Transcripts For SFGTV Commission On The Environment 20240712

That i was talking about before. I dont think that we can leave public bank to decide at this point. Thank you. Chair fewer thank you. Clerk that is the only caller. Chair fewer okay, Public Comment is now closed. Madam clerk, is there any more business today. Clerk no further business today. Chair fewer thank you very much everyone. We are adjourned. Disantsing. The second Corner Grocery store i went to, tables were set up. This means, you know, were in the middle of a pandemic, and i think my life is more important than having to pay a quarter for a paper bag. I think this should be suspended for Senior Citizens or suspended, period, until the mayor says that were going back to normal and. [beeping] thank you, caller. Are there any other callers in the cue operation . No more callers in the cue. All right. Thank you, operations. Thank you, charles. The next item is item 5, an update on the departments ongoing Racial Equity hish tive. The speaker is timmy [indiscernible]. This item is for discussion. All right. Director felled, take it away. Thank you. And good evening commissioners and everyone who is listening in. This is really exciting and im excited about todays agenda. And this particular agenda item is near and dear to by heart. You may remember, commissioners, at our last Commission Meeting in june, i stressed the importance of our continued work on Racial Equity in my directors report, i emphasize the work that all of us in the department are doing, in light of the murder of george floyd as well as our ongoing commitment of equity. And clearly, the need for this work is selfevident. Its all around us, covid19 is just the most recent example, traumas that are disproportionately impacting black people, indigenous people, and all people of color. So back in march of tween 18 you may remember that the commission passed a resolution to affirm our commitment to racial inequity. And allot over a year later in october of 2019, the city of San Francisco opened up an office of Racial Equity and also the supervisor, mayor, signed legislation that are mandating changes to City Department and alaska tifts, in order to refine City Departments, on Racial Equity in all the things that they do. In january, we welcomed that feel like hand years ago now but january of this year when, we had our inperson Commission Meeting, we welcomed our Equity Committee leadership and they came to the commission and delivered a presentation. That was talking about the work we were doing to develop a Racial Equity plan. We were vownlded by this critical need right now. And we are committed to examining our role in the department. As staff, and as Community Members of San Francisco so we wanted to bring to you, an update on what we have been doing in the past month and cindy combford, ive asked her to come and present tonight. She manages our climb 8 criminal justice program. Shes going to review with you, some of the work weesk doing on the department, as well as a survey that we have participate in, and qat future of Racial Equity looks like in the next few months for the department. Cindy [indiscernible]. I am the Climate Program manag manager. Debbie, talk about what im going to present today, so im going to start off with some reflection over the last couple of months. Reaffirm our commitment to Racial Equity. Talk about some of our immediate commitments. A survey that we participated in with the office of Racial Equity, and then conclude some next steps. So the San Francisco, department of environment, has reflected on Current Events of covid19 and its disproportionate impacts on American Indian communities, black communities and communities of color. The mores of george floyd, brieona taylor, and countless others, and the under lying government and economic structures that create the platform of these events. We have a responsibility to do better and continue making progress on this critical Racial Equity work. We have also seen an extraordinary mobilization across the country. Every walk of life, every race and every religion vocalizing that this is our time to do something. We see a legacy of white supremacy. Access to nature and other environmental benefits have provided to privileged Community Bus environmental harms continue to disadvantage neighborhoods of color. The environment isnt really about [indiscernible], its about water in michigan and about the air in new delhi. While were not going to solve all of these problems in one day, im proud to work for a department qoz a long history of the Environmental Justice work and we are continuing to grow together. We have so many other dedicated Staff Members that are continuing to address race for the environment. So pursuing Racial Equity say process and its something that we have all been going through together, as a city, as a department. And as a commission there office was founded under the human race comig a city wide gap to close the gaps of racial inequities, found in all fangt ors of city work and to look at our policies through a racial len. This is not something new to our department. Our cole core values is around equity and we have also had Environmental Justice program for over two decades the commission has also adopt aid resolution, affirming our commitment to Racial Equity, and we have been working hard on our Racial Equity plan after the george floyd traj, our director vocalized her commitment to our core values and [indiscernible] our director also identified three immediate next steps when im going to briefly review in the next three slides. Next slide. You may recall from our presentation in january, we provided a summary of our Racial Equity survey, that we administered about a year and a half ago and one of the findings from the survey was staff did not feel comfortable talking to a supervisor about race. And there were many suggestion that is key leereds have needed white [indiscernible] training. Our leadership team, at the department of environment, took a halfday seminar Robin Deangelo, she offered findings of her work, on analysis of white supremacy, work around whiteness and wight agility. Dr. Diangelo spoke about racism, and the specific ways racism manifests in ways progressive. Via workshops, offered a leadership team, trying for personal reflection which was really an opportunity to identify our complacency with the system of white supremacy. And why i dont want to speak to everyone on our leadership team, i personally walked away from that training next slide. Our next commitment we made was for every staff member to provide mile stoins into their Performance Plan around [indiscernible]. Like many of these other commitments, this is still a work in progress. Several weeks ago, my staff and i developed a template and my team has been pilot pressing work. That may be something within their personal journey or would benefit the Department Around hiring or recruitment and then also one external goal, that would be about engage wct community or around policies. We plan to share it with the rest of the department so everyone can have Racial Equity goals as part of their work plan. Next slide. Our last was training, continuing to make sure that all of our staff is trained on Racial Equity. Well be having staff trainings on our raicialg and social Equity School either next pont or in early september. And also, well be providing on our equity policy, which ill get an opportunity to discuss later in our presentation around the instruction. So that was the summary of our immediate commitment and well continue to develop more as we go through. Several weeks ago, the office on Racial Equity requested all City Departments, fill out a comprehensive survey on Racial Equity leadership and also, our programmatic efforts that support different populations. And also, provide very specific details on these efforts, and thinking was many of our community stakeholders, as well as City Employees believe that San Francisco is conflicted in creating personal laws, policies and institution that is perpetuate racial inequities in our city and to address these concerns. The office of Racial Equity wants the department to supt their engagement and under represented historically, marginalized communities. As the city prepares for its budget hearings in the next couple of weeks and given our mayor and board of supervisorser visoro focus on equity and support for marginalized communities. It also gives our department an opportunity to compile and accept this information. Next slide. So this slide shows some very highlevel key take aways from the surveys. I had the fortunate of compiling the survey, and i was really impressed by the diverse engagement that our department has done. There were over 20 Different Program initiatives that worked with 7 different communities of color and 20 dissent population groups. Some examples of new things that i learned about with our work with chinese daycare communities, providing toxic sleeping matts for children, also, our opportunity to expand through recovery and providing healthy [indiscernible] to San Francisco, and also work ache can American Youth by offering stipe ends to conduct gardening and composting. When we look at the budget adopted by our comitionz. If you remember, our presentation from january. We focused on phase 1. Which is really looking at our internal actions to address Racial Equity, such as measures around hiring, training or recruitment and well be back to present on phase 2 which looks back internally, towards our engagement strait strategy gees, our poltses and programs poo make sure we are promoting Racial Equity. That concludes my prohibittation,. That was great. Thank so much. I really appreciate your time and presentation and all the work the department is doing on behalf of Racial Equity. Commissioners, do you have any questions for cindy . Commissioner o. I do want to make sure we bring up something brought up in the past, Career Pathways department, and leadership pathways for particularly, people of color, staff who have started how to improve upon th that. That is one of our actions in phase 1 report. We are looking at different ways we can implement your suggestions. [indiscernible]. Start figuring out how we can have a better, more diverse [indiscernible]. Do we have request feedback. Is it better now . A little better. I should have gotten my head set figured out before that. Sorry about that. Specifically, around the budget item, when we talk about the Program Amount of work that we do as a department, we can certainly, its not easy. But its possible for us to take the lens of Racial Equity and apply it to the work that we do and make sure that when we get out there, we are always asking the question, who is this helping, whos this hurting. Whats the first step here. How do we make sure were not accidentally, stepping into institutional [indiscernible] et cetera. We can do that as part of the programmatic work. The work internally of the department, the work on ourselves isnt always funded by our grant funds. It isnt always funded through, you know, the work orders that we have from other departments and so it seems like, you know, im sort of struck by the idea that a lot of time when is youre creating womens groups at Big Companies its the women themselves who have to do all the extra volunteer labor to make sure the womens group flourishes and thats unpaid work they are doing above and beyond their own job. It seems like this falls into the same sort of trap of, you know, we need to have some budget, devoted to making sure we can keep this drum beat going and keep the work that were doing for our own staff going, and i just, i dont know if there are answers any to right now, but i want to throw that out there for something we should be considering, as is there a way for us to allocate something towards a more regular basis so we make sure were just not asking people for their own volunteer time to keep the work of the Department Going forward in Racial Equity. So thats an excellent point and your point about metrics and concrete feedback, on how were doing is heard and taken. We arent actually tracking everything from a Racial Equity lens, even if were doing work that way. So what gets measured gets managed, if you will, and feedback so what we are really trying to do is figure out how we institutionalize the work such that it gets trapped better. To your point, commissioner stephenson, its really such a good one. So this training we did with robin di angelo was not free and we had to find departmental funds to pay for it and therefore, it was only offered to Senior Leadership because it wasnt cheap for us and we didnt feel like we could ask for a scholarship because we were coming from government. Thirty two of us took a class oracial oppression, and that was free, in the sense we didnt have to pay for t but we had to take our own staff time. So i think what we will be looking for are what are opportunities where the training itself is not, doesnt have a cost. The cost is very much the Time Commitment that we will donate. So its not volunteer time. When that becomes tricky, is for our staff who are funded by grants, this is where we do need that pot of money to think about how we have among our staff, to get the training so those people do not need to volunteer their time. I of course transformed in the last five week theys never understood was possible because of the work i was doing and throofs personal. And so i think we have to start there. As well as looking at our own structures and so one of the things were doing, were also requiring that every team meeting thats from the Different Program areas, as equities as a standing agenda item and that the responsibility to fill that agenda item is with the team itself. So that they can ask for speakers. They can ask for article that is they want read and cared about so its just a way that were bringing that conversation, and that personal growth into the norm of the way the department operates. So, i guess thats a longwinded answer to something that is really a challenge that you bring up. It would be nice if the city had a way, a Scholarship Program or if the unions had ways that they could help support departments for specific trainings or dhr. It would be great if dhr would have sponsored these trainings. And maybe they will. Thank you. Any other commissioner comments seeing none, lets open it to Public Comment. To make Public Comment, dial 3 to be addd to speaker line. Pleads let us know if there are callers that are ready. Press 3 to be added to the queue. Those on hold tht queue. Please continue to wait until it is your turn to speak. We currently have no callers in the queue. Seeing that theres no Public Comment and no discussion, Public Comment is now closed. Next item, pleads. Item 6. Presentation to highlight the Green Business Program Support during covid19 to Small Businesses, sponsor is debra the direct omplet speaker is kevin green representative. The past few months of course incredibly difficult for our Small Business community. Thousands of Small Businesses, literally, have closed their door for good. Thousands are suffering and stugling to keep their doors open or to stay afloat, to be allowed to stay open. Just as president stephenson suggested, this slowdown time we should ask ourselves what can we be doing to help our small ms . They have always been an area of focus for us. How do we need to pivot our work so that it is particularly helpful in this moment . And we also want to look very particularly at our Green Businesses. That is the cohort of Small Businesses that we have a direct relationship with and its also a cohort of business that is we would like to become larger and so perhaps, in fact, the slowdown is a good moment for other businesses to start thinking about how to green their operations as well. So youre going to be hearing today, from kevin kumataka, who is our Green Business Program Coordinator and he says been thinking a lot about this and hes going to tell you ways that his program, has pivoted. Ways we are supporting and respecting Green Businesses and ways we are trying to focus our energy on resilience and recovery on the business sector in San Francisco. So with that, heres kevin. Great. Can you see me and hear me . Great. And when you have a chance, can you bring up the presentation in. Im bringing it up now. Great. Thank you. Great. Thank you much, commissioner, for give ming this opportunity to speak. Im speaking on behalf of my Green Business team so yeah. This is in the collective work of a team and im happy to share this information. Howarhow Green Program has been pivoting to support Small Businesses for covid19. Go ahead. Next slide. Before we talk about the initiatives of how weesk pivoting ill give a quick overview of our Green Business program. Our Program Helps businesses achieve a wide range of environmental best practices and are in recognition for their accomplishments. So i see our mitionz as twofold. We create a high set of environmental standards. And then we do the verifying with the businesses to make sure we have met those standards so that theyre certified. But were also a Business Assistance program, helping any business in San Francisco become more environmentally friend lee. Next slide we work with 30 other Green Business programs across the state and these programs are either ran at the city level or mostly at the county level. The areas in dark green is where we have existing programs and the areas in white green on the map are where we plan to expand and have Green Business programs. Collectively, we are the Green Business network and we recognize over 4,000 businesses across the state and our focus is on mostly, small to mediumsized businesses. Next slide. Our Small Business community is really struggling. We did see an influx of businesses sign up for the program. Largely, this is because businesses werent able to operate and they have heard about the Green Business program but after we have had initial cmpgzs with many of those businesses, its been difficult for them to follow up because they are facing a number of issues. Many of our businesses had to cease operation completely, like a lot of our hotels. Many of our businesses have had to lay off esms a lot of them are really struggling to pay bills, and the businesses like, a lot of office firms, they are working remotely so they are really struggling to operate with the same efficiency they were running before shelter in place. So as a response, our programs take in three actions. We then promoting information, e had a social Media Campaign and we have also instituted a [indiscernible] program. First, ill talk about some of the Financial Resources that weesk sharing on our facebook page. We have been providing updates on programs like the Payroll Protection Program and the citys Small Business relief fund. As well as Small Business grants, provided by private companies. Next slide. Were also sharing critical information like reopening time line for businesses and what to do if your an employee that tested positive for covid19 and what are some of the resources that are available. Next slide. And our partner, the california Green Business network put on a Webinar Series called Business Recovery and resilience and the webinars of course focused on pivoting your business and loan options and forgiveness. Also, operating beyond crisis management. Negotiating rents, lease strategies and insurance optionses. Ask we also have another webinar coming up on september 16. And this one will be held in spanish and my supervisor will be talking about green cleaning and disinfecting. All right. Next slide. Information has come out in our department, around best practices, around greening and disinfecting. We have shared information like the stat sheet on our facebook page, as well as in our Green Business news letter and during our virtual site individual says. So before we would go into the location of a business to do the voiftionz processes, were all doing this most mostly through the teams Video Conference application. But this information around green cleaning has been really helpful and we have got a lot positive feedback because believeses are really interested on ways they can remain green while making sure that theyre following the best practices on disinfecting next slide. Ask we have also run a romotional ad campaign for our Green Businesses, really letting customers know that our Green Businesses are open and to shop green during shelter in place. 24 businesses participated and it was completely free for all the businesse business the the n the right is from cold hardware, and the business on the right is from catering in the ad campaign, runs through until the end of august, and already, we have generated 1700 clicks from the campaign and 1,600,000 impressions. And beings submitted their highend photos and descriptions of their Current Business services and in the phot oh, we have incredible adventures and one of our Green Business preschools. Next slide. We have offered a Rebate Program to, help businesses stay green, and this is basically a 500 rebate or predate and other cost of the predate program is to help pay for items that would have qualified them to become a certified Green Business and were paying for these items up front, which [indiscernible] ine financial and logistical burden for a business to figure out a qualifying product thats green, that meets our Program Standards and then, waiting for a rebate we asked bees, and there are 19 businesses that participated, what type of items they would want and they can purchase items like copy paper, bticertified to go ware. Led lights. Cleaning products. There was a course for toilet paper, especially in the beginning and we worked one of our Green Businesses to purchase and these items were then shipped to those buildingses that participated once we made this announcement, all the funds were in 24 hours and we got wonderful feedback our promotional ad campaign, they actually took advance of the rebate. For the support, during this extremely difficult time of covid19, business interruption. The 500 Rebate Program, helped us purchase, recycled paper towels and dticompliance togo boxes for our Takeout Service the past couple of mons. We appreciated the social media on facebook, promote being our takeout program as well we hope we can reopen completely soon. Operating the busy green restaurant and brewery, this is from the general manager at thirsty bear brewing company. They are operating just for takeout now and if you havent tried their palle paella, i highly recommend it. Next slide. Another m we were able to help out, is Grace Tabernacle community church, located out in hunters point. I was really excited to work with this business and provide them with some predates. They were part of an existing campaign for our Green Business program, to work with businesses in districts 10 and 11 which the corridor, and excel yore corridor. In the future, this is something our program is going to continue working into the next fiscal year. Helping businesses with predate and rebates a as well as other owner Business Owners and people color. Next slide. Throughout the process, we have been changing our messaging we dont want to be insensitive to the reality of the situation and Say Something liker no, this is a perfect time to get certified businesses are stugling to stay built. They have a lot going on so were focusing on how can we help your business really recover and maintain being a resilient business in San Francisco. And also helping buildingses with leds, that will lower their utility bills. And i will close with an inhave itation. The inhave itation is really f you have be that is you know personally, that can use additional assistance at that time. That are looking to green their operations, stay green during this difficult time please send them our way, were happy to help out. Thats it. Thank you. Thank you for the present aismghtsz commissioners, any comments or questions for kevin. Commissioner, do you have a hand raise friday before if kevin, i appreciate the fact that the messaging is thoughtful and its consistent with our values of department. Certainly, resilience is the big part of the work we do. I think getting out there, there is this part of me that says, theres all these empty businesses that can be complete clee retrofitted right now. Not the time to go out with that kind of a hardcharging insensitive message. I think the way you get it done is fantastic. And the social media took a double hit of getting to support the m and promote them at the same time you helped them with their splice and stay on the green track. I appreciate all the work that you guys are doing all right. If theres no more commissioner comments commissioner stephenson. This is for cefng. Do we have outside members, that want to say a few word . s. Yes. Thank you much for that reminder, charles. Great. Can you all hear me . My name is benny, the owner of lamidy tase tran ecialtion. A restaurant here in San Francisco on berkeley. I want to just quickly take this opportunity to thank you all and kevin in particular. To share very briefly, about my experience thus far. Its been a very rewarding experience to work with the Green Business program and the department of environment. To get our businesses certified. And for us, keeping that momentum through covid19 is a very challenging one. These are times when its easy to cut corners. So i really see a Great Potential for a couple of directions that the the Green Business program can take. Especially most of the our restaurants are operating to go. Its an opportunity to bring awareness we have a great Composting Program in San Francisco want this is really an opportunity to make best use of it. And tied to that is really, encouraging the Green Business program to find new ways to promote Green Business. Ask one thought that came to me is it just came to me while i was linking to kevin. Was linking to kevin. That we are focusing on natural gas in our climate work. Its also important to focus on natural gas for health and safety reasons, and that is a key element of the resolution that is before you tonight because we understand that natural gas in pipelines is very vulnerable. Its vulnerable to earthquakes. Its vulnerable to [indiscernible] the street. When you disturb natural gas, its incredibly explosive and has a long history of spires and loss of life. So thats why over the past 12 months weve come before you with this issue on a number of occasions and in fact with your help the city and the mayor eliminated natural gas in new construction in the municipal sector and also incentivized all Electric Buildings in the private sector as well. And these were signals to the marketplace. These initiatives were ways of the city leading by example and also letting industry know that were serious and that we want to take more steps in this direction. We are not going to be satisfied with where we are. So were not stopping here. Were not stopping with those two items. And our next step, as we promised we would, is to take a look at mandates for all electric for new construction. And the ordinance that we are working on under the leadership of supervisor Raphael Mandelman speaks to that in a very significant way. So youre going to hear a presentation today from supervisor mandelmans office, from jacob, who is a phenomenal advocate and a wonderful partner to the department of the environment. He will be talking about the ordinance and about the supervisors commitment. You will then hear again from Cyndy Comerford, this time with her hat on as our Climate Program manager, and cyndy is the one leading our efforts on this initiative. She is our point of contact with the supervisors office, with labor organizations, with the department of building inspection, because in order to get this work done, we needed to do it in a very inclusive manner that brought in as many parties as we could and cyndy will talk about that. And she will end her presentation back where she started tonight, which is talking about equity and how we think about equity when we look at this particular program. So with that, i will turn it over to jacob. Thank you so much, debbie. Can you all hear me . Yes, we can. Great. All right. Thank you, charles. Thank you so much for that introduction and good evening, commissioners. My name is jacob and im supervisor in raphaels office and really pleased to be joining us this evening on his behalf to speak about the ordinance. You know, as director, we know that natural gas is a major source of our Carbon Emissions in San Francisco, not only is it more than 40 of our citywide emissions coming from natural gas, its 80 of the emissions that are coming from our buildings in San Francisco. I think you all probably know as well that methane, which is the primary component of natural gas, is more than 80 times more potent as a Greenhouse Gas than carbon dioxide. So those are just a few of the reasons why building electrification as a particular measure is a critical component to achieving the ambitious Climate Action controls that our city has adopted including the mayors commitment to zero emissions by 2050 and to allelectric construction by the end of this decade. Natural gas is also something that introduces a lot of health and safety risks in our communities, as director raphael mentioned. We are coming up very soon on the 10year anniversary of the tragic explosion in san bruno in 2010 that leveled an entire neighborhood and actually killed three people. And more recently weve had the gas explosion here in San Francisco out on geary last year that burned several buildings as well. We all know that a major earthquake, fires caused by natural gaslines, poses a major hazard, and its also true that damaged gas lines take longer than electric service to restore in the event of an emergency. So switching over to electric service in our buildings also makes our city more resilient in the future in the face of future emergencies. Thats all in addition to some of the Everyday Health impacts that cyndy will talk about as well to residents and workers especially, people who are working in commercial kitchens with open flames, those Health Impacts are associated with increased incidence of asthma and respiratory illness as well as the risk of Carbon Monoxide exposure and of course fire. All of those reasons are why it has been a priority for the supervisor to work on building electrification. Last april, we passed unanimously, the board of supervisors, a resolution to declare a Climate Emergency in San Francisco which committed San Francisco to doing our part to limiting Global Warming emissions to below 1. 5 celsius, the level we know we have to avoid, we have to keep in order in order to avoid the most severe impacts of Climate Change. We advanced. We moved on from that to pass an ordinance last year that requires natural gas buildings to achieve a Higher Energy efficiency standard and also approve the ordinance that the director mentioned requiring all electric construction in our municipal projects as well earlier this year. Todays ordinance is going to take the next step to ban natural gas from all new Construction Projects starting for those that apply next year. The ordinance does cyndy will get into some of the details here, but i want to be clear, this applies to permit applications coming into the Building Department starting in january 1st of 2021, and there are limited exceptions where all electric construction is not technically feasible. This would cover about 60 of the Current Development pipeline and also will leave time for applicants who havent yet filed to plan accordingly but without disrupting projects that are already in our development pipeline. While this is definitely a big change, we are confident, based on the great work of your staff and the months of Stakeholder Engagement and conversations with city partners, Affordable Housing builders, representatives from the labor community, housing and mixed use developers, architects, engineers, advocates and others, weve really become confident that allelectric construction is not only technically achievable but also Cost Effective and an efficiency step to meeting our climate goals and protecting our city from future hazards. We have to note that this conversation is taking place during the incredible uncertainty posed by covid19, and while it is certainly difficult to focus on a whole lot else right now, i think one lesson that weve learned from this pandemic is that when a crisis hits, it is the steps that we took or failed to take in advance that determine how well we are able to respond. I think everyone on this commission knows that the Climate Crisis is not going away, and it will be a bold step to take today. Yes . Sorry. I thought i heard someone there. So it will be the bold steps we take today that makes a difference in the future. To wrap up against on behalf of the supervisor, i would like to thank everyone that participated that helped to get us to this point, to the environmental advocates and Community Organizations who led the call to action and worked for those throughout the entire process, and to all of our city Agency Partners at dbi, planning, Mayors Office of housing and others for their support and Technical Expertise in developing this ordinance. And of course i have to thank and really commend truly director raphael and your staff here at the department of the environment, Cyndy Comerford, barry hooper, charles sheehan, and joseph. Your work has been excellent and the dedication to convening this engagement process, the ongoing outreach, untangling the many technical considerations that are at play and really shepherding this ordinance through the process every step of the way has just been a tremendous asset to the city. So thank you all so much. I look forward to the discussion today and want to make sure that you all know this is just one step in the public review process. We went to the Building Inspection Commission earlier this month for an informational presentation, and we had a generally positive discussion with the understanding we needed to finalize some of the provisions around those exceptions that will be provided before we go back to the Building Inspection Commission at their august 19th meeting for recommendation. After that point, we would move on to the Land Use Committee of the board and then hoping to get to the full board of supervisors in september. With that, commissioners, thank you all so much for your time. I will turn it over to cyndy to walk us through the proposal and well be here of course for any success and discussion. Thank you so much. Thank you, jacob, for that introduction. That was wonderful. Good evening again, commissioners. My name is Cyndy Comerford. Im the Climate Program manager. Diedre, if you could bring up the presentation, please . Just give me a minute, please . Sure. Before i start i just want to again thank all the Department Staff that has worked on this, specifically barry hooper, charles sheehan, and i also want to thank Elizabeth Felter for doing the Equity Analysis on the legislation. Next slide. So for todays objectives, ill just briefly touch on the health, safety, resilience and climate context. Weve heard a little bit about that in our introductory presentation, so i wont spend a lot of time on that. But i will review in detail our stakeholder process and our outreach. Ill go through the key tenets of the legislation. Ill talk a little bit about the impacts, particularly around the Cost Effectiveness and the impacts to our housing pipeline, and then well talk a little bit about the implementation and the equity. Next slide. So the context for this legislation is really around health, safety, resilience, and climate. All four of them together. This legislation provides an update to the San Francisco Building Code, which we are able to make amendments under the purview of the health and safety code. And the objective of this proposed legislation is to really recognize these health, safety, resilience and climate impacts of mixed fuel buildings and ensure that new construction does not exacerbate any of these impacts. Next slide. So weve heard a lot in the introductory remarks about these impacts, so i wont spend a lot of time on it. But generally we know natural gas is bad for our health. Theres various acute and chronic Health Impacts around exposure to natural gas. We know that natural gas impacts safety and resilience. We are coming on the anniversary of san bruno. But on average in the united states, gas or Oil Pipelines catch fire every four days, result in injuries every five days, theres an explosion every 11 days, and leads to a fatality every 26 days. We know that we are in earthquake country here in San Francisco, and that the ability to restore our utility service, its estimated to be about a week after a 7. 9 earthquake for electricity, and almost 6 months for natural gas. And lastly, for low income communities and communities of color who are more likely to suffer some of the Health Impacts, such as asthma due to poor indoor air quality, zero emission homes are an important opportunity to deliver social equity benefits. Next slide. And so weve heard a lot about the climate impacts of natural gas. We know that about 44 of our climate pollution comes from buildings and thats dominated by natural gas. So 82 of building emissions stem from the use of gas, which is mostly from space heating and cooling, hot water, cooking, and other uses. Next slide. So im going to the next section im going to discuss our stakeholder outreach process on the development of this ordinance. Next slide. So our mayor has committed to net zero emissions by 2050, and this includes all New Buildings being net zero emissions by 2030 and all existing buildings being net zero emissions by 2050. And to accomplish this goal, we embarked on launching the mayors zero emission Building Task force. To make sure that we had inclusive and diverse engagement that really helped guide the city on the development of this ordinance. So as you can see from this slide, the zero emission task force had multiple [indiscernible] and today were only going to focus on the new Construction Work Group and the deliverables from that working group. There are other working groups that looked at existing buildings, but at this point you dont have any policy outcomes around existing buildings and we still have much, much more work to come. There are a lot of challenges around our existing building infrastructure, and thats something well be working on for years to come. So just to reiterate, the ordinance were talking about today will only focus on newly constructed buildings. It doesnt apply to renovations or major alterations. So this slide kind of shows the structure of the task force, and the new construction working group, which formally met three times, but we also had many Sub Committee meetings and the working group really brought together participants from key perspectives, and this included community and neighborhood advocacy group, affording housing developers, commercial and residential owners and developers, investors, design professionals, environmental advocates, work force and labor representatives, and also our City Departments. We also had an executive Steering Committee Meeting Committee in which we reported the findings from our work group, which was also a publicprivate Steering Committee. So today im going to talk about the deliverables from this work group around the new construction ordinance and the task force report. Next slide. So i know this slide might be hard to read but it really is just to exemplify an overview and the breadth of our outreach efforts. Our outreach efforts not only centered about getting the ordinance done, but really about establishing expectations for longterm partnerships. We made a really goodfaith effort to build trust with our stakeholders and really identify opportunities for the city to be a partner in this process. So we had a partnership agency, dbi has been with us every step of the way and has also spent many hours developing this ordinance. So i want to express my gratitude to both james zahn and mosan sheikh for all the time they have spent on this work. In addition to our new Construction Group working, we had various workshops and expos, we have met with Affordable Housingfa developers, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and all together we had over 15 convenings and were able to interact with over 750 people on the development of this ordinance. Next slide. So this slide just summarizes the new Construction Work Group feedback that we heard, specifically around the Ordinance Development. So around timing, applicability, implementation, and equity of the ordinance. And so the first thing we heard is that we need to act now. Delaying this type of policy would not make the transition earlier. We know that zero emission technologies are available and Cost Effective, and when buildings continue to put fossil fuel systems in new construction, it will eventually just become a liability for the owner. We heard over and over again that health and resilience are reallyq paramount to equity, d so many concerns about the need for the city to really remove fossil fuels from buildings. We also heard that our stakeholders want help making smart decisions, that our participants would benefit from a clear warning, clear messages, and they wanted the city to be a partner in this work. And lastly that Workforce Development and stakeholder education are really necessary to the success of this ordinance. Zero emission buildings are a significant shift in design and construction, and successful implementation is going to require the city to invest in resources and outreach and education and to support workforce training. Next slide. This slide is just to let you know, although in addition to all the outreach in San Francisco around allElectric Buildings, this is also a statewide, if not nationalwide movement. One of the top questions we got, you know, is the grid, the grid capacity there . And pg e was also a stakeholder in this process. They have publicly supported this new ordinance, and they have expressed that they do not want to continue to invest in Gas Infrastructure. In addition to pg e, we have probably close to 30 cities around california that have already passed ordinances that either restrict or eliminate the use of natural gas in buildings. And lastly, we have the state as a partner. Both the California Public Utility Commission and California Energy commission is starting to plan for a fossil fuelfree future. Next slide. So the next portion of this presentation im going to dive in to kind of the meat of the actual legislation and the ordinance. Next slide. So, again, just to reiterate, this amendment is not an energy code. We have the local authority under the California Health and safety code. And so well be amending both section 106 a and 202 of the Building Code. There are key sections to note one, the project will apply the ordinance will apply to projects applying for initial Building Permits after january 1st, 2021. And this is to ensure that the building operations, which include heating, cooling, water heating, cooking, clothes drying, must be all electric. Once we have allElectric Buildings, no permits will be issued to convert allElectric Buildings into mixed fuel buildings. So you cant get a permit for natural gas post occupancy. Lets go to the next slide. For projects that include a commercial food service establishment, such as a restaurant, mixed fuel Building Permits may continue to be accepted to january 1st, 2022, provided the gas piping is exclusively for the cooking equipment. We heard earlier in kevins presentation the impact of covid19 on the Restaurant Industry, and as we worked with them and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, our outreach was really curtailed because of this pandemic, and we want to continue to provide more outreach and education over the next year and a half to make sure were setting up the Restaurant Industry for success. So getting into the last two key components of the ordinance, there is an exception process. So in the rare case its needed, mixed fuel permits may be issued upon findings that allelectric construction is either physically or technically infeasible or a specific area or system of the building. And lastly, if a mixed fuel Building Permit is issue, that building must be as electricready as possible, and make sure that it complies with all other provisions of the building and electrical code. For those who arent familiar with the term electric ready, that means the building would have to be prewired to can you still hear me . Yes, we can. We can hear you, cyndy. Sorry, something happened. I cant see the slides anymore. I think i have them memorized. I can keep going. So just electric ready means that a mixed that a building would have to be prewired so it can convert from a mixed fuel building to an Electric Building in the future. So, next slide. Thats the impact slide . Yeah. If you can just give me one second. Im not sure what happened, but all of a sudden the web browser closed, but if you can still hear me, maybe if i just pull up a copy of that presentation, i can see it. Okay. I have it on my computer. So lets keep going. Apologies. So next lets talk about impact. So im going to talk about the cost impacts of this ordinance and then also talk about the impacts to development. So, next slide. So this slide here illustrates data from three different public Cost Effectiveness studies from the state codes and standards. In it it shows that generally allElectric Buildings cost less, and in many scenarios, the Construction Costs are less, which is depicted on the change in Construction Cost column and also the negative numbers represent a reduction in costs from the first cost, and the elimination of the natural Gas Infrastructure. And then the column on the right, which i believe is labelled lifetime net present value, kind of shows the cost savings over the last time of the building compared to mixed fuel building. So generally while we see reductions in costs in these studies, weve had an opportunity to review some real life examples, and generally we think that the ordinance is cost neutral and does provide some cost savings. And if we go to the next slide, we can see an example of an actual building thats being built and we can look at some of the cost benefits that have been realized. So this is 100 Affordable Housing development thats being built on treasure island. Its called the maseo may apartments. We can see key drivers, theres savings around the elimination of a hot solar water heater and the elimination of natural gas. There are some additions in costs adding a heat pump water heater. Overall for this project we saw a net impact of about a little less than 250,000 in costs p. So, next slide. And so this slide kind of gives an example of an array of buildings in San Francisco that are already being built and that are allelectric. We have some fantastic examples. The first one there, 260 fulsome is one thats under construction. We actually had an opportunity to go to the site with supervisor mandelman and debbie, our director raphael, and this is 127 permanently Affordable Housing for low Income Housing and there will be homeless transition units and parenting units. Its such a fantastic story about all of the Community Input and the partnerships that went into developing this housing around the social support and just a great story, so if you have the time, i totally recommend checking out that site. Next slide. So i think jacob had mentioned earlier about the applicability to our housing pipeline, and i know this slide is a little hard to understand, but the key takeaway, if you look at the new ordinance will apply to about 65 of our buildings in the housing pipeline. So these are buildings that have not submitted an initial application to dbi. So if we look at that circle, everything in green, the new ordinance will apply to. Next slide. So i have two more things to quickly cover in my presentation. The next part of the presentation im going to talk a little bit about the implementation, and the implementation isnt specified in the ordinance, but i think its really important to kind of understand how were approaching the implementation, and then lastly ill talk about the equity. So next slide. So this slide shows an overview of the process. The department of Building Inspections will be the permitting agency for this ordinance. So starting in january 2021, all new initial applications to dbi, if its an allElectric Building, will just go through the regular Building Application process. So theres no special documentation needed. In the rare case, a building needs to apply for an exemption because of physical or technical infeasibility. It will have to go through a waiver process. And so we are right now we are working with staff at dbi to develop something called ab112 or administrative bulletin 112, and this will provide guidance to dbi on how to verify these types of exemptions. And so if you submit a waiver for an exemption, youll also have to submit a verification from a Third Party Reviewer, and this Third Party Review system is known as a special inspection, and its something that dbi uses for systems and situations that require special analysis or expertise. So dbi has uses, fire, seismic, and Green Building code. And so that waiver would be submitted in. Again, these exemptions are really limited to technical and physical infeasibility. The circumstances really need to be exceptional or extraordinary. Its on the project sponsor to demonstrate the infeasibility. And then when there is an exemption for mixed fuel, as i stated earlier, the building must be as electricready as possible. And once all this documentation is submitted into dbi, theres a plan review meeting and the Building Official could either approve or reject the waiver. Next slide. So as i mentioned earlier, on the last slide, were in the process of developing guidance for dbi, and really to make sure that we can provide the best information to make decisions on exemptions. And so what will be in this guidance document is really around code conflicts, and this is specific to electrical transformers. If theres issues around utility infrastructure, energy code conflicts for with title 24, or any other exceptional or extraordinary circumstances that we are not able to foresee. Next slide. So the last part of this presentation we want to talk about the equity scan, and i had the opportunity to mention this in my first presentation, that this is a process that will be required by the office of equity starting next calendar year. But we at the department have already developed a tool and have been Pilot Testing it on legislation. So this is our first piece of public legislation that we have tested it on and its still a workinprocess, but we thought this would be a great opportunity to present the feedback from that equity scan tool, and we have also shared a draft of the report with the commission. So there were five equity concerns and recommendations that are team identified. And the first one was around Energy Burdens for tenants, and when we talked about the cost, on the Cost Effectiveness slide, the cost looks over the lifetime of the building. So over 30 years. You may want to move to the next slide, cyndy. Im sorry. Thats okay. Can we move to the equity scan assessment and recommendations slide, please . Theyre there. Sorry. Its a little challenging not being able to see. So when we look at the operations or the Cost Effectiveness, its assessed over the lifetime of the building, and we really want to know better to make sure that there arent Energy Impacts for shortterm tenants. And so the recommendation is to really work with utility regulators on making sure that we have equitable rate structures, making sure that were working with tenants around energy costs, and also, if needed, to expand assistance for lower income tenants. The next equity concern was around impacts to Affordable Housing. We have done significant outreach to Affordable Housing developers. Weve met with almost 40 professionals in the field. Affordable housing has been leaders in this field. But we know what San Franciscos housing crisis has looked like, and we definitely want to make sure theres no impact to Affordable Housing. So we want to make sure, as a recommendation, that we continue to prioritize outreach and Technical Assistance to Affordable Housing developers who arent experienced with electrification, and make sure theres a Feedback Mechanism to understand any potential unintended consequences around the ordinance. The next equity concern was lack of workforce considerations. The ordinance, as we know, is an update to the Building Code. And so there is a recommendation to make sure that theres assistance to black, indigenous, and people of colorowned businesses and to make sure that were targeting training towards these groups and that were able to provide incentives and hire and direct towards black, indigenous, and people of colorowned businesses. Our fourth equity concern was around impacts to restaurants, which i talked about earlier. The equity recommendation kind of concurred with our exemption for a year, that a longer implementation period is needed. And this will present us an opportunity to better understand burdens and do outreach and education to this hardly hit industry from covid19. And lastly that, you know, resources are needed to advance Racial Equity. All the things i mentioned take resources and funding, and so to look to maybe create a fund that uses Climate Justice principles where maybe largest buildings computers pay for the transition and maybe considering a fee to large existing commercial buildings to assist with this transition. Next slide. That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for listening to me talk twice this evening. I know its a lot. And were here to answer any questions you have about the legislation or equity scan or additional work that i presented on. That was great and it was masterful at the point where you lost your slides and kept going just off the top of your head. That was great. Thank you. Commissioners, i look forward to hearing any thoughts and comments that you may have. Commissioner chu . Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for speaking about this. This is so exciting. As a former architect, really pushing this forward is really wonderful for the city and i was just wondering, in the context of other cities, is this really pioneering legislation . Are we one of the first to do it . Are we behind and we need to catch up . Can you help contextualize the magnitude of this ordinance in the context of how everyone else is approaching it . Thats a great question. Thank you. So berkeley, california, was the first city to do a similar ordinance that they proposed last i think it was last fall, so last septemberoctober. Its a little different than our ordinance that looks at land use and the entitlement process. So there are some differences, but i think they have somewhat similar outcomes. Although, you know, we in San Francisco have really been thoughtful about our Stakeholder Engagement process and feel like the production of housing in San Francisco really supersedes what they do in berkeley, so we feel like the ordinance will be much more impactful in San Francisco. But we did learn a lot from working with berkeley. San jose also falls quite probably last fall too where they have eliminated the use of natural gas in lowrise buildings, so four units or less. So we do definitely have a pretty expansive ordinance in that it applies to all new residential and commercial buildings in San Francisco. Thank you. Anyone else . Commissioner . Thank you. What i really want to ask at this point is whether or not it might be possible for us to hear the Public Comments first and use that perhaps to inform our discussion . I do have some substantive comments, but if its okay with people, i would like to know what the public are thinking about this, if there are any. Oh, we have a few on the phone line. Yes, i think that sounds i dont think theres any i dont think we have any issues with taking it out of order a little bit. Great. Lets do that. So, charles, why dont we move Public Comment and reserve some discussion time at the end. A reminder to anyone who would like to speak, please press star 3 in order to be added to the queue. Thank you, commissioner. Im told there is now a 45second delay, and so we may have to wait a second. Operations, please let us know if there are callers that are ready. If you have not already done so, please press star 3 to be added to the queue. For those already on hold in the queue, please continue to wait until it is your turn to speak. Operations, do we have 30 more seconds we need to wait, approximately, or do you have some you are ready to go with . We have 14 callers currently in the queue. Can we hear the first caller . Go ahead, caller caller hi, commissioners, and everyone. This is joy, a resident of district 10. First of all, i am thrilled to see this ordinance introduced as the first really major Climate Policy since the city declared a Climate Emergency last year. I do support it. But i think it can be stronger. Im concerned about the complete exemption through 2022 for developers building potential restaurant space in newly constructed buildings. I totally understand that the impact of covid19 on the Restaurant Industry has been way beyond devastating but i think theres been some misunderstanding about what this legislation would do. I want to make clear that it does not affect existing restaurants at all in any way, and so the exemption through 2022 does not help existing restaurants in any way. Also, continuing to add Gas Pipelines to the citys infrastructure would only increase pollution, methane leaks, and danger of explosion, especially in neighbourhoods already disproportionately affected by Climate Change. I also worry that gaspowered kitchens will continue to expose restaurant workers, many of whom continue to work throughout this pandemic, through excessive heat buildup and bad air. Many of these workers are among populations most at risk from respiratory disease, including covid19. But thanks for considering this aspect. And id also like to mention that i attended the fair on the west side and the cooking demos were great. I now have a portable induction cooktop and we almost never use gas burners anymore. Its really wonderful. If we get out of this pandemic, i recommend you hold a similar fair on the east side and publish it a lot more. Actually during the pandemic, it doesnt matter where you live so id like to suggest that you introduce a very wellpublicized Virtual Energy fair. Thanks. Okay. Next caller . caller district 6 [indiscernible]. I am a renter and someone, my hometown on the east coast in Washington County is expected to be disproportionately impacted by Climate Change. It is important to deal with methane emissions, theyre so potent, as the commissioner says. Thanks for your work on this. I believe that the ordinance can be stronger and they make sure in the exemption process that n and to make sure that any project that is found to be quote, unquote, infeasible is exempted only for reasons that are in the public interest, so im concerned about powerful and connected people being able to get favors and we need sunshine on the exemption process so that the public has insight into how this works. Thanks for your time on this important issue and thanks for helping our residents and the climate. Thank you, caller. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. My name is stuart collins. Im a resident of san francisc San Francisco district 5. Im calling in to support this ordinance as well. Thank you for the thorough work. I was so impressed with all the work that you put into that, really months since december. So way to go. Im a parent and i have a 3yearold and now when i go into my gas kitchen, which ive kind of assumed how gas kitchens are, i look at them, oh, my gosh, what am i doing well, not what im doing but this might have an impact on my child and im considering moving homes and one of the things im looking for is electric infrastructure and electric stove in the home i move into. So i really support this in new construction and just as a general thing in San Francisco. I also share what joni mentioned two calls ago, the exemption for kitchens until 2022. The problem seems to or the restaurants in trouble today, new construction doesnt really help them, so i dont know how the exemption until 2022 assists that. But you might know more about it than i do. It might really help with getting it passed. If it helps getting it passed, that might be something to consider. But the rationale hasnt been fully landed for me. Otherwise, transparency on any exemptions, super important. 30 seconds caller thank you for all your work on this and thats my comment. Great. Thank you, caller. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. My name is daniel tahara. Im proud to be a subsequent of supervisor mandelman. Im joined together with 30 local organizations to support the ordinance and ways in which it can be made stronger. Just as a note when i checked the supporting documents for the meeting today, it looks like emails made itnr in but not the attachments. The coalition is excited about the ordinance, a big step in the right direction, applying it to Building Permit rather than entitlement, like we saw in berkeley, means that it covers a really large swath of the buildings in the pipeline while being fair to the parties who submitted their plans. Lastly that it requires specific limited exceptions to only the particular Electrical Systems that are infeasible rather than the whole building. As i mentioned, i would like to ask the commission to recommend changes to the ordinance as laid out by earth justice, the sierra club and the San Francisco Climate Emergency coalition in their letter. In particular, as other callers have mentioned, eliminating the blanket exemption for commercial kitchens, delaying compliance until 2022, eliminating the feasibility exemption to the requirement, and making fully electricready construction a baseline requirement for new construction. Weve seen this in berkeley with their ordinance as well as in i think 30 seconds caller 20 and 30 municipalities in the bay area, in california, that electricready is just a requirement. I also would like to see the ordinances definition of mixed fuel building expanded to include lab, industrial, and decorative uses of gas, and lastly, amending Ordinance Section 106 a to require sufficient evidence is submitted to substantiate the infeasibility of a building or project inaudible . Thank you, caller. Appreciate that. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. This is [indiscernible]. I live in district 8, supervisor mandelmans district. Im a home owner in a small condo building. And we are starting to have discussions about retrofitting to allelectric. Im really proud of that. I strongly support the allelectric new construction. I agree with everything that i read in your emails, comments, and arguments. And i also second what everyone has said on calls to limit exemptions. Id like to address a decorative gas exemption. I have three friends, at least three, who have those faux fireplaces, theyre electric. They use a kind of Video Technology to mimic a three dimensional fireplace. Theyre not cheesy. They look great. Theres no need for anyone to have a natural gas fire place when we have the technology to provide decorative fireplaces. And the second thing id like to say is ive been following fbi investigation of dpw and other departments in San Francisco and i would like to reiterate that there be transparency and strict oversight over any exemption thats granted. Thank you very much. Last thing i want to say, im very jealous that certain people got to take a Robin Deangelo work shop. Im reading her book now. Thank you. Bye. Thank you, caller, very much for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi there. Im chris. Im a resident of San Francisco. Although the ordinance is a good step in the right direction, were the city of San Francisco and we hold ourselves to high environmental and equity sense. I want to answer to work with supervisor mandelman to make the following changes to the ordinance. One. Please make the process more transparent to the public and ensure that any exemptions are exclusively decided on the basis of the public interest. Frankly through the ongoing corruption throughout various City Departments, San Franciscoans have lost faiths in their government. The currently proposed exemption process with further mistrust that can only be mitigated with further transparency. Specifically im very concerned about the ordinance definition of mixed fuel buildings. It is critical to amend section 106 a to ensure it does not include financial infeasibility. It would fix this loophole and i strongly encourage you to adopt this language. Shall be determined without regard of Square Footage area. This will prevent developers from. House necessary equipment for all electric environment and transformers. This amendment ensures that the focus remains on Public Health and welfare rather than profit maximization for developers and landlords while giving the Building Officials proper discretion. That may serve the purpose of public interest. Amend the ordinance to prohibit laboratory and decorative uses of gas in buildings. As written developers a lot of these Industrial Buildings will be wholly exempt. This is inconsistent with other jurisdictions thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello. I am a resident of district 10. My name is brioni. I am a parent and i have a lot of family members with asthma. Im really strongly in support of this legislation and i would like it to move further, if possible. The sooner that we are able to reduce the amount of dependence our society has on fossil fuels, the better we will all be able to breathe. So if you can expand the definition to include laboratory, industrial, and decorative uses of gas, especially decorative uses, we should not be harming our Public Health for the sake of [indiscernible]. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller good evening, folks. My name is matt levine, 35 years living in San Francisco and currently in district 2. I think the case is made really spectacularly about obviously the need to address the Climate Crisis, Environmental Justice, racial justice, et cetera, and im calling tonight as a youth mentor, volunteered about 11 years, and also as someone who is unemployed in the Restaurant Catering business. I think the first thing has been clearly established, but there are so many of those kids that we work with through an Organization Called city of dreams out of the oakdale, the old oakdale Housing Community center that have asthma, and until i became aware of this issue, it never dawned on me. I always thought it had to do with much more Industrial Power plant emissions, so clearly that imperative is established. As far as restaurants, again, everyone has stated how it doesnt impact current facilities, but what i will say, even in those, the technology is 60plus years old. Anyone who has worked in a large kitchen comes in after a couple of days dark and those pilot lights are burning nonstop, and furthermore, the industry is committed to innovation, so 30 seconds caller that along with a number of franchises that are part of the people protesting this movement, i just hope you look at the justice and sierra club recommendations and include them in this otherwise really strong proposal. Thanks very much. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller good evening. My name is alaina engel, im a district 9 resident. I support this ordinance. It is a powerful and a brave stance for the city of San Francisco to take this. And it is a necessary and timely measure for both our individual health and for the collective health of all the beings on this planet. We do not have much time left to stop the grave damage that our use of fossil fuels is causing, so i commend the department of the environment and supervisor mandelman for bringing forth this new legislation. My hope is that you will approve it and that you will make sure that there are as few loopholes and exception exceptions writtet that would potentially allow buildings to continue to pollute with methane natural gas. Allowing New Buildings to be built even partially with gas will only cause future problems when these same buildings will have to be retrofitted to strip out the Gas Infrastructure and replace with electricity. Let us remember, should we hear any objections to these measures, that the use of methane in buildings is incompatible with a livable world. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello. Thank you, commissioners. My name is tara sheer and im a resident of San Francisco district 12. Im also a fourth Year Medical Student at ucsf, and i strongly support requiring new construction to be allelectric. The use of natural gas in buildings poses many risks to health. As a future pediatrician, i want to especially highlight the risks to children. A meta analysis on the association between gas stoves and childhood asthma found that children in homes with gas stoves have a 24 higher risk of ever being diagnosed with asthma than a 42 higher risk of experiencing asthma symptoms. Use of natural gas in buildings releases nitrogen dioxide and other air pollutants that are triggers of lung and heart disease. Theres no known safe threshold for nitrogen dioxide exposure, and especially when our communities front line workers including restaurant workers and our Health Care Resources are so strained during this pandemic, its crucial that we limit harmful indoor pollution exposure to the people of San Francisco. Finally, using natural gas in buildings releases potent climatewarming pollutants like methane that are driving Climate Change. We have a moral obligation to lower our Carbon Footprint to protect people who are most vulnerable to Climate Change, including low income communities of color and children born today. 30 seconds caller i urge the commission to support requiring new construction to be allelectric. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. Thanks for taking my comments. My name is jeff and i live in district 9 in the mission. I live across the street from [indiscernible], and im one more voice in strong support of this ordinance to prohibit natural gas in new construction. Weve heard plenty today about the harm that natural gas does to our local and global environment, and i just wanted to make a point that we have heard a little bit less about which is the writing is on the wall, the day will come when the natural gas will be turned off in San Francisco and all of california forever, like our governor has committed to it, the mayor has committed to it, and there will be a day when pg e doesnt want to support it anymore. We are already in a very deep hole of infrastructure that will have to be retrofitted before that day comes, and if the supervisor fails to adopt this ordinance, every new mixed fuel building we build will dig that hole deeper. Every new building that has natural Gas Infrastructure racks up another charge on our Energy Transition credit card that will have to be paid off in the future with interest. And im quite certain that the political constituencies that are rooting for this change to be delayed, to keep building more mixed fuel buildings in the near future, that they are not the ones that will be paying for those retro fits. That will be the Property Owners and taxpayers of San Francisco. Several callers have referenced the letter from the earth justice, sierra club and the Climate Emergency coalition, and i wanted to also voice my support for that letter and the changes it proposes. Weissel words like infeasible weasel words like infeasible channeling toward making more Electric Buildings. Thank you very much. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello. My name is martin mccarol, longtime resident of San Francisco, currently in district 5. I want to say thank you to everybody who is involved in this. Its really terrific to see this happening, and i think this is a really good step forward. I wanted to look ahead a little bit obviously not even long term but the short to mediumterm goal has to be dismantling and removing natural Gas Infrastructure. For me one of the things thats most worrying is the Public Safety implications when there are earthquakes. And so to do that, we really need to minimize exceptions as much as possible. So im one more person in favor of removing the exception for laboratory and Industrial Buildings and decorative uses of gas. If there is a building that really needs to use gas, then they will find some other way. The free market will do its magic. Perhaps there wont need to be deliveries of propane, whatever it is. When we do that, what we do is we confine the risk to where it is absolutely needed rather than having a network of pipes underneath our city, you know, ready to cause problems for us all. One other thing that i would point out for work looking forward. When i talk to people i know, home owners, about going allelectric, their one big concern that comes up is, hey, listen, pg e keeps shutting down electricity 30 seconds. caller so one thing as we go to allelectric is thinking about how can we be more resilient in our electric use and finding ways to make sure that within houses and maybe smaller units like blocks, we have resilience in electricity. Thank you very much. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. My name is barry hermanson. I am the chair of the Sierra Club Conservation committee here of the group of the sierra club in San Francisco. But i wont repeat a message that i think has already been communicated to you by the club. I wanted to say that im a former Small Business owner, and past president of my merchant association, one of the largest ones in San Francisco. This idea that we will give exemptions is insanity. This is a technology that is obsolete, and as a former business owner, i would be taking a real look today at the cost of not only installation of this Gas Infrastructure but what it might cost me down the road, either to replace it or to continue to buy gas. We may decide that we want to tax the hell out of it s until t isnt being used. I can see that in the future. So its an investment decision. 30 seconds. caller now, i dont think there should be exceptions. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller good evening, commissioners. My name is paul wormer, and id like to start by commending Cyndy Comerford and her team for all the work they have done and the outreach they have done on this project. Its been exceptional. Its hard this late in the series of comments to come up with something thats new or different. I do want to echo what the previous callers have said. And what id like to do is frame the issue of exception exception environmentally focused way. So let me start by talking about use life of buildings and equipment. Theres a lot of stuff out there about how long Heating Systems work and so on. Well, my father, who lives in the northeast, his oil furnace went in in 1968. Its still running. My motherinlaw, when she died, she had the furnace that was in the house when they bought it in 1945. Things have a much longer lifetime than occurs when youre in a city like San Francisco where people are remodeling expensive houses on the north side frequently. 30 seconds. caller buildings have a huge footprint and a very long life span. If youre giving an exception for feasibility, what happens when they need to convert in 30 years . Have we defined an unfeasible building that needs to be taken down and rebuilt . Its not a good use of Environmental Resources to have an exception. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Is there another caller . If so, please go ahead. caller hi, yes. Hi, commissioners. This is melissa yu. Im a resident of San Francisco in district 3 and im also with the sierra club. So i am calling to say our support for the ordinance, as barry mentioned earlier, because its really important that we stop building further Gas Development in our buildings, especially as were approaching wildfire season. Right now there are 32 cities in california that have adopted Building Codes to reduce their reliance on gas, and were really excited to hear that San Francisco is also joining one of these cities. As jacob mentioned, its technically feasible and economically advantageous, and like the many callers before, im also here to urge the commission to recommend changes to the ordinance, so that being eliminate the exemption for commercial kitchens, eliminate the feasibility exception to the electricready requirement, expand the ordinances definition of mixed fuel buildings, explicit add language to the ordinance that shows there will be further transparency in the case of an exemption, and amend the section 106 a 1. 17. San francisco has been a leader in many initiatives and it should continue to take the lead and set a precedent, and city leadership is essential not only for local Climate Action but also to convince the states Energy Commission to require or at least support electric new construction in the statewide Building Code, so title 24, and all of this community and city support for more ambitious Building Code sends a really strong message to the cdc to align the statewide Building Codes with the science and require the Climate Science and require allelectric new construction. Thank you for the opportunity to speak and i also want to add thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello. My name is [indiscernible]. I am a San Francisco resident of district 11, and i support this measure. Im only 20 years old, and im really scared about the future and the Climate Crisis and switching from natural gas and its a lot of methane that drives Climate Change which would be ver a very good idea fr businesses. Also the fact that theres natural gas inside restaurants poses a risk of air pollution to the people inside. So switching away from that helps with both air pollution on a global scale and also[osr9q on a smaller scale. So there better not be any loopholes, and to get loopholes in this plan removed so that we can get everyone on board. Thank you, caller. Is the next caller ready . Please go ahead. caller hello. My name is beverly sarb, im a San Francisco resident since 1980 in district 9. I strongly support prohibiting gas in new construction and for the simple reason that in an earthquake, the first concern is a gas line. And of course as people have mentioned, natural gas is an indoor and outdoor pollutant. And by the way, cooking with induction stoves is great, as we found out in a trip to europe where its used widely. And i wanted to agree with people saying, please change the ordinance as the sierra club, earth justice, and San Francisco Climate Emergency coalition recommended. And thank you so much for working so hard to give us a healthy future. Thats all. Thank you, caller. I did get a note so im going to announce the Public Comment callin number. If you want to make a comment call in at 4156550001. The access code is 146 435 2566. I believe once youre on, you press star 3 to be added to the queue. Is there another caller, operations . If so, go ahead. caller hello, this is jennifer hagey. Im a resident of San Francisco district 7. Like a prior caller, i also attended the electrification fair at the San Francisco county fairground, which reinforced my strong support for prohibiting gas in new construction. This ordinance is particularly timely, as our legislators are incenting increased Housing Construction density and only by achieving allelectric new construction by 2020 can we or in 2020 can we realistically avoid an increase in Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2040 and move forward to our path to net zero by 2050. We are fortunate that Heat Pump Technology is available and induction stoves are available and easy to use. I missed part of the equity presentation but hope that city college is a partner in your education and job training process. All of San Francisco needs to support this electricready ordinance to meet our state and city climate goals. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. Thank you very much. My name is ann limbel, and im a San Francisco resident and home owner in district 5. I want to say thank you for all the work that has been done putting this ordinance together and that i fully support banning gas in new construction. Natural gas has no place in our homes and its important for Climate Change. I support the ordinance with all the changes outlined in the letter from the San Francisco Climate Emergency and in particular i would like to request that we remove all exemptions, including ensuring [indiscernible] is not a reason for exemptions. Profit can be a reason to push the health and Public Safety of our families at risk put . I also like many callers support removing the oneyear delay to restaurants [indiscernible] will be for decades to come and theres no reason for this today. As a home owner, i really wish that my home did not have gas, both for the Health Impact and the reasons already spoken about, in the case of an earthquake. We need to move to a fully electric situation. [indiscernible] taxpayers are going to have to pay for in the future. With those changes, i very much support this ordinance and hope that well do the right thing to close these loopholes and close these exemptions that have no place here. Thank you very much. Thank you, caller. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. My name is helena bereki and im a resident of district 9. I want to thank Cyndy Comerford and everybody at the department of the environment for all the work theyve done on this ordinance and i echo everybody who has called so far in their ask to remove the loopholes from the allelectric new building legislation and then pass it asap. Allelectric is doable and its the easiest necessary step in solving the Climate Crisis as well as protecting our Public Health and safety. We cannot allow exemptions. Financial infeasibility is a myth. Its been toppled by covid. As have the people need more time to adjust. The danger of not acting on overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, has been demonstrated to be completely true by covid and applies to other Health Crises and the Climate Crisis. In terms of equity, im concerned about the possibility of pitting different equity concerns in opposition to each other. It is not equitable to make somebodys utility bill cheaper by, in exchange, sending their child to the emergency room with an asthma attack. This happens. Gas stoves in a building make it 42 more likely that a child will have asthma, and even with obama care, emergency room visits are not cheap. So i just want to say that we need, as was spoken about in the equity 30 seconds. caller presentation as well as the Green Business presentation that we need Creative Solutions which could include, as another caller said, city college being involved in something that was already recommended by the department of environment, Energy Efficiency and the Electrification Task force which is a clean Energy Buildings hub which would connect workers and contractors, give culturally Competent Community education and information about selffinancing. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hi. Good evening, commissioners. Thanks for taking my call. Im calling from district 10. As everyone has said, i just want to reiterate that i fully support this legislation. In fact, in my own home, we have a gas line and were transitioning off of it. I fully electrifying all our appliances, furnace, et cetera. And i just want to make the point that all these appliances are actually more enjoyable to use than their gas equivalents. Theyre faster, more efficient, quieter, and were actually improving our overall experience by doing this process. I anticipate that bypassing this legislation, youll be improving everyones experience overall in the city. Further, i agree with everyone that we should eliminate these exceptions. All of the professional chefs i know prefer induction, and this idea that commercial chefs need gas stoves is a myth. Thank you very much. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello, everyone. My name is todd snyder, im a resident of district 5, and i wanted to voice my thanks to everyone for bringing up this important matter. I wanted to mention that the scale at which these changes need to be made in order to avoid the worst consequences of Climate Change is something that i think that Everyone Needs to be aware of. So the state of california is on board with these changes. Many cities around the state have also adopted allElectric Building codes, and the forces aligned against these changes, namely Southern California gas company, are standing in the way of our future on this planet. So i urge all of you to remove the loopholes from this ordinance and protect our planet. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. caller hello, commission. My name is josh, im calling from district 1 and echoing the many, many prior comments in support of this measure. Im also calling as a member of sunrise bay area, which signed onto the letter written by earth justice and the Climate Emergency coalition and i wholeheartedly urge you to take the letter into consideration and add its recommended changes to this ordinance. In particular, i want to echo the concerns about the lack of transparency in the proposed process and that this is an opportunity to build trust not only in dbi but in the city, that it is taking the Climate Crisis seriously, and that this is not an opportunity to be squandered by pointless overtures to hospital or Restaurant Developers trying to have exemptions. This is an opportunity to stand strong and to really commit to yourselves and to me, a young voter in this city, and to all of my peers who are struggling, that you are standing up for Climate Change action, and i wholeheartedly urge you to support this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, caller, for your comments. Next caller, please go ahead. There are no more callers in the queue. Okay. Thank you, operations. Commissioner stephenson . All right. Commissioner wall, did you want to respond to any of the comments from the public since you had the floor before we went to Public Comment . Well, thank you. I would like to. But first i wanted to thank supervisor mandelman. He has been such a great leader on our issues and we are so lucky to have him as a partner in the work that the Department Camera the commission have been charged with doing, and thank you supervisor mandelman. Second, i would like to thank all the people who commented both orally and in writing. I think that what we have read and heard are among the most outstanding comments that have ever been presented to this commission in my many, many years of service on it, and we are in the debt of every person who took the time to come and speak to us or write to us tonight. I also want to thank everyone at the department and jacob for all their really hard work on this ordinance. Its so exciting to have San Francisco finally joining the allelectric bandwagon. I remember actually upsetting barry hooper with my insistence that we should have done this long ago, but he was, as is so often the case, correct that we had to do it the right way at the right time. And i do think the outreach thats been done that was described by you, cyndy, and that was affirmed by one of the speakers tonight, has been truly impressive. I do want us to support this ordinance and to urge the board to pass it. But like so many other people that weve heard tonight, i would like you to try to strengthen it. I know youre pretty far down the path here in terms of your work on this, but i think that a number of the points that have been made to us both in writing and orally about the need for increased transparency, for example, for a tightening of the exemptions, for a second look at the use of decorative gas fixtures, for example, i think that those points deserve some additional attention, and i really hope you will give them that attention. I dont at this precise minute know the best way to make that happen, and debbie, if you could give some advice, id appreciate it. I mean, on the one hand, we could stick something in the resolution. On the other hand, theres probably other things that we could do. But, again, i would appreciate it if you would pay some more attention to those issues that have been brought before us so powerfully by our constituents. And last but not least, i know this is only about new construction, but particularly in light of the equity issues that we discussed earlier, i want to suggest that this is a perfect opportunity for us to replicate some of the programs that weve been involved in in the past involving housing projects in San Francisco. We have put new, more efficient refrigerators in housing projects. We have put we have taken actions to ensure that housing projects are protected from the use of pesticides in order to protect the health and safety of the people who live there. Id like us to at least begin the department to at least begin thinking about a way that we could, when were ready to address existing construction, that we make a big effort to see if we can address gas fixtures, and particularly stoves and water heaters in our housing projects. These are the homes of children who are most at risk for all kinds of environmental harms, and this is a harm that we can, i hope, avoid. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner wold. Anyone else . All right, commissioner sullivan. Youre on mute. Im unmuted. Thank you. I want to start off by just reiterating what some of the callers said, which is this is so important and i especially agree with the caller who mentioned the scope of this problem. Its just its so huge that no matter what we do, we arent going to solve the problem. So i think taking a step like were taking today is hugely important. I also want to second a couple of things that commissioner wold said. I want to commend the department for the thoroughness of this effort. When we do something that is really important and going to change San Francisco in this way, its important to reach out to all the stakeholders, including people like beaumont who might have a contrary point of view. So its really clear that there was a very, very thorough process and i think thats fantastic. I also want to commend and recognize supervisor mandelman who from the very beginning has been a real leader of climate, starting with the Climate Emergency that he took the lead on i guess more than a year ago. Its so important that there be leadership. I think everybody in this city or almost everyone in this city supports the environment and Climate Action, but supervisor mandelman has been a leader and i think thats incredibly important. Then i just have one question for cyndy the slide that said that natural gas represents 30 of our climate emissions, the pie chart, i wonder, does that pick up the contribution to climate that comes from the leakage of methane . As we all know, leaked methane is an incredibly potent climate gas. And im just wondering, and you can never have a system that assures no leakage, so i wonder if that goes into that statistic or is it even worse if we pick up the leaked methane problem . Thank you, commissioner sullivan, for your comments and your questions. To clarify. So 44 of our Greenhouse Gas emissions come from the building sector, and of that [indiscernible] and that does account for transmission and leakage of the system. Thank you, cyndy. No further questions. I have a question. Its about the restaurant exemption. So when there was a conversation a caller said something about feeling that that was a preferential thing, that chefs like to use gas cookers instead of using induction stoves. My read on it, when i first read it, was an assumption that it had to do with the fact that, as far as i know, theres no solution for wok cooking yet. I thought that that was thats how i assumed. So i was just wondering if there can be some clarity on why the year wait was built in and sort of what the thinking is, what happens after that year . So thats a great question. So we worked very closely with the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and we also continue to work with chinese Community Organizations around this ordinance. There were some specific concerns around cultural cooking, specifically around the use of gas for woks, and this year process is really because we need to continue to outreach to these communities. It was really interrupted by covid19. We had started doing outreach in february, and we just, because of the pandemic, we werent really able to do this handson outreach with these communities, and so to continue the stakeholder outreach and to provide the equity to these restaurants who need to make this transition in new construction, this was something that we had agreed upon. So i understand the callers concerns, but it is only a year and its only specific for cooking equipment, so it wouldnt be for entire building operations. We have seen in other cities who did not work closely with their Restaurant Association, there was lawsuits, specifically in berkeley, the california Restaurant Association is suing the implementation of the ordinance. So we wanted to take that partnership very seriously, and we continue to do so. Thats really helpful. Thank you. Any other commission comments or questions . Debbie, i would love your feedback on i mean, im personally compelled by a lot of the comments like commissioner wall stated she was too and im willing to say, lets send our resolution over with potential amendments. I dont know if thats the best approach to take here, or if there are other ways that we can go about this . So, yeah. First of all, thank you all. I really want to thank the 24 people that came out tonight to comment. Im just deeply grateful. I know many of you. Ive been in meetings with some of you. And i really agree with commissioner wold who has expressed her appreciation for the quality of the comments. They are very helpful when they are specific and when they are backed by so many different perspectives on why theyre important. So and i hope that everyone who is listening in understands that this was a very thoughtful process, and yet it can always be improved. So when we say were far along, we are not so far along that things cant be amended. We have not gone to committee yet. So this was very intentional, to bring this to the commission before we went to committee so that the commission has a real and meaningful impact on the development of the ordinance. I also want to make a comment that this is a little tricky for us because normally this conversation would have happened at a policy committee, and we would have had a lot more backandforth. We would have been able to amend the resolution before it came to the full commission for a vote. So part of this lengthy Commission Meeting is a result of the fact that we couldnt do this at a policy committee, and thats just the way it is and were going to do the best we can. So my recommendation, because wordsmithing on the fly never leads to good policy. So what i would like to recommend is that the Commission Vote for or against the resolution and with the amendment that there would be a letter that would accompany the resolution, that would outline the commissions thoughts and recommendations around what it heard. Now, the president has the ability to write that letter on behalf of the commission, and we can find out a way of making sure that that letter is crafted appropriately. I dont know what that is right now. But what i would like to ask the commission to perhaps consider right now is to think about what elements of the comments or your own concerns you would like emphasized in that letter. So, for example, commissioner wold brought up three elements that i heard her reference one was the need for transparency, which to me is a very legitimate concern and it may be fairly easy to put that into legislative language. I dont know at this point. The second is the idea of exemptions around decorative uses. That seems, again, to be something that is you know, we could look into further. I dont know. And then she mentioned the third element, which is tightening of exemptions, and that is more complex and i would like to have cyndy or jacob talk about, if you dont mind, the thinking behind the building types. This was something we heard a lot, why are you just doing this in commercial and residential . Why not hospitals, industrial settings . And there may be some reasons for that. Im sure there are not maybe. You might want to hear them. And then you can decide whether or not that should be in the letter. So that, with the permission of the president , i would like to ask if cyndy could answer those questions about exemptions and then perhaps you could talk about what might go in if the letter is sufficient . Sure. Im happy to answer that, debbie. So i want to make some clarification. So this is for all newly constructed buildings that commit Building Permits to dbi. So that does include Life Science Buildings, it does include production pdr kind of our version of San Francisco Industrial Buildings. I think when some of the comments had focused on, we are looking at the building operations. So making sure that our heating, cooling, water, cooking, clothes drying, has to be all electric. A Life Science Building might use natural gas for a process load or something thats not specific to the building operations, thats needed for bunsen burner or Something Like that thats outside our domain. I think thats what they were referring to. It does apply to all newly constructed buildings. For example, hospitals do not submit permits through dbi. They go through the state because its a very complex process, so it wouldnt apply to hospitals. But really i think besides hospitals, i mean, municipal buildings that has already had its allelectric ordinance that was passed in january, it will apply to all building typologies. And the exceptions for mixed use are limited to technical and infeasibility. There are no financial exemptions. That language is in the ordinance. The exceptions do have to be exceptional and extraordinary, and as far as transparency, they do have to be verified by a third party to confirm there is no alternative for those exemptions. Thank you, cyndy. What im going to just paraphrase here, all buildings are covered except hospitals because its a different process. The exemptions may allow mixed use in some building types because of specialized uses. In terms of transparency, cyndy, i understand that that third party is required, but how would the public be aware of exemptions happening . Im thinking about the ipm ordinance and how we have a public hearing process for all exemptions in hindsight, so its a transparency function, not a gateway. So can you talk about transparency . Sure. So the department of Building Inspections has been approving or rejecting Building Permits for years. They do have a process set up that allows for appeal. So any Building Permit can has an appeal process. For dbi, it does go through the board of of examiners, and thent can proceed i believe to the board of appeals. Im not very familiar with their appeal process, but that is a tool for the public to use if they dont have confidence in a Building Permit either being issued or rejected. You know, im happy to try and provide some additional context on that for the commissioners if it would bring in some dbi staff who could better explain that process and provide a little more guidance on how dbi makes those decisions and how they make them transparent to the public. Is there a reporting requirement in any way in the ordinance itself, on number of exemptions or generally percentage of buildings that go through without any exemptions . There currently isnt a reporting process, but that is something that we have discussed, and unfortunately one of the issues is that the department of Building Inspections Collection System doesnt always allow to look at that specificity, but i think thats a great recommendation, something that we could work on. Id be happy to try to accept that amendment, that we either produce an annual report in case there are exceptions, im confident that report would be very short. So wed love to take that consideration into looking at it with this ordinance. I think thats a great idea. Maybe another thing you could potentially do would be to add some language about reviewing compliance with the legislation after a certain period of time in order to determine whether or not there were some, you know, unintended consequences, whether or not there have been experiences that suggest that there are changes needed. I think that kind of language potentially would help reassure people that this isnt necessarily the last action that San Francisco is going to take on this issue but that theres a mechanism for continuing, you know, to move ahead and push the boundaries to make this ever better. Director raphael . Yes, i think thats an outstanding those are both great recommendationst and i think this is pretty straightforward for us to recommend to mandelmans office, we do this all the time, and the reason i really enjoyed what both president stephenson and commissioner wold are saying is one of our equity concerns in the scan was there might be unintended consequences to low income communities that we just dont even understand. So putting in there a review and a report back to the board of supervisors on these issues so i think there are two things here theres one, how are we going to have more realtime transparency, and well look into that with dbi, and the second is how can there be a look backward to say what did we learn and what are compliance and are there loopholes that really need to be filled . So i think both of those are very good suggestions and im hoping charles and cyndy are writing this down. Commissioner wold . Well, i dont want to be greedy and i thank you all for being so receptive. But lets not give up on those decorative gas fixtures, okay . And some other things that just all im asking for really is that you take another look at these things in light of what people have said to you as well as other commissioners and figure out whether or not theres something that you can do about it because i dont, particularly at this hour, dont want you to have to go through one of the potential issues that we could talk about and explain your rationale for them. Im sure you have a rationale. I just want to urge you to take another look before you push the button. I can certainly say we will and, jacob, i dont want to put you on the spot, but im going to. What do you think the supervisor would say to that request . Thank you so much, commissioners, and, no, debbie, were right in sync. I just raised my little hand here to chime in, and so i am right in the spot where im in to be here. This is absolutely the not the end of the process, and so this is exactly the kind of conversation were hoping to hear. The introduction of the ordinance is really the beginning of the phase of this process where we come up with the best information we could from the task force, from the outreach, put that out there, and then we need to keep talking about what changes need to happen. So we are absolutely pleased to receive any guidance or recommendation from this commission in whatever format is appropriate for you all. But, no, all those things are things that we are certainly looking at. Some of the ideas so far that have been discussed, the reporting is absolutely something that we are looking at. The decorative uses, i want to be clear, we did not put in, go out of our way to put in an exception for decorative fireplaces. It was actually a very astute comment that was raised by some of the climate advocates weve been working with who said, you know, the way youve written it, it would allow for that. Thats exactly the kind of comments were already looking at, how we can tighten the language to make sure that we are capturing both systems being just clear enough that were not allowing for any additional wiggle room but also making sure that were not getting into areas we havent looked at yet to understand what the technology is. Finally i just want to also, in the way of transparency, this exceptions process is fairly elaborate, and we are taking the additional effort to get the administrative bulletin in the dbi to be published and finalized in advance of the Building Inspection Commissions action on this, because its really important people understand what that process looks like and kind of cyndy was alluding to, if what we have learned in this pros i process s correct, we should be seeing a small number of those waivers being issued because it should not be the case, if there is a widespread amount of technical infeasibility out there. Were trying to make sure that is something that actually allows projects only in exceptional circumstances where weve missed something and its not possible to move forward. That was a very longwinded way to say, please, by all means, put forth any of the recommendations that you all feel that have resonatessed with you or are your concerns that whatever format is appropriate and we are actual taking all of that into consideration as we move into committee and look to finalize the ordinance. So thank you so much for your attention on this. Thank you. Commissioner ahn . So, thanks again, jacob, for all your work, and thanks to supervisor mandelmans leadership on this important item. President stephenson, id like to move to approve this resolution and also put forward the letter that that ranges from the exceptions to the transparency to the decorative fixtures that were discussed today. As chair of the policy committee too, id be more than happy to work with you, of course, on this letter. Normally, as director raphael said, but we havent been able to because of the pandemic. Yes, i would like to make that motion and [indiscernible] into the process. Theres been a motion. Do i hear a second . We have a second. Thank you. I want to thank [indiscernible] this has been just an exceptional presentation. Its fantastic to have expertise that sits in this department on this screen here to talk about these things from commissioner wold to cyndy to jacob, its been really great to have really concise, fantastic answers to all our questions. I appreciate it. All right. So weve had a motion and a second. Charles, i think the next thing for us to do is to vote. Yes, i will call the roll. Commissioner stephenson. Aye. Commissioner ahn. Aye. Commissioner. Aye. Commissioner chu. Aye. Commissioner sullivan. Aye. Commissioner wold. Aye. Commissioner wan. Aye. The ayes have it. The motion passes. Thank you, everybody. All right, charles. Thats the end of that item. Thank you to all the callers, if anyone is still on the line, we really appreciate your time and all of your really, really concise and fantastic thoughts. I know two minutes is tough and i appreciate you got it all in there. All right. Next item, please . Next item is item 8, the directors report. An update on operationthis item. All right. We are changing gears now. Im just going to give you a couple sort of fun highlights. The directors report you get in a lot of detail, in writing. Its part of your packet. What i like to do with my five minutes is just pull out some highlights that inspire me and that i typically want to share with you and then let you know of things that are on the horizon. So whats been interesting is weve been looking at tracking behavior of weve been tracking behavior, sorry, thats changed during the pandemic. And one of the things that weve seen thats been interesting is that between staying at home and spring cleaning, people in San Francisco have been very aware of whats in their garages and whats under their sinks in a very positive way, and in fact, our household hazards Waste Collection service has never been this busy. We had 36. 5 increase in Home Collection because we will come to your house and pick it up for no charge. And the permanent facility had a 33 uptick, and this is up over last year. So its wonderful. We talk a lot about San Franciscos environmental muscle memory, this idea that we are pretty welltrained as environmentalists on lots of our zero waste behaviours and our toxic behaviours, and its been very wonderful to see that that is something that more and more residents are taking advantage of. The other sort of sf thing to do is Reusable Bags. Its been quite a journey. I am so pleased to announce that the department of Public Health has now allowed us to use Reusable Bags. Yay for that. And in the nick of time, because july 1st was when our new bag ordinance went into effect, that made the charge for a bag up to 25 cents from 10 cents, and so the idea that we couldnt use Reusable Bags and we were having an increase in a bag charge, that was really untenable. So weve been working very, very hard with the department of Public Health to increase their comfort and it worked. They made the announcement. And at the same time now the other things that are going into effect as of july 1st are the precheckout bags have to be compostable. So there are other requirements on stores, and our environment now team is working very hard right now to try and figure out how to reach out to businesses, to educate them, and then how to distribute Reusable Bags to our lower income communities. And one of the things that were looking at new right now is partnering with the Covid Response efforts. So the Covid Response center used to be the Emergency Operation center. Its still at moscony and they have a lot of work in the community so we are partnering with them to leverage their work to get the message out and bring you reasonable bags and safer cleaning products out into those communities. I want to also just give a special callout to our school ed program who has also been trying to figure out how to pivot when we havent had school in session or the ability to do assemblies. One thing that was done, the person who runs the program, she is an active member of the nature collaborative and she brought ideas to them and partnered with them and one of those ideas was a massive project to deliver seedlings to families in vulnerable and low income communities and families of Young Children who are really struggling the most with Distance Learning problems. They ended up in two days putting together 3,363 seed planting kits. So these were kits that had activities, they had the actual seeds to plant, they had the soil, the instructions, and then they distributed those throughout the community. So a lot of fun. A lot of heart went into that program. Looking ahead, the policy committee is going to be convening around the integrated pest management, reduced pesticide list. And before then, on august 10th, we will have our public hearing for the reduced risk pesticide list. So we are gearing up for that. The other thing were gearing up for is budget hearings. You may recall that you heard our budget some time ago, but because of covid, the mayor suspended everyones budgets and asked everyone to resubmit budgets. Those budgets are now going through hearing process in august, next month. And the new budget will go into effect october 1st rather than july 1st. Our budget, we have a lot of angst, a lot of worries, a lot of sleepless nights. It looks like we are coming out okay. Were coming out okay in part because we have some staff that reduced hours voluntarily. Were coming out okay because the City Departments who we do work orders with found those work orders to be so valuable that they didnt cut them. And were coming out okay because our Funding Sources are not tied to the general fund. So there is the blessing and the curse in that, and right now we certainly we are experiencing the same hiring freeze and the same challenges with staffing, Disaster Service workers and the same challenges around future funding, but this budget i think will be okay for us. The last thing i want to say is we always talk about new people coming in, and im going to introduce you to that person in one moment. But i just want to acknowledge publicly that we had a very significant retirement, and thats alex demitri who is in our zero waste program. Hes been in that program, i dont know precisely, but im going to say around 14 years. And he has been a rock and an inspiration to me. Hes a rock because no matter how crazy things get in the commercial zero waste world, alex is always very calm and very matteroffact and cando. He was instrumental in some of our more recent zero waste policies, our zero waste facilitators are sorting ordinances. Hes got such deep on the ground experience that it informs our Ordinance Development in meaningful ways. He will be tremendously missed. I no he hes super excited about retirement. With that id like to end my directors report, switching it over to our new Commission Affairs officer who is katie chansler, and she is a delight and i am so excited to welcome her. I feel really bad that she is coming on at a moment where shell never come into our office and work with all of us because well be moving before we come back together again, but with that, i would like katie to take a couple minutes to introduce herself to you. After that, i am done. Thanks so much. Hi, everyone. Im so excited to be joining the team on my second official day. Im really looking forward to meeting you all virtually and working with you. I was previously the Program Associate for the climate and land use strategies at the david and Lucille Packard association so i was on the palm Oil Portfolio which was based largely in indonesia and also europe, as well as our bioenergy portfolio, which focused on biomass and biofuels. And before joining the foundation, i was at the California Academy of sciences, a member of the development team, and i supported our friends of the academy donors. And before that, i was at the California University of california irvine getting my ba degree in Environmental Science with two minors in Political Science and sustainability. And ive been a resident of San Francisco for the past 7 years. I live in the inner sunset. And im so excited to be joining the department and have the opportunity to really contribute to amazing policies and programs that ive directly benefitted from and im just so excited to be here with you all and look forward to working with you. Thank you. Welcome. Were thrilled to have you and were so excited that were going to see you at work at the policy Committee Meeting coming up. Any comments or questions for debbie, commissioners . All right. Seeing none. Public comment on this item. If you are on the line and have any Public Comment on the directors report, please press star 3. Operations please let us know if there are any callers that are ready. Are there any callers, operations . There are no callers on the line. All right. Next item, please, charles . Next item is announcements, items for discussion. Commissioners, do you have any announcements . Seeing no announcements, seeing no hands raised. Is there any Public Comment on announcements . Operations, are there any public are there any callers on the line that are ready to speak . There are no callers on the line. Next item, please. Next item is item 10, new business, future agenda items. This item is for discussion. Commissioners, ill be brief. You already heard from debbie we are hopefully going to have our first policy Committee Meeting since february, i