say in the music industry. Come back and refine and improve our approaches to these. How do you address the fact that if you have an outside space, the state requirements are basically saying you have to provide every single thing that would be done indoors. Sinks, sanitation stations, all of this stuff. They cant do that. What i hear from them is they are afraid the state will pull their licenses. This is regina through the president. One is we will get more clarity about i dont think the governor would have made that recommendation had there not been some discussion with the state licensing agency, but to your point, commissioner dooley. I am hearing and i havent forwarded it on because i received more feedback from other predominantly hair salons that it is the wrong direction to go for their business. They dont want it promoted as a solution for them. They are so highly regulated. They have already made investments to provide the dividers and unlike the food and beverage industry, they are required to regulate and have clients selfcertify before they can enter. That is not required of those eating and drinking in our restaurants. From their perspective, they are questioning the risk when they, one, have to reduce the number of clients. They themselves have the Close Encounter with the client. They are being extraordinarily cautious about bringing their clients into the space. They understand the need for good ventilation. I appreciate the enthusiasm. I am enthusiastic about shared Space Program. It is not something for every business. But i am very concerned that we are expanding the shared Space Program, having more shared space happening, more Outdoor Dining but seeing reduction in numbers. To the Commissioners Point i am concerned the city isnt actually being more proactive around the requirement of wearing masks, and i am concerned that with with the shared Space Program and th andg committed with this, as we should be, but not with more enforcement. I dont think it should be up to the business enforcing. Maybe within their space, but when people are gathering on the other side of the space talking to people in the space, when does it become the individuals responsibility to be responsible . If we are expanding shared spaces but not seeing numbers going down . What is the longterm implications for other businesses . That is going to continue to me to be sort of looked and advocated. As i said, these businesses are communicating they feel more comfortable with the sanitation and cleanliness inside their business than being outside. Can i jump in real quick . Sure. Where are we on the advocacy within the city to reinstate a timeline to reopen businesses taken off the timeline . I am sure advocacy i is happeni. We need to keep the eye on the ball there should be people in the room reminding folks in the Decision Making body there is are businesses for whom shared spaces cant work. What are the metrics we need to get the businesses back online . What is the status of that . I was going to talk about this. This is a timely comment. Before i respond, i want to say that San Francisco was on an uptick. Over the last week the seven be day average is moving down. We have more shared spaces. Behindthescenes the Contact Tracing that is going on and the research into transmission causes, there hasnt been a transmission event associated without door dining. This is one thing that we can point to as being reassuring. I grab on to every reassuring data point whenever i can. Lord knows, they are few and far between. Commissionecommissioner yekutien conversation to narrow down on the recommendations. With that being said, i was texting folks this morning. I want to draw the commissions attention to this. There is a fundamental communication breakdown happening relevant to all of us. Doctor aragon will appear on the tenth before this commission. Is that correct, director . Yes, that is correct. What i am hearing, and i have triple verified. I am not out of step here. There is a bit of communication breakdown between the Small Business community and dph. Dph has done an extraordinary job at keeping us all safe. Where the communication breakdown is happening is basically one way street. It is going from dph to Small Business. There is poor communication from Small Business back to dph. The health professionals, oewd has a long institution at history of working with business. Did Small Businesses i talk to praised how oewd responds to them. They do not have an institutional history of working with Small Business. Some of these concerns are abstract and foreign to them. First of all, at a top level, one concern i have is that when we hear about Small Businesses failing because so often the 13458 businessmallbusiness is gf business. It is like abstract problem. We dont see the 20, 30 employees that work at the restaurant who dont have the platform to advocate for themselves. What i think we need to bring to dphs concern is that this represents a new Health Threat because when they lose jobs there is food and housing insecurity. People are living in tighter quarters to increase the threat level from the buyers. We have to recognize that, good lord, please, let there be a solution to this pandemic on the way. It is not going to be here in 2020. We need to somehow as a community we need to convey, yes, we support your health concerns, we support keeping people safe. We dont want people sick, we dont want them dying. At the same time we have to find a way to help businesses. What i see coming from dph right now is a lot of no without a lot of this is how to get to yes. That is what i think is the missing element here is the attitude and mind set from dph needs to be how can we get to yes . How can we help you solve the problem so you can go back to having a lively hood . A process question. The Public Health officer of San Francisco is setting policy and benchmarks for reopening and advising on that. It is like the main decisionmaker on this. When i spoke to the Mayors Office they let me know the people responsible for doctor aragon were the board of supervisors. What that said to me, obviously, everyone is in conversation together. If they provide perspective of needs of Small Business owners, it seems like the two doctor aragon and Public Health officer are the people he is answering to the board of supervisors. We have zero Small Business owners on the board of supervisors. They often times talk about how important Small Businesses are, we all know sometimes their legislation does the opposite. Other times it is hard to know what they are saying. I wonder should we, a, lean on the board of supervisors to bring this up more often in conversations with doctor arago aragon, get the mayor to step in more or, c, should we take a more aggressive approach to make sure we or someone else is in the room represents needs of our constituents. My answer is a, c, c and i would add d, ertf, and e coalitions of Business Owners applying with the support of a, b, c, d. I apskeptical that i am skeptical any individual supervisor can move the needle. We struggle with the problem when a Small Business fails it is individual in the abstract. In my communications with various folks in the city stop thinking about the Business Owner. You dont care about them anyway. Talk about the workers and 164,000 people that are out of work that were employed three or four months ago and our 12 unemployment alltime high. It is all of it. We have to apply pressure at each and every turn with each and every lever available. I am open to suggestions from you and all colleagues and commissioners what we can put on the agenda to apply that pressure. I am trying to do so with ertf. I think who should we invite . Should we invite the president of the board of supervisors to ask him what his plan is to make sure Small Business owners are represented in the conversations with doctor aragon and same with the policy director to talk about how Small Business owners are represented in the Mayors Office with the department of Public Health and that is the most impactful thing. The two bodies in the room where it happens, as we all know, we want to know how they are bringing up concerns of our constituents in those conversations. I think bring them to the commission and ask how they are representing us. I will add to that. I think we should have ertf chair, perhaps carmen chu. I know for a variety of reasons policymakers are really leaning on ertfs recommendations whether it is providing political cover. I dont know why it is weighted to heavily, but to the extent that it is. Lets make sure that we are well represented in each and every corner. Commissioner ortiz cartagena. You are frozen. You may have to call in. This is regina. One other additional point. I think what we are seeing here is because to commission. Laguanas point we focus a lot on employees as the city and that captures attention. The personal service sectortends to be a lot of selfemployed individuals and that is why i am i have been very adamant through this process that they not get lost because i am concerned they arent given the attention they need to be given and the importance they are to our economy. In addition to an equity focus. Their voice isnt as strong as businesses that tend to have employees and tend to have industry organizations. I want to kind of keep that in the conversation as well. I appreciate that. Commissioner dooley. I think along those lines there is something we as a commission could do, which is because we do get reached out to from the selfemployed type businesses. I know i was provided with statistics from these hair salon owners from the c dc stating there were no infections in the United States or europe in hair salons. We can bring this up to a higher level so that when we talk to the officials as suggested we can say, well, you know, we have statistics given to us by a group of personal care providers. Have you seen these . That is a very Important Forum for us. When people are watching our Commission Hearings they should be sending us things that they because they are trying to survive. They have researched more heavily. Our job would be to bring those up at our Commission Meeting so it is a much higher awareness and maybe we will make decisions Going Forward. Absolutely. The hair file lists and fitness and tattoo shops are vocal. We have deployed that information wherever we can. I think this conversation right now exemplifies that. To the extent Business Owners are listening to this, if you are wondering if your random email or outreach matters. We dont get that much communication. It is not that hard for us to Read Everything that comes across the path. It often is material and makes a difference in a surprising number of ways. Coming back to the directors point, i think there are so many businesses that are independent contractors, the hair salon is somebody who owns the real estate but 10, 15 different contractors in and out of it. I think just simple keeping the message simple that each Small Business represents 10 workers on average might be the most politically astute way to convey you need to take this with a degree of seriousness. It is just clear that we are not balancing this quite right. We are building the plane and playing it. It is now time to really start examining this issue and finding a way to build a sustainable economy. Commissioner ortiz cartagena. You are on the phone now. We sound lie hamilton wanting to be in the room that happened. Look, we have been saying this throughout the course of my tenure as a commissioner. We dont have teeth. I know the director report is going to say about legislative path. What is the point . If they dont listen to us, right . Parallel to all of the specific initiatives we are doing to help businesses through this pandemic and crisis, we need to help ourselves and get some legislation. We have more teeth. All we do is recommend and if they dont like it, then they dont include us in their speech to the rest of the supervisors. I know there is a consideration about giving the commission more teeth. That is a ballot measure. I dont know where that is at and whether that is something seriously under consideration. I agree with you, right . Especially when we see about how much of an impact Small Business has. I will Say Something else. Even without the commission formally having teeth, our community has teeth. We represent 45 of everybody that working here in the city. We represent almost every single ground floor retail that you drive by. We have a ton of teeth. We just dont punch our weight. In order to punch our weight we have to organize and activate. That is something each and every one of us as commissioner should contribute towards organizing and activating, getting our friends and colleagues and Small Business to show up for these hearings to make contributions, to make Public Comments. They are one of the most powerful ways to get people to change their mind. We struggle to get anybody to show up at all. I get it everybody is struggling and i am sympathetic. They dont just hand power out. You have to take it. If we want that plow were we have to take it power we should take it. It is on us. That is our role as city voters to help organize and activate their voices. Commissioner huie. Speaking of teeth, i want to remind everybody about the struggle i had to try to get dental offices open prior to they would have been open during this round. I wanted to interject that. I agree with everything. I did get a Public Comment from one of my good friends who owns the salon in the city. Connie mcgrath. I submitted that. She took photos of the spaces outside of her building. The shared Spaces Program for her would not be feasible for so many reasons. If she was in a space that was nicely wind covered, there are other things threatening her business. I think since she put in that Public Comment she emailed me this morning. I think she is going to choose to do Something Else and focusing on a different location that she opened in washington, d. C. She has given me a nice perspective in terms what other cities are offering at that point in time versus our city. I think this is mentioned before that we should look at what other municipalities and places are successfully navigating share covid situation and what they are doing for Business Owners. That is something we can look at, too. I think the thing in terms of speaking about dental offices. It was all of those entities. If we spent a month writing letters to every single entity because nobody was talking to each other at the end of that situation i really learned that we need to advocate for that communication. We need to advocate for our commission to be really a very well connected voice for different Small Businesses. I think right now i feel like my biggest priority has been to advocate for personal and professional services to open. That is a huge sector of our city that has had no income for so many months. I think that is scary for those individuals, for the people who work there. I think it is unfeasible. It is not sustainable to keep asking businesses to hold on without any sort of point in the horizon to shoot for. Especially for professional services that are only seeing one client at a time. It is like, you know, we should advocate for reopening with whatever it is that they need to reopen. I think that is the conversation we need to have with doctor aragon. What are those things you are concerned about specifically . Lets address those things. Quite frankly, for tattoo parlors and hair salons and dental offices we work with a certain leveling of understanding of the infection control, sanitizing and sterilizing. We are adding layers on to what already is a very deep and broad base of knowledge. Lets figure out the concerns and address those concerns specifically to move on to get people open. It is really for me a number one priority Going Forward. It is something that as a city we have not spoken about for the past few weeks. There are people who are not making any sort of income. I think that is unfeasible and unsustainable for us. We are running out of time and going to lose the commissioner at 2 00. We will open up for Public Comment if there is any. Nobody is in the queue. Public comment is closed. Next item, please. Item 6. Approval of draft meeting minutes. Action item. So moved. Second. We still have to take Public Comment on this. Public comment on the minutes. There is no Public Comment. I move that we approve the minutes. Motion by commissioner laguana seconded by commissioner dooley. [roll call] motion passes 70. Item 7. Directors report. Update and report on the office of Small Business and Small Business assistance center, department programs, policy and legislative matters, announcements from the mayor, announcements regarding Small Business activities. Discussion item. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you for that very informative discussion around our economic recovery. Just some quick updates. I want to make you aware that we have surpassed now surveying 3,000 clients at osb within four months. That is usually a number that we service in a nine month period. Also, the office of Racial Equity is now engaging with departments on developing the Racial Equity plan. And for defendants that have boards and commissions there is work that you will be involved within developing this Racial Equity plan that needs to be completed by the end of the calendar year. I am just bringing this to your attention. I will be sending out advanced reading material. Dominica and i will work on a project plan to present to you at the next meeting in terms of timeline. In terms of your engagement and work to be done with the commission. Also, as noted, doctor aragon will be attending the Commission Meeting on august 10th. In addition to maggie wheland talking about the cert program, the entity going out to do enforcement, particularly towards businesses and Community Education as well. I think to your point, commissioner yekutiel, and commissioner laguana will reach out to the assessor to see if she can attend the meeting. That might be a good compliment as followup to your discussion. There was a question about implementation for right to return to work. Yes,na passed and is implemented. That is in place. It applies to businesses that have 100 or more employees. Today at Land Use Committee, the Land Use Committee which is happening now will be hearing supervisor peskins cd3p legislation which you heard. Then as dominica noted in the legislative review, supervisor peskin introduced legislation waiving fees for tables and chairs, sidewalk encroachment. There are a couple other pieces of legislationna have recently been introduced. I will forward that to you noting the time. Then one other point i just wanted to highlight. In the commissions resolution around the shared spaces, there was the recommendation for rec and park to be included in the shared Space Program and not charge a fee. I have heard from one business that they have now spent 1,000 to utilize the rec and park property to do their outdoor exercise activity as they are fitness business. I am bringing this to your attention. That is 1,000 they are spending for rec and park in addition to what will also be rent that will soon come due. They are not paying now but they will eventually have to pay once they are able to open. Just to rehighlight that particular point in the resolution. I will keep it at that for now. Since we are running close to 2 00 and we will be losing commissioner yekutiel. I am happy to take any questions. Any questions for the director . Seeing none. Any Public Comment . We have no Public Comment. Public comment is closed. Next item, please. Item 8. Commissioners reports. Allows president , Vice President and commissioners to report on recent Small Business activities and make announcements that are of interest to the Small Business community. Discussion item. Any commissioner report . Commissioner adams . I want to let everybody know. I am not here. I produced an event called lazy bear. This year we had to cancel. What we have done is we applied for a grant with Sonoma County and got it for 20,000. We took that 20,000 and split it up between three restaurants two i in gurnville and came up with two thousand 10 male so 1l vouchers. We are feeding people and helping the restaurants. It is really helping the restaurants and feeding people. I just want to report that. Thank you. Commissioner zouzounis. Everybody is involved with more than they report. Thanks to everybody. Quickly, just some of the merchant organizations that i have been part of have participated in ppe distribution quite regularly. We did two this past week. One in district 10 in the bayview and one in district 6 in the tenderloin. Again, we are establishing Small Businesses as hotspots for community to access free ppe. That model is working pretty well. Thank you. Commissioner huie. I am going to be speaking further with the chamber of commerce about expanding some of their tutoring or oneonone mentoring solutions. I think they have several that they started. I will be talking to them about expanding some of those programs so that some of the Small Businesses can access more personalized resources and have a better understanding where their business is right now. Wonderful. I love it. I am going to jump in. First, i spoke with bayview merchants groups about how the commission has talked about a mentor ship program to develop new leaders and future commissioners. He was excited by that. I also spoke with him that excel see or action group at third street merchants. We will try to get them in to do a shared presentation around shared spaces and what we can do to get more activity in these areas. Then one last thing i want to do. I was going to save this for the next item. Since we are about to lose commissioner yekutiel, i want to report to the commission i am and the director can inform me if i am not getting this quite right, but i am going to request that ofb staff send a memo to the board of supervisors that commissioner yekutiel be honored with a resolution of support for his work with opening up van elsieia street. Vallensia street. I dont have to make this is action item. If i did i want blind sight him with this because then he would be on the agenda. We are not voting on it because i wanted to blind sight him but we are going to issue a memo and ask the board of supervisors to honor him for his work. As i was walking down valencia street. I saw supervisor mandelman and i said this is incredible. He said this was all there. It is leadership here that is exemplary. That is why i was rushing to this. I didnt want to not acknowledge other contributions. You do not have to do that. I am very surprised. Thank you. Can i share a little story before i leave that will touch all of us . Last night some of my volunteers didnt show up. I was closing the 18 to 19th street block on my own. When you get this in your neighborhood you will realize it is a lot of lifting. By the end of the neat the owner of the pizzeria saw me and asked if i wanted pizza with him. It was 10 00. He was telling me how he left ireland. If he had stayed there he would be dead or in jail. He was going through it in ireland. He came here 25 years ago to start a new life. This pizza shop which is the maimain owner. He is spending all of his time and energy to save the pizza shop. I said why . He said i want to send my three daughters to college. This is the only way i am going to be able to create alive for my children that i want to. I think what we sometimes lose in these conversations about gross receipts tax and programs of the city and other things that owning and running a Small Business traditionally has been one of the main ways that people can achieve the American Dream in this country. A lot of us come from a family of immigrants, some of us are immigrants ourselves. My father is an an immigrant. There is so many stories about supporting themselves. It is about the American Dream. I think our work here is about trying to keep the American Dream alive as much as we can. Thank you. This is unexpected and i appreciate it. Any other commissioner reports . Seeing none. Any Public Comment on commissioner reports. No Public Comment. Public comment is closed. Next item, please. 9. New business. Allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration by the commission. Discussion item. That was my new agenda item. Do we have any other new business . All right. Just to remind everybody. I think we will try to bring in these folks that we spoke about earlier carmen chu, president yee, doctor aragon next week, perhaps somebody from the Mayors Office to improve community occasions with dph. We are also going t to hear from outlying communities on shared spaces and how we can improve. We will continue to get regular updates for the time being on shared spaces. As far as i am concerned you can expect to see that on the agenda each and every meeting until such time as that is fully dialed in. If any of you have agenda items that you would like to see or things to focus on. Commissioner brought up hdhl. There will be a time to tackle that. That is going to take groundwork to get it done. If any of you have anything else to see on upcoming meeting agendas, feel free to reach out. You can reach out to me directly usually. If not, if you think there is any chance i might talk to more than two of you about it, reach out to the director and we will make sure it is on the agenda. Any Public Comment on new business. No Public Comment. Next item, please. Sfgovtv please show the office of Small Business slide. We will end with the reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. That did office of Small Business is the best place for answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters continue to reach out to the office of Small Business. Item 10 adjournment. Action item. I move that we adjourn the meeting in honor of shared