Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240712

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Good evening, today we will begin with a reminder the Small Business commissioner is the Office Public forum to face your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses of San Francisco. The office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance, with Small Business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone and our services are completely free of charge. Before item 1 is called, id like to start by thanking Media Services and sf gov tv and thank you for assisting with the Public Comment line. Please call item number 1. Clerk call to order and roll call. [roll call] i keep muting on everything. Every which look, its just muted either way. All right. Can you hear me now . Clerk yes. It says muted on my screen. Clerk yes. Ill take that as a present. [roll call] clerk mr. President , you have a quorum. Wonderful. Next item, please. Presentation update and report on the shared Spaces Program related resources and Community Feedback discussion item. The presenters are robin abad, senior planner with the planning department, donteball Vice President of the Bayview Merchants Association and may bell ramerez Vice President of the exce excelsier action groupd doug pressly. Owner and representative of the outer sunset Merchants Association. Great. Welcome back, robin. I want to thank you so much for sticking around until, i think you didnt go on until 9 30 or 9 40 at the last meeting. I appreciate so much that you sticking around for that and accordingly, we put you first today to hopefully get you out earlier this time. So were excited to have you back. We obviously feel very strongly about shared spaces in your on going feedback and information that is very important. Wed also like to welcome marybell and doug for joining us. They have some great information for us about how shared spaces is working or not working and out lying communities and its a big priority for our commission. So, im excited to welcome you and hear about your experiences. Well begin with robins update and after that well move over to mary bell and daunte and doug. Thank you, president. Its great to be here again reporting on status and to be here with mr. Ball, mr. Marez and all three of those individuals have been major champions for in suring adoption and sort of a presence and an impact in the communities that they served. I did prepare some slides. I dont know if it would be helpful to the commission for we have maps and some graphs. I dont believe at this moment i have the ability to share my screen. Clerk i will toss the control to you. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, lets see, all right. This is material that the commissioner is familiar with and focus on the items pertinent to our presenters that will go after me. As a reminder. This is all about turning over the public realm to commissioner activities, allowing Small Businesses or merchants in our commercial corridors to conduct fitness safety out of doors. Theres retailing, you know, Outdoor Dining, of course, but curbside pick up and physical distance chewing which are also activities that we facilitate through this program. All applications are conducted through very simple intake process at shared spaces at sfgov. Org where you will find another supporting guidance in the materials about how to. Updated statistics. Were now at over 1,600 applications to date with about 13 of those in some sort of position in the pipeline wait to go get approved. We steadily see the percentage of approvals for the programs increase and we know that the commission has been highly interested in Program Performance and not only how quickly were processing folks through but over all volume and so im very glad to report that we continue to make wonderful gains and getting as many folks as possible who have applied through the pipeline and up and operating. In recent weeks, weve launched a public tracker so anyone in the public is able to see where all of the shared spaces applications are and in the city and you can even get down to the neighborhood or the supervisor director even that application, click on that data point and get information about where you are in the process using this url. So, here is another look at the numbers. These numbers are actually from wednesday of last week. Our team updates our stats, actually end of date on monday so sometimes when im here before you, commissioners, im able to have fresh numbers from that monday. As you can see from 1,600 applications, the numbers in small parenthesis represents the number of the prior monday so you can get a sense of how many applications are getting processes through the pipeline and moving into approvals. By comparing the number from monday versus the following wednesday. As folks know, this is a fee free program and currently the program is set to expire at end of president 2020. We are endeavoring to improve our Technical Assistance document and our how to materials to make it even easier for folks to understand what the process is and so this is somewhat new visualization that helps folks understand the different stages of getting approved and what happens in that 72 hour timeline from application submitel to operating. Its a simple sixpart process. The simplest permit application the city has created. And of course, there are some Certification Requirements we ask of applicants and insurance, of course, policy, we no longer are requiring applicants to produce this documentation at the time of application. For the moment, its fine that you sell certified and you carry this insurance and and we moved that requirement from the front end and request all the stressors we know this community is facing right now, commercial and insurance requirement documentation. Were also steadily increasing our capacity to do sort of monitoring and compliance. As our population glows, we want people to adhere to publichealth guidelines specifically but also our guidelines for ada access and this is the primary responsibility that faults to the merchants who are operating these shared spaces and the city will be amping up it was efforts to go out and ensure were operating as expected and safely. I just want to give a mention to a shout out in the Washington Post pertinent to the way that San Francisco is championing and really being till general about the need for these facilities to be ada accessible so on the screen is one of the to help how they a array their furnishings so as this pro live rates around the country that were all doing so in a manner that keeps our most vulnerable communities safe and ensures that they have access so were proud of the fact the Washington Post and their National Survey called out San Franciscos guidelines and some positive feedback for merchants this is from a perch ant on upper va len see us regarding the way were dealing with ada and ensuring compliance. Ive made mention several times that the shared Spaces Program has a very rigorous equity framework and and certain neighborhoods and part of the cities amongst certain demographics where were most vulnerable, even before covid and the Global Pandemic and the attendant economic crisis so, that is something that we look at. There are many different inputs into this equity framework, the office of economic and identifying opportunity neighborhoods as well as the invest in neighborhoods areas that were established by the office. Were also looking at cultural districts and there are other metrics like the communities of concern, the m. P. C. Has an index that classifies sort of neighborhoods and geography in terms of their impacts and air pollution, for example. As well as the San Francisco recreation and Parks Department equity zones index all go into helping us determine and plan where we need to do paperwork so what is this paperwork look like . It looks like outreach and it looks like partnership with non governmental organizations, non profits to support these equity pilots in these neighborhoods and i think much of this material is material the commission is already seeing so i wont bee maybe it here and just a note on capacity and process, which is something weve been very appreciative of the commissions attention towards and support around. As we seek to further improve the performance of the program, not only how quickly we are responding to applications and getting folks back up and running but also thinking about the longterm sustainability of this program as something that works well for the city and not only through the end of the calender year but, potentially beyond the calender year. We recognize that in setting a program up overnight, you need to think about how to make it sustainable and resources in a way so it can continue serving the Small Business of San Francisco. There are four goals in this shared spaces sustainable strategy and that it was greater equity and a faster timeline, minimizing bureaucracy and ensuring that we maintain compliance with our Health Directives and then ability for us report impacts. There are five different action areas and you can see in this chart the way the shared spaces Sustainability Strategy organizes responses in those five action areas, in order to meet these four policy goals. Theres special attention here at the Small Business commissioner as well as in outer neighborhoods like the sunset, to ensure that were able to create larger shared spaces by closing parts of the road like weve seen on valencia street the closure organized by the valencia merchants Corridor Association so like weve seen in china town on grant street and so, your City Departments are working very closely together to ensure that we can have this happen as quickly as possible and so, is the shared Spaces Program led by our Municipal Transportation Agency has been looking very closely at how to tighten up that that review and approvals timeline and the mta will issue new Program Regulations for shared spaces that lock in this streamline process that we have developed, experimented through shared spaces and not codifying it but being explicit through orders being released by the department. Also just a quick plug, we have spun up more of our sort of marking in Communications Efforts and part of that is. So please follow us on the platforms to celebrate a lot of the great sponsors out there who have made shared spaces possible so our first shared space recognized the mission on 16th. My favorite in the city. You should expect to see, you know, more celebrations of the diverses of businesses participating in shared spaces on those social media platforms. With that ill break and let mre over with their presentations. Before we move onto the next presentations, do any commissioners have any questions specifically about the presentation . You are unmuted. I have a couple of questions and i have come up in north beach and i want to double check. One as you know, people are very protective of their shared spaces and in northbeat and probably lofts of other neighborhoods the meter spaces to match up with the storefront. Right now, i just spent part of my afternoon with some very unhappy merchants and who claim they have a space and the they have a space that i left out today, 10 feet of the parking space is in front of one business, the other 10 feet is in front of another one. How do we address these issues. I think its, were now seeing evidence of the, you know, the program being a victim of its own success. On the one hand, its so encouraging that there are so many folks who really see this as a viable way to their survive but we are seeing that in some neighborhoods that are starting done and they are next to each other and some of these use conflicts might come up, were taking about it. I think were obviously here to help all business and merchants and they have have the public realm to support their efforts. I suspect that overcoming months, well see tweaks and adjustments either at site level or on the Program Level to accommodate. If there are any is anyone out there listening if you are having a specific kind of how or conflict, maybe you werent Small Business ready to start where your neighbors were Better Research to start and you can found yourself in this position. The city wants to settle and mediate this. How would you suggest that i have three businesses that are screaming at me right now about these spaces. They have the space, no they have the space. What am i going to what am i going to tell these people . In the spirit of togetherness that weve all embraced this this crazy pandemic and the next crisis, we really encourage neighbors to talk to one another. These issues are best resolved between neighbors and friends so, you know, first and foremost i could encourage folks to talk to one another. Weve seen situations where one business might activate the same part of the street and its more where they take over so there are many different creative ways for neighbors to Work Together to share this limited resource and be able to leverage the program. At this point, these situations in north beach are beyond the Friendly Neighbor thing and people are waiting to have an assessment of who gets that space. That is what were dealing with right now. We have such a success with our shared Space Program and now every inch of the space is contested. Im going back tomorrow to these same people and inaudible . What could i say . Commissioner, you cut out a little bit there. Go ahead, commissioner. I was just going to say, if its beyond the Friendly Neighbor moment, where theyre all waiting to have an assessment done that they can stick with, which is where i am with a number of merchants, what am i going to say tomorrow . We will not improve or implement anything unless we have the sense that that both operator and the operators neighbors are on board. So that is absolutely requisite for project success and neighbors need to work with one another and figure out an arrangement. All right. Theres no definitive answer. I mean, these people are probably watching this right now. All right. And last question is just, you know, there are merchants that paid for all the money for all the barricades and they paid for all the insurance and so i assume that means we were under the assumption that our merchants under our umbrella are taken care of by us. Is that correct . I would need to double check. Maybe we can take this off line so i can check on the details and make sure that inaudible submitted and im not quite sure the specifics. All right. Thank you. And there will be some very angry neighbors over these shared spaces. Ill do my best. Hope it doesnt end up in fist fights. Thank you. Commissioner. Thank you for presenting to us again and congratulations on the shared spaces and the castro opening up this weekend on 18th street from hartford to colling wood. It was awesome to see it in full bloom. I have three questions. Robin, how many of the street close your applications are still in the queue or been rejected . What percentage of them . Im just pulling up my most recent report, commissioner. Do you want to hit me with your second question while i look that up for you. Its come to my attention from some of the merchant associations the folks applying for street closures on streets that currently have sfmta bus routes are being told by the sfmta they shouldnt apply because the mta does not want to reroute buses and the communication i received from this at mta the city has asked the sfmta to reduce the capacity on bus lines a lot, which is causing them to leave folks behind because they cant absolutely give all the people that need rides. This seems like a problem point. A lot of our commercial corridors, looking for new, bold ways to survive, also are on bus routes and what were hearing from the sfmta they are resistant to moving bus routes along because they want to help workers. Its a paradox right because if we loose all these Small Businesses in San Francisco, they wont have any where to take the bus in the end anyway. What do you think needs to happen for some of these commercial corridors looking for the closest solution but this are bus lines running through them. Weve acknowledged the really del indicate balance that we as a city have to strike again the economic recovery activities and also moving folks around safety making sure folks have an option other than the car not everyone has access to a car and for many working class and low income folks especially, you know, our muni network is vital and so theres a way to balance the possibility and as well as accommodating transit and maybe it doesnt look like a full street closure. There are many places, many of our commercial districts [please stand by]. On top of that 18 have been approved. And 18 have been approved and a number applications that were ineligible or diverted to the program to meet the need for outdoor facilities. My last question is new york and has almost 10 0 mile of closed streets for the Small Businesses and the pedestrians. It is funding a lot of this and i will repeat that. San francisco has a bigger budget per capita than any other city in america other than washington, d. C. But we are putting the entire financial position of this tool and street closure tool from per chants and why do you think that the city is not willing to fund street closures and some aspects of the shared Spaces Program. We have been actively looking into that materials like street closure barricades and cones and all of the kind of Traffic Control devices and fixtures that heretofore we have expected the applicant to apply. It is an equity issue for the city. We recognize for the larger shared spaces and procuring and deploying barricades and is no small feat, right . So i would say theres been a lot of openness and interest in providing that kind of assistance to shared spaces. And so i cant report on anything definitively now in terms of timing, but that is our ambition and our hope to resource as much of that part of the shared spaces deployment as possible so that we remove that burden and that stress from the operator. How could the Small Business commission help make that happen . Thank you for asking about that, commissioner. And you already have in a large way helped to advance the conversation around how to meet the equity goals if resolution that you passed i believe last month and i dont recall and i think it was last month. July, yes. And july 13 if i am not mistaken. So the idea you gather from your constituents and articulate in that resolution has been valuable to us as a city and to understand what the kind of the pulse of the Business Community is and what they need and so that has risen to the top as one of the ways that the city can show up even more for the Business Community is by resourcing them through materials grants and the like. The Sustainability Strategy which i referred to earlier in the presentation and i dont know if folks remember, but the last column in there was Technical Assistance grants and materials grants. So hoping that this year we will have some provision of this in the budget and i understand that theres some conversation about this at the board level thanks, i think, to a lot of the advocacy that the commission has done in expressing your needs to me, to the program manager, and to our board. Thank you, robin. Appreciate it. Thank you. Commissioner huey. Hi, thank you, robin. And thank you i know we have a meeting in district one together coming up pretty soon. Thanks for coming out for that. I just had a question as i am looking through the tracker and notice this tracker is awesome, by the way. This is something that i totally love. And im looking at some of the businesses and especially b1 because that is going to be where we will have the upcoming meeting. A lot of the differences there are primarily like the well, i guess the ones that are missing a a lot of the chinese speaking restaurants. And i had a conversation with francis and he has been doing a lot of leg work to promote the program amongst different chinese businesses. And i am just wondering do you feel well resourced in that area . I do feel it is not just a language situation that is the gap and how to pivot your business and go to Outdoor Dining and speaking specifically to chinese businesses and this could be a conversation we could have about many different parts of cultural context as well. So curious beyond language. And in terms of resource to meet Diverse Community needs in the shared Spaces Program . Thank you, commissioner. I would say that we know we can be doing more and be very transparent about that. And San Francisco is a really diverse place with folks from many different backgrounds who are coming from, as you said, not only a different language background and p giving someone another Application Form and more sensitive and direct work and helping folks understand how to pivot, like you said. I would welcome more resources in this particular area of our equity strategy. Our team have been doing a lot of incredible work in the outer neighborhoods and disadvantaged and esl communities. We could do more. So recognizing that if we had more dedicated resources, we could reach deeper into the harder to reach communities to see wider adoption. Id be happy to talk more about it offline if that is something of interest to your programming. Absolutely, yes. Thank you. We will be hearing from the presenters shortly but a couple of quick questions. So if memory serves, we were at 18 streets approved at the last hearing. And im certainly happy to hear that we have 31 more in the works. And what do you think has been driving some the lack of forward progress over the past two weeks . Roadway closures are a complex proposition. Sometimes it is a City Department doing some analysis and sometimes the ball is in our court. A lot of times projects also need time on the ground amongst Community Members to sort of develop into a viable project, right . And so there are certain things that we ask for and that we look for a site plan and operations and monitoring plan. And these are unlike the sidewalk or curbside shared spaces because those are operated by single merchant and a single entity. So those can move at a different pace. For roadway closure projects these big ones to be successful, we have to move at the speed of trust and there is quite often a lot of sensitive work that the Supervisors Office is partnering with our team on to work out issues of access and closure times. So in terms of where we are with roadway closures doesnt mean that we are turning this around and sometimes we are waiting for the communities to transspire and the consensus to emerge. And as i think back to the 31 or so in the mix and in some stage of review, my sense is that most of them are in development within the community. That is totally fine and coming to agreement. As soon as folks are ready, well be ready. So what i am hearing is in some communities wrestling internally with how to move forward and build consensus. I am wondering in the communities that are successful, any patterns are emerging about habits or practices that expedite that process that we could then somehow convey to the other folks in the process because one thing that i have observed from the outside looking in is that different communities and anything to do to help get everybody moving as quickly as possible. Perhaps there is a role for the commission to play to have that information out to the communities. Thank you for that partnership. Lets think about this because there are ways that the commission has already been really with policy and in term of the more active way from the Technical Assistant and we welcome that, too. This is a big experiment for the city as a program. To try a partnership to have the program. Lets put a pin in that for now and talk about offline and in the future as well. There are ways our networks and Different Communications and neighborhood organizations and how can we develop consensus soon sner and two quick questions. A partial travel lane closure which i was happy to hear you mention that. Has the m. T. A. Got therein and closed one travel lane but leave the other open . For shared spaces, not to my knowledge at this time. And maybe two or three projects that are currently under analysis and under develop that play do Something Like this and cant think of the 18 that have been approve sod far since the roadway opened up since this permit path opened up a month ago. And better anything but a full street closure. And the joint special meeting and with m. T. A. To facilitate a conversation to the obstacles and how to make that available. If i am thinking about the businesses that can benefit from more space than they currently have and as the commissioners have mentioned to observe what new york is experiencing and the kind of atmosphere that its developing and to maximize that and really happy to see the streamline roadway prort. I cant wait for that to roll out. With reanticipating the uptick in applications as a result . I am not sure about the applications but number we can push through in this approval. We have been operating in this streamline manner far little while and making it official in documenting the specifics around it. So yeah, it has been quite a stretch for us as a city family to push something as complex as a roadway closure through in an accelerated timetable and just really want to appreciate our staff team at the m. T. A. As well as the Fire Department who have been very cooperative and constructive about figuring out how to close that gap, so we should and should see more projects move through much quicker than we saw in the initial experimental pilots. And then my last question, in term of your own staffing and resources, i was trying to parse that last graph that you had on your presentation. And does the shared spaces team have the resources it needs right now . And first of all, i want to say i want to echo what you said. Your team has been doing amazing, wonderful work. And of course, theres always folks that wish more could be done and done faster, and obviously we are trying to be partners in that as well. B but in the last few weeks you had about 300 approved in out of 90 o previously and had done 30 of the prior output. Thats commendable and the velocity is increasing. And the question i have is do you feel overwhelmed and are you short on resources . Could you use more resources if you had more resource, could you move faster . I am not going to say no to that. Lets back up and say the first and foremost hour the approach is to streamline bureaucracy and process and the citys budget is extremely constrained and the outlook continues to be not scarce but where we have to be more and more careful, transit revenues, sales tax revenues and we dont want to look to staff capacity and many other ways in the business and the way we interact as a city and as a multiheaded bureaucracy. And the approval of the 900 has to do with us amending the require for certificate of insurance. Very welcome and appreciated. I was getting comments at the cdma hearing last week. It was i was very pleased to let them know that that requirement has been down to selfcertification and that was great. That is where we look to make gains and efficiencies and with the process and the regulatory environment. And as well as at the prompting of the larger Economic Equity task force which members of this commission are contributors to. We have been asked to do the stafftime analysis and we are putting every idea out on the table. And the streamlining process and regs and what would it mean that kind of surge increase one time, when you are in certain parts of the program team. And to leverage to nonprofit partners and for shared spaces and in general closing streets and experimenting with the ways that the public realm can be turned over to many more uses. So i think increasing capacity with some of our trusted with partnership in the expertise and to see the capacity and the bottlenecks ease up and open up. Nothing definitive yet. We will be reporting back to the commission as in the past with more detail of what that could look like. More on that soon. I will continue to coordinate with you offline and perhaps we will have a check in before putting you on the agenda again because i want to make good use of your time. I think, commissioners i will call on you in a second, but just as a point of information, unlike every other city in america, San Francisco is both a city and a county. So when we talk about our budget, it doesnt necessarily map 1 1. Its not an apples and oranges comparison when we talk about budget dollars per capita because we also have to fund things like the Sheriffs Department and county services and county Health Services and what have you. Just im a stickler for nerdy facts like that. Sorry to ask to speak again, but i appreciate the privilege commissioner iguana. I want to get back to the street closure process because something i want to ask a couple more questions. One, how many people manage that process in sfmta . How many people are in charge of it . So temporary street closures is a program that is managed out of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and many of those come through the interdepartmental staff on traffic and transportation and sitting members of Fire Department, Police Department, Public Health, entertainment commission, many others. And shared spaces also comes through temporary street closure, although no longer through iscot. The chart i showed earlier is actually a separate and special streamline process that we have created just for shared spaces. Partly due to the commissions prompting set to look at closing streets that werent through the traditional. For temporary street closures and street fairs, yes. They were going through one person, correct . That is right. One committee staffed by coordinated by one team. Is that still the process moving forward . Has that transitioned not happened yet . We are using an amended process. We are no longer using just for shared spaces in that temporary period we are using that streamlined process that i showed a charter if earlier being coordinated by the same staff who coordinates all of the other temporary street closures. So this is the same thing individual and the city has said get it done sooner, correct . We have removed a lot of the kind of requirements and reduced code that says take this long and reduced that and streamlined that so you are not going through that much longer, more rigorous process. Do you think that a Major Program like this which is one of the life bloods for so many businesses around the city should go through one person . Well, i think weve achieved a lot of process improvements so that much less stuff that that that the manager, right, of this huge part of the citys activities has to worry about. Ill defer to the director of transportation on this. Street closures this is my personal opinion and not speaking for the program really or transportation agency, but as we look to the next eight to 12 months of rolling shelter in place and unpredictability of resuming activities indoors. The out of doors and the streets and sidewalks and parks are going to play an increasingly larger role with economic survival, with social and psychological well being. So i do see and i am sure i am not the only person that sees the demand to use our streets in a different manner to increase and be more innovative and responsive as a city to using that asset for a broader range of purposes. S as a this is what i want to get through in the public realm. I appreciate the comments about being complicated and the Community Partners are involved and input and the plans fleshed out, but i am hearing from all over the city, robin n all the districts practically that folks are waiting sometimes weeks and some folks waiting over a month for responses from the singular individual who the entire city is waiting on to address this one program which before the pandemic and was a side most. With enough capacity. And from all the conversations and to every other department. And i think from being able to step back and from the external standpoint, to me it is a process malfunction to have all of this circling around the essential program with one person. On one persons shoulders. I would hope in the next time we have you come present that there are more people or other people or a team of people. And applications and it is not just i am yelling towards you but not at you. Its not just the process and not just the community we are waiting on and with the private conversations about this and i want to say that publicly that this is the malfunction and the city needs to address it as soon as possible. Thank you. Commissioner, i could not agree more. And we put in a resolution that the iscot process need to be either reformed or eliminated. And ive had private conversations about how to we get more resources to that bottleneck. It seems inappropriate to have one person have the entire city going through just one person on something so complicated and for issues and delays, so i just want to commend you for staying on top of that. I want to amplify that and echo that and support that. And were just going to keep pushing forward on that issue until someone hears it and gets the message. As i mentioned, we are trying to get going on a joint presentation with the m. T. A. And i think that is an opportunity for us to engage in a direct conversation about that. And we are one hour in and we have other presenters who have been very patiently waiting. And robin, if i could ask for you to wait while they present as part of the agenda item. Absolutely. And i am very excited to have them that represents shared heart and more spaces in the outer lying areas which have more vulnerable populations and more people that are susceptible to job losses and to all of the damage. And we see the wonderful things that shared spaces is doing. And we see how incredible it is for the communities that are able to get up and going. So how do we make this broader . How do we get this out to the other communitys . With that, i would like to introduce our three presenters and we havent had a chance to coordinate beforehand on what these presentations will look like, so i will introduce them first and then i will say two each of you, you have a couple minutes to talk about what youre seeing and what you are experiencing and in your communities and share with us your observations and then well have a little bit more discussion after that. This is very important. So to go in alphabetical order here, dante ball who is the Vice President of the bayview Merchants Group and follow up with doug marska and the taco shop in the outer sunset and then well conclude with the recently promoted executive director of the excelsior action group. Congratulation, marybelle. Lets start with dante. Are you here . Please unmute if you are. I am here. Thank you for having me. An excited to have you. So go ahead and talk to us about shared spaces and how thats working or not working in bayview right now. Yeah. We havent seen a lot of action in the realm of shared spaces. A lot of the folks on the corridor is really just dont know enough about the program. Or they havent heard about the program. So super grateful to get the information i got today. Robin, thank you for sharing that. I will be able to report back to merchants around the possibilities. So we havent had enough activity. I think the way that the best way that maybe to have that happen is group of businesses kind of coming together to really make that happen on a particular street. And the corridor is a complicated corridor. It as long corridor. And weve had event called baby business day last year and to try to activate the corridor from armstrong and created four different hubs and that allowed businesses on some of the slower streets to be with a little bit of that action and the shared Spaces Program will be incredible and the Biggest Issue we have right now is i heard Technical Assistance being thrown out there and we would need someone on the ground to help the Business Owners navigate through the process and more information about the program in general. And i love what valencia street has done and examples of the possibilities look like. When we show really good examples, it opens up the our Business Owners minds around whats possible. And so im super excited to get the information, super excited to present the information. And i am excited to put this on my shoulders to help the bayview kind of change and there are incredible shops and merchants and a few places closing up shop and a lot of businesses are down to pretty much owners working. Any way that we can activate our businesses to get folks rehired in some way will be amazing. We have struggled with traffic in the bayview and any way that we can get folks from other neighborhoods to see the beautiful bayview would be amazing. Any touch of anything that we can do to help activate will be incredible. I think shared spaces could be a good plateau to that. Thank you. You have done a good job of raising awareness with the bayview merchant community. And i was privileged to watch about the Instagram Live event you did with the two vegan chefs that i thought was excellent. I enjoyed it a lot and want to encourage the public to check out bayview Merchants Group instagram. And dante, if you could stay around and Public Comment that have and there may be commissioner questions. Please dont go anywhere. We will come back to you. Next up, we have lets see here, doug marshka. And fire direct . And the underdogs and on 46th avenue. Great. Tell us what you are experiencing. I just want to echo some comments that i think you guys did a great job of asking Great Questions on shared spaces. I have been involved flt in the program for my own business just in front of my stores but also involved in trying to close down the street. And unique challenges compared to other areas. And one challenge most of the commercial blocks are really heavily residential in commercial blocks so there is quite a bit of coordination that has to happen and outreach for anything to happen. And also most of the west side merchants and we have some language barriers. So i think a lot of the merchants dont really know much about the programs. And they havent really been advertised out and when we do our walks and communicate and sometimes there a communication barrier on what nay need to da and what are the criteria. And we have problems, but getting a shared space was pretty easy. The difficult part was the financial side. We were lucky because we were able to use some Disaster Recovery money. To actually make the shared spaces active but we are talking about thousands and thousands of dollars to make it compliant on the a. D. A. Side and also on the barrier side. And on the street closure side, its been a struggle. As but mentioned, we submitted applications as soon as the thing started for street closures which was month ago and now just really got on the the point where they have been approved. It took a lot of using the supervisors, using our other places in the city to put pressure and putting petitions out. Getting a lot of Community Effort to get a response back. This shared spaces email and must be some people behind it, but it was a struggle and with that said, we have been improve and the urban street had the first event over the weekend. And i am terrible for the one block and we will have the first sunday approval the first week of september. As for understanding the requirement and would be a struggle to understand why something would be rejected. And to know requirements and get ahead of it and the neighbors and do Something Else and planters or whatever else would be nice to know to be denied two months, lose momentum, and have to go back and regain momentum with the neighborhood and do it again. Those are the challenges that we have had. All right. Im sorry, mute your sorry about that. I am probably echoing. You are. And so we have been asking about our irving street the past couple of meetings trying to follow up. And we heard from supervisor mar and that was an obstacle and we asked robin about that. But i do also want to check in with and please as i said to dante if you could hang around far couple of minutes as we open this up for conversation afterwards. And Marybell Ramirez is the executive director of the excelsior action group. Congratulations on the recent promotion, and what are you seeing and experiencing in excelsior . Thank you for inviting me to participate on the call. As you mention, we support Small Businesses in district 11. So the shared space has kind of launched with mixed reviews as we just saw on the map. That robin shared, and i think really addresses the inequities that are inherent in the program in the outer part of the city. So from the commission. And the capital and city to launch that. And the studios and this is almost 35 to 40 of the businesses. So to launch outdoors and is an Impossible Task and theft and cleanliness and some of the businesses are concerned to spend the seven to 6,000 to 8,000 is what i have been quoted for certain parts. And parking and one on one with our local businesses and we Just Launched the micro grant with that large in a few days. And the t. A. That is going to take to support businesses because the responses are rejust need something to do outside and we dont know what it needs to be and what it needs to look like. We have provided an opportunity to rent tables and chairs but it is only for weeks and the request is large and they are working throughout the city and so theres that challenge of it takes one week to set it up and get it out into the world and two weeks later they have to figure out how to pay it or the items are taken away and to the street closures. We just got approved last week. But its a big, big investment of our time and our resources. And i do hear the value and with the fivemile corridor and when quarter of the budget that we are addressing to address the issues of shared space is being spent on four weeks. And obviously it brings a lot of concerns when we see the need is so great and that the business wants to participate but the Capital Expenditure is something that is just a lot more them to bare. Right. So kay. Well, thank you, ms. Ramirez for sharing that with us. And with that, i am going to open up to commissioner questions and discussion about this aspect of the presentation. Commissioner dooley . I wanted to mention to marybelle that maybe she would be interested in meeting up with some of us who have a Program Going into the neighborhood that might be of useful interest to her. I know in north beach not everyone has spent that kind of money. And i would be happy to invite anyone over so they can see there are alternatives to really expensive setups. Just wanted to put that out there. I am sure there are other neighborhoods that would be happy to do the same thing. And the in community and the traffic barriers and to see what youve d. O. T. Done and i appreciate it. Ls an i was going to say that you might start with a less expensive setup and from the northeast side is they started with the most minimal setup and now that theyre seeing that people are coming and being more successful and then they are considering spending the monday on something more expensive or permanent. There are ways to get it moving and going without the huge expense. Thank you. And before i go to the next commissioner, the commissioner the Commission Secretary has reminded me we are supposed to go to Public Comment before commissioner discussion. Commissioner ortiz, you will be next, be u we need to go to Public Comment before discussion. So is there any Public Comment on the line . I do not see anybody in the queue. Great. Then seeing no Public Comment, Public Comment is closed. Commissioner ortiz. Thank you. And more like the clinical inequities in the city and to be rolled out and with that resolution and from myself and a program and to ask for assistance and you have been amazing and for the city as a whole and i want to see that i want to highlight the inequities and experience the people of color and that is just what black and brown life is. And the resources and you have to reach out to me personally and is free and we have the resources to get the business and the corridors up and running and the process for free. And black and brown as the business commissioner. Thank you very much. And ill add to that if the commissioner ortiz offered you any helper assistance, you would be very wise to accept it. He is a force of nature behind the scenes and we will get things done. You should follow up afterward. I would encourage you to do so. A couple things that i took away and robin, this may be something that look at the top level from what we are hearing from the community. It seems to boil down in five categories and one is language barriers. We know about that. Weve talked about it in the past. That is a barrier to folks learning about shared spaces and even once they know about it, in communities like the sunset where theres several different languages, it is a barrier to implementation. So we should be thinking very aggressively about how we address that barrier and expenditure is something that we heard from all three and one thought i had, marybelle mentioned how popular the micro Grant Program was for her. Perhaps this is the case, but does the shared Spaces Program lift n. G. O. S to coordinate with . Yes, we partner with and we have partnered with a number of projects to a number of nongovernmental organizations to make the projects a reality. And livable city was mentioned earlier. And they have been a huge city wide partner for helping with everything from Technical Assistance to project scoping to kind of operations and theres not to mention organizations like the valencia quarter Merchants Association and other similar groups who sponsor and make these things feasible and real. Part of the Sustainability Strategy which i have alluded to and referred to before what were doing is trying to put together a kind of clear proposal for what it would mean to resource these partners in the deeper fashion, right . So to have the kind of Technical Assistance grants that ms. Ramirez be available citywide or Technical Assistance and help from the organization like livable city to be available to some of the more Vulnerable Community and that is part of what we are thinking and that they brought up today and really resonates with me. And our other ways to be supporting. And the resources arent available to me and therefore, not available to our vulnerable Communities Just yet. We are working on providing that kind of resource. So i know Livable Cities invest in neighborhoods and made contributions to the shared Spaces Program offline and you mentioned the cafe and dante has talked about that as well, which was an inequity pilot and dante has spoken quite eloquently about how central that businesses to that community. And that is over on yosemite and then Livable Cities and has helped with a few other places and you had mentioned in the jazz room and but i guess what i am encouraging you to consider in i dont know if the city can do about the obstacles and the shared spaces website and under Program Resources, and the shared spaces tracker. And i am thinking of somebody not familiar with n. G. O. And the city processes and might not have ever heard of these programs. I am wondering if it would be possible for the city to lift these programs under Program Resources so they know there are places that they can go to get help and create a funnel for businesses that need more resources to go down because on shared spaces website right now, theres not a lot of direction. At least not on the main page. Perhaps during the application process they get more information. But on the main page there doesnt seem to be a lot of direction to folk who is dont have the resources already. That is a great observation, president laguana and one i will take back to our team. I think pulling back shared spaces is one of the citys responses to help Small Businesses and Small Business corridors and other grants and relief programs primarily run out of the office of economic and workforce development, so i think sometimes this is just a little bit of an aside when i look at our map. Sometimes an Outdoor Dining space is not what that commercial corridor or merchant need. It can be another form of assistance and program that will make the difference between the survival. So i think leaking out to the other programs and the whole tool box that city has made available in terms of assistance to the Small Business community would be a key thing to do from our own website. And i think when we and just ask the commission that shared spaces is the answer and with the Outdoor Dining spaces and always what is the best and most appropriate way to help an individual merchant or community survive. That being said, everything that the commissioners and guests have mentioned today about multilingual outreach and sort of deepened attention are things that i recognize and we are differently trying to do more of. Just to and a coup of other commissioners wait l to have questions and to finish another thing. And we know that its shared spaces isnt always the answer. And we also know that we can do a better job of helping people and in business we call that cross linking. And multiple entry points into the funnel. And the idea is to get people the help they need or the assistance they need to move them along. And to break this into the five top level points that we keep track of Going Forward and one is language barriers. Two is the cost and expenditures. And this is the place where micro gram cans help. And three is not come up before this commission previously but something that i have heard a couple of times recently, street cleanliness and is perhaps something we should be looking at. Four is Technical Assistance. And five is kind of a more challenging, thorny problem which is layer elasticity as was mentioned where perhaps the city has less flexibility to help but maybe theres something we can do. And for the benefit and the commissioners and what appears to be the five elements and the five predominant elements that are presenting barriers towards deployment in the outlying community as we heard directly from them. And to think about the five elements. Commissioner, as soon as you have been very patient and i appreciate it. Please, you have the floor. Thank you, again, robin, for joining us. And to our guests, we really appreciate you guys being here. I just like to put a reminder out there that the equity neighborhoods are not in the commercial corridors and are also serving an extension of the Human Services agencies and by [inaudible] we lost her. Give her a second to reconnect. Okay. If she returns, i will put her next. Commissioner chief thank you, president iguana. And quality of experience and city wide and sorry, commissioners. Commissioner, you cut out on us for a second, so i will come back to you after commissioner ortiz you were gone for about 10 seconds. Oh dear. Okay. We will come back. I dont want to take her time away, but we have to expand on the quality experience on the cleanliness portion and we have to help the businesses and to attract them to dine or shop outside and it defeats the purpose of being outside. Very hard to convince people to go outside if it is not attractive. Couldnt an i degree. Commissioner azunasa, back to you. How am i now . You are great. Great. And i wanted to thank robin and our speakers and reaffirm the importance of shared spaces in our commercial corridors and inequity neighborhoods because the corridors and businesses are housing the expension of the housing and Human Services Agency Program and with ppe and for community and the support for individual Community Members on accessing federal programs and that sort of thing and i just want to put it out there that tangential city agencies and the programming is getting directly to communities in need as well. And the point i am trying to make as merchants in the neighborhoods are extending beyond Just Merchant Services in that regard. I agree. Great point. Thank you. Commissioner huey. I just wanted to echo again the street cleanliness and i wanted to point out that i did mention that at the last commission meeting. And i guess it just wasnt heard maybe. I just wanted to kind of amplify that once again. And to amplify the original comment about the need for culturally responsive information and not just in language information. I feel like basically a lot of what our panelists had or our speakers had presented as well is making sure that we are really reaching people where they are. And i think that is really the equity piece, and i think thats something that feels like might be the next step for the program that i think you have the full commissions support on. Thank you very much. Commissioner huey, i apologize for forgetting that you had mentioned street cleaning and the previous meeting. Could you for my own benefit flesh out a little bit more by what you mean by culturally what did you say, contextual or im sorry, flesh that part out a little bit more for me. And i am talking about culturally responsive and people may refer to it differently and culturally competent and is just that the differences between people are not just languages and are where they are coming from and the personal experiences and i know that you know given a specific example and is in north beach and the Outdoor Dining is fantastic. It is, i think, in a european environment, al fresca dining is something easily understood, easy to translate. When you take it into china town and look at grant avenue, the experience is very different. They are only streets apart. So with the constituents to invest when al fresca dining in that type of atmosphere is not the way we conceptually outdoor dine. The way we dine is in a hopper and type of thing and outdoor market and the standup kind of takeout type of thing. So understanding how different cultures look at something and the way that people invest and businesses operate differently based on their cultural context as well. Nos just the social experience and the Business Owners depending if they are new immigrant businesses and maybe multigenerational businesses to think about reinvesting into the business in the crisis is very different. And different from one another. I think that is something to take in consideration is who owns the business. And how do we meet you and help you through. Having photos for everybody is helpful and somebody reaching out personally for the businesses which is really challenging right now in the time of limited personal contact which is why there are some barriers. And i think its not just the language piece. Its the needing to trust that this program is going to help and how do you build that trust amongst different communities . That seems like a really incredible and important point. I am glad i asked you to flesh it out. I feel like i have a better understanding now. So i think that we should think about how to digest that and turn that into an action plan. So perhaps we could be encouraging Business Associations to form shared spaces and ambassadors like a vision board. This is what the street can look like and its like you said culturally responsive and i think that its really an incredibly important point in a city as diverse as ours to get this right. Commission sner and add to that culturally it doesnt have to be angle business way. And the language as well and was different to the way i understand it is more i didnt go to college in spain. And to translate it like that, people in my neighborhood dont understand that. And the way we want to be spoke on the and now the way we think they should be spoken to. So thank you for bringing that up i agree. And so robin has messaged me while we have been talking and has an update on roadway approval numbers. Robin, please go ahead. And thank you, president iguana. And we are at 21 nowened an about 18 and were a number that were approved in recent days. And so thats three since last wednesday. And an update to that. I think reflecting on the really insightful comments that commissioner huey and commissioner ortiz and to continue thinking about this together. And you are all embedded in the communities and have a sense of specifically the cultural competencies that would best help us translate our program. If there is a way in which the policy and with regard to shared spaces if there is an ambassadorship and partnership and feel like you can extend deeper and commissioner ortiz has been doing this for months with shared space. Tas great example how to help communities understood the relevance of the program to them. And it isnt just something that we do and in the arena. It is something that all businesses can take advantage of and support them in the survival and thriving. And i am not sure what that looks like and what that means and really grateful for the invitation to collaboration that the individuals on the commission and have extended to the team. And we have one Public Commenter and reopen Public Comment and i think its so important to hear from the public as they have something they want to say. And secretary diamond, could you repeat the instructions for calling in in case anybody else would like to offer Public Comment . Yes. Members of the public who would like to call in and make Public Comment, the number is 4084189388. The access code is 146 705 4896. Press pound and then pound again. When you are connected, you will hear the meeting discussions and you will be muted and in listening mode. Press star 3 in order to be added to the speaker line. Michael, i am going to make you the host so that you can circle the Public Comment linement do we still have the caller on the line . It looks like we do. Great. As a performer, i hate dead air, so im going to tell a couple of jokes. Let me know when the caller is ready. An i am trying to make michael the host. And there it goes. While she is doing that, the couple of and hold off and zip it. Is the caller on . Caller hello, can you hear me . I have the floor. Its great. And my name is i am the executive director of the filmore Merchants Association. Just want to say thank you for an Excellent Program and great speakers and good overall perspective of the shared Space Program and the Outdoor Dining. And seems like the biggest challenge for the city. And the merchant corridors and demonstrate safe and clean and safe and clean and the Outdoor Dining programs and and whats more important is really demonstrating to the public that our city is back open again or trying to open. And what i see on filmore street is the recovery is very spotty. And i the see that across the city as well. So really restaurants and bars at this point will pull traffic into the corridors. And other nonrestaurant businesses are going to be more apt to open. And this is what i see on filmore especially and i want to say that our merchants love the shared Space Program. And i wish we could close filmore, too, but we have the overhead bus line but again, thank you for an Excellent Program. And its going to be a slow recovery, but this Program Helps the merchants. Thank you. And for members of the public, he has been a long standing member of the Business Community trying to help move things forward for the city. And do we have any other callers . We do have one more caller in the queue. Great. And the floor is yours. This is what i see. I just want to say that our merchants love the shared Space Program. And whoever is not on mute, please mute yourself. I think this caller may be delayed. Is the commenter on . Hello. Yes, you have the floor. Please go ahead. Just a quick question. And i own a business on 895 bush and its a very busy street. The traffic coming down and we got approved for the space, and i am wondering what do i need to get help with the traffic barriers because were ready to buy 3,000 worth of traffic barriers and sounded like you guys can help us with that and what do you do when were done . After december, once were done, we dont need them anymore. We have no place to put them and have to i dont want to deal with that. And if there is a way the city is doing that, who do i need to contact on that . Do you have any other callers . Hold on, commissioner. I wanted to respond to him. I understand but we have to do the callers first. Are there any other callers . There are no remaining callers on the line. And we rented the barriers and if youre interested in finding out and by the month and through the northeast Business Association and to contact me and the north beach Business Association we will give you that information that you are renting and you wont have to keep them. So that i will add to that i will add, i believe, that supervisor peskin has introduced legislation to allow tables and chairs on sidewalks for up to two years. Further, the commission is issued a resolution recommending that shared spaces be extended to three years. And finally three of the commissioner members are also on the Economic Recovery Task force and i believe it will be ertf recommendation with shared spaces extended three years. Dont necessarily give up on the idea that the program will last beyond december when it is set to expire. Quite a few of us have been pushing hard for the program to last substantially longer and is a huge win for the city and obviously as we heard from many people and is currently due to end and is a barrier for people to invest in it. We need to extend the deadline quite a bit. And before we close the agenda item, did you have any did you want to add anything to what you heard . Any other comments . No obligation. Thank you for dwifr giving me the opportunity. We are working on getting some materials and barriers up to folk. Thest not going to happen any time soon. It is something we are pushing for thanks in large part to the resolution that the resolution and july 13 and underscoring the importance of that kind of assistance. And i am grateful to commissioner dooley as well about chiming in about renting and that is the best option. So as always, you can reach out to me and my team and shared spaces at sfgov. Org and there are specifics and around the particular situation and i think that the connection between the caller and commissioner dooley is going to help a lot. Thank you. And i would add to that i have heard rumors of folks wanting to jump in and help the city in a substantial with the micro loans and the sense is more help is on the way and thing wills get better. With that i want to thank our presenters. I want to thank you you all for coming and made some really important points to inform us moving forward. With that we will close this item. Thank you, all, everyone, for coming. Next item please. Item 3, board of supervisors file 200759 and business and tax regulation code and interest and administration of cannabis business tax. Amending the business tax and to amend the penalties and provisions for waiver of penalties and interest. And the provision of that code. And for administering the cannabis business tax and chief of policy and communications and the office of the treasure and Tax Collector and Marissa Rodriguez director of the office of cannabis is also here for questions. Great. Welcome in. I appreciate your patience. I know that was a long first agenda item, but this is a really important topic and robin had to wait three hours before the last meeting. We i hope you will grant him that courtesy of letting him go first. Ms. Friedman, i believe you will be presenting and director rodriguez, you are available for questions and input on the back end of that, right . Ms. Friedman, you have the floor. Good evening, commissioners. From the office of treasure and Tax Collector. And the legislation before you today has two major components and the first is to revise the business tax penalty structure and the second is provide administrative provisions for the tax measure. Are you able to hear me . Yes. Great. And so on the first part which is really the majority of the legislation, the department has been looking critically at the penalty structures for several years and noted that it was more severe and in certain areas than the state s. T. Bvp and the i. R. S. And sometimes to put an overly complicated and harsh outcome. And for those on the commission and with the penalty for Small Businesses and the effort that made sure at the time that the existing penalties were hitting equity regardless of the size. We have made major changes to the way we collect debt and mainly increased the speed of the election and reduces the penalties and impoeszed and tax payers and increases the overall tax pay rs and paying late or forgetting to file are clear so that you know how to comply as a business and the penalties are progressive and hit Small Businesses larger than bigger businesses and are easy to understand. The major example before you today would be eliminating the 20 penalty on payments more than 90 days late. Let me explain this a little bit more. This stuff gets in the weeds and unfortunately you only find out about when its quite late in the process. Currently when a payment is late we add 5 every month up to 20 of the tax due. But 90 days and add an additional 20 and that seems harsh and when we looked at who was paying that additional 20 and what impact it has, it really doesnt seem to encourage anyone to pay any faster. So this legislation would remove that additional 20 structure and is 5, 10, 15, 25 and stops at 25 . I did want to know in the staff report on the legislation there is a recommendation to delay this until after the election. I did want to address in my remarks and happy to take any questions about it. And we worked quickly to make sure that this penalty perform was contemplated in the context of what we have today and the existing penalty structure and also in the event that the two measures on the ballot in november passed. And so there is really no issue in passing the legislation before the november election and we actually really recommend doing it before. And taxpayer businesses and benefit from the changes sooner and the penalty structure wont go into place until 2022 and another year of businesses and the other things as wellment every time we have the tax measure on the ballot to keep the items on the ballot specific to the attacks at hand and afterwards we come forward tie it to test are of the provisions without going to the voter. With that i am happy to take any questions. Great. Thank you so much. I do want to apologize for getting your name wrong. Amanda freed. I apologize. Commissioner questions . I will jump in with a few of the questions i had one. Please. Go ahead. Commissioner adams. I just want to say thank you for your presentation and i was here many years ago when you did this and thank you, good job. I think its great when tax code is simple simplified and commissioner azunas. Thank you, amanda, for being here to answer some questions around this technical piece of legislation. I have a question because some of the tax fee schedules that fall under this have penalties that are not necessarily that are accrued based on multiplying how much you pay already. I am looking at one fee that i know that my familys business pays in which we had to pay late and then the calculation is based on an actual number of your reporting as opposed to the standard 5 , 10 rate of increase. And the fees scheduled and seen that on the fee before. And so we have tried in the prior legislation that i was speaking about that was a flat penalty. And pay 100 or 5 whichever was greater. That really had a disparate impact an larges business and for a Small Business it was a huge percentage of what they owed. And cleaned that up and there are a number of different penalties scheduled and hard to know which ones we were talking about and covered by this legislation come back and the filing and payment that come before in terms of number of businesses and also the revenues. I believe this will have an impact on the most number of businesses and i am happy to share with me a specific fee or penalty and i would love to take a look at it. I can do that offline and based on the reporting and passed on that number, it was paid late and 20 of what we were paying. It doesnt line up the speed populations at all. I am a little confused on that one in particular. And a second question i had was for kind of fee settlement negotiations that tend to happen with and i know departments are working and retail Compliance Agreement to help businesses comply better and some categories and license holders and with the business tax penalty Amnesty Program and i have to admit i am not entirely school and how that Program Works and how thing wills change expiration and effective sunset. Im curious to if this if these changes are going to impact negotiations for businesses that had stuff pile up on them and usually were handled with the agreement of how to handle that if there is a new process. And in the process and if future and something that fell under the penalty and Amnesty Program, thank you. I think you are referring to regulatory license fees with the fees for the department of puck lick health and the Police Department that we collect on the unified bill every spring. The penalty structures are a little bit different and not covered by the legislation. And if i am wrong, i am happy to look at this. These cover most tax payments so fees are a little bit different and often guided by separate legislation and for a variety of reasons have to be treated differently. This covers most businesses and city taxes and we try to avoid any situation settlementsen and typically that means anybody is quite delayed. And they are really far behind and what we have been trying to do as a department is work with businesses and do a lot more notifications of deadlines and get something out faster and you know right away via email and i missed that and you dont get into that situation. Great. Thank you so much. And in the future and a streamlining process and no doubt we need to apply to other areas. So i guess first let me check and make sure any other commissioners and if you are done with your questions. Thank you. And under this legislation and is the Tax Collector able to waive interest or staff seems to have determined the Tax Collector would not waive interest. And does include a provision to not waive interest. So one thought and given the situation and the ability to waive interest and would be helpful and welcome any time we give flexibility to Decision Makers to help keep the businesses afloat. I think that would be welcome. And the next bit is is i guess and again, this is just based on the staffs internal analysis of the bill. I guess my understanding is that if if the gross receipts tax and the payroll tax reform ballots pass, they can have a substantial impact on this bill. [please stand by] its where the majority of our penalties come from. Our penalty collections is going to go down no matter what we do with the penalties. But we still think this is the right move for businesses. Thank you. And thank you for your work on this. With that, commissioners is there an action . You have to take Public Comment before an action. One of these days ill get that right. Do we have Public Comment . There are no callers in the queue. Do you want me to read Public Comment instructions . I guess we should. Members of the public who will be calling in the number. The access code, press pound and pound again to access the public line and dial star three to be added to the speaker line. And is there any Public Comment . There are no callers in the queue. Even though we just gave directions, sadly were going to have to keep monthing. Moving. Why was the decision made to waive disability interest . We were trying to adherewe were trying to stream line as much as possible. Thats a provision we have for property taxes. As part of the state code and make our penalty structure as similar as possible to other entities. I certainly hear your concern and can bring that back for consideration. I would like to hear from our director about if theres been any industry comment on these changes, if theres been concern with the disproportion neat disr equity impact retailers. Thank you for having me here to speak to this. Is there a question specific to if theres a tax coming. In this piece of legislation beforewanting to defer the tax because of the pandemic and Small Businesses are suffering as a result. As you know the cannabis industry doesnt get to appreciate the government aid thats available to other businesses at this time. It is difficult. We continue to have these conversations. At our next Oversight Committee well talk more about that. As far as provisions necessary to implement this tax, theres been no discussion about that. Thank you. Excuse me, commissioner is ahead in the queue. Thank you, director. Hi. Thank you for coming today. I just had a question, the taxes are high in the cannabis industry. The sales are way down. Im wondering if anything will be taken into consideration for this 25 tax . Thank you. Again, these are conversations that are being had with the supervisors. Well have to wait and see how that all rolls out. We want to make sure the industry feels supported. Thank you. [indiscernible]. Its more of a recommendation. Thank you, director. Its certainly something we consider whether its taxits something we want the community to appreciate. Thank you for the kind wor word. Thank you. Echoing that, we appreciate all the work you guys are doing to facilitate this and appreciate all the work on this. My only recommendation to my fellow commissioners would be that we recommend that the pts be given the opportunity to waive interest given the covid situation. Does anyone else have any recommendations they would like to provide . Seeing none. Perhaps director, where are we at in terms of the action item . Is this pending . Are we voting to approve as written. It sounds like were in the middle of the process here and not at the end. Yes. This is an action item before you. I think amanda can speak more in terms of where the legislative process is. As per most legislation thats scheduled before you. You, usually its an action item to make recommendations to the board of supervisors. Timing wise if theres the ability to have it come back before you or not . That helps me. I just need to understand where we are in the process. I would move that we support with that recommendation that they be given the ability to waive interest on late fees. Ill second. We have a second. As presented by commissioner. Roll call vote. roll call . Motion passes. Passes, seven to zero. Thank you for your time and patience in this hearing. We appreciate your work on this. Next item, please. Good evening. Program manager. Thank you for the welcome. Welcome, rick. Its good to hear you voice as always. I dont have a camera on my computer but i do have a power point presentation. Let me get that up for you here. Before you today are six applications for your consideration for the legacy business registry. Each application includes a staff report, draft resolution, the application itself, and a case report, and a resolution from the planning department. The applications were submitted to planning on july 21 and heard on august 19th. Annies hot dogs the business has nine carts in San Francisco. The kitchen and Head Quarters are located in the dog patch neighborhood. Annies is committed to quality food at affordable prices. The restaurant was recognized for delicious offerings by well known food critic and became an immediate hit. Due to the success and line that would wrap around the block. He decided to try a new non conventional approach to cooking and serving. He decided to turn in house of nanking. The restaurant expanded to the space next door. They were brought on byits a restaurant featuring chinese cuisine. A lock smithing business. Forty three years they have served the immediate neighborhood with key cutting, rekeys, lock installs, and other key related services from the businesses original location. Its a family owned business and still under Sole Proprietorship of john. Its staffed by his wife and daughter. In addition to lock smithing needs, he has old keys. The core feature of the business he must maintain is lock smith. Legal assistance to the elderly. A Nonprofit Organization established in 1879. Offers San Francisco residents over 69 years in age. Its the only Legal Organization of its kind in San Francisco. The organization multi lingual staff serves the elderly and adults with disabilities. San francisco natural medicine. The business was founded in 1989. Having completed his doctorate in natural pathic medicine, he saw a need in San Francisco for alternative medicinal practices. Health care concentrated on whole patient wellness and healing through natural therapies. The clinic moved to a space where it is today. The core piece of tradition the business must maintain is natural pathic medicine and actt puncturacupuncture. Always maintained one location in the china town neighborhood. The store is famous for the collection of chinese cook ware. Its been featured on television and cook books. The business received a certificate of congressional recognition of outstanding and valuable service in the community. Today the store also has an Online Presence and features wok wednesday social media approach. All six businesses met the criteria for the business registry and from the Historic Preservation commission. Its adopted six resolutions for your consideration. A motion in favor of the resolutions. Thank you. This concludes my presentation. Im happy to answer any questions. There should be business representatives on the line who can speak on behalf of the business during Public Comment. Any questions . Seeing none. Well open up to Public Comment ill be reading the Public Comment line instructions. The number to call in for Public Comment is 408 4189388 the meeting access code is 146 7054896 press pound and pound again to be added to the queue. Press star three to be added to the speakers queue. You have the floor, please go ahead. Hi commissioners. Thank you for considering this item today. Im the executive director for Legal Assistance for the elder elderly. We provide Legal Services to the elderly. Were the only organization that focuses solely on the legal needs of seniors. We take a holistic approach and connecting our clients to Vital Social Services sm th services. The issues are elder abuseour attorneys work closely and collaboratively with our entire time. And help with the immediate issues and underlying issues as well. Our primary areas are housing, business fits advocacy. Health care preservation and advocacy. We provide services in multiple languages. We have extremely experience logossedthank you for considering our application for becoming a legacy business. We believe this will help us to serve our vulnerable seniors for many years to come. Im happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next caller, please. Good evening. Im calling fromi want to thank you for hearing this item and considering approving wok shop for the legacy business registry. A variety of institutions. I think this is a great opportunity for us to continue to talk about legacy business. Support our Small Business Community Despite the Public Health and economic crisis that were in right now. When we celebrate these businesses were highlighting the fact that our Small Business community continues to be resilient especially during this time. Having businesses that survive for thirty years gives us hope that we will overcome this challenge that were facing right now and further serching g our community. Both wok shop and youre good. Im sorry. I just want to highlight that the wok shop started off as a locally serving business. It became one of the must visit Tourist Attractions for tourists worldwide. The legal aid for elderly even though right now its district six, they operated for a long time in our district and are known as a hero. I really thank you for considering this item today. On behalf of the supervisor i ask for your support with these businesses this evening. Next caller, please. Im the daughter of peter and lily the sole proprietors of house of hanking. Im here to share what its come to represent for our family and the city of San Francisco. I spent very little time out side of the restaurant when i was a kid. We have spent more hours of our lives in this tiny restaurant than anywhere else. We continue to do so thirty years later. As i reflect back on all the history that we have accumulated over time, it dawned on me that its much more than just a restaurant. For my family its our one and only true home. For our patrons its a place to get pot stickers and waiting in the long line. Its a meeting place, a date place, a family place. A place where you go and share tables with strangers and make friends. You can rub shoulders with a celebrity or engage with tourists. It serves a slice of familiarity and fond memory for san franciscans all over the world. We have been selected for a movie by a famous director recently simply because she had vivid memories of our soup. I believe that as much as it would feel different to see the restaurant missing on the map, i joined the Family Business over ten years ago. We would love to be recognized as a legacy business to protect our business for years to come. Thank you. Thank you. Next caller, please. Hello. This is from the San Francisco business clinic. Thank you for considering my business as a legacy business. I want to add some perspective to some things that may not be obvious about what we do. When i moved to seattle i realized it was not a licensed practice in california. I became one of the founders of the natural pathic doctors association. We got california to license natural pathic physicians in 2003. We became the first legal natural pathic medicine clinic in San Francisco. Weve been providing integrative care for people with normal things you would go to the doctor with along with people with chronic disease where they are looking for something to build their health as dealing with conventional therapies for disease also. Weve had a long practice since 1998 we are pleased to be considered for legacy business status. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next caller, please. Go ahead, caller. My name is debbie. Im calling on behalf of the lock smith business for john white. He wants to thank you for considering his application. I wont go on and on. It seems that in this time of the pa pandemic the need for changes of locks because of lock outs and people are forgetful going through so many stressful times, were always available to help them with rekeying. People are not always able to pay right now. We understand all of that. Weve been in business since 77 here and appreciate you considering legacy status for us. Thank you. Thank you. Next caller. There are zero callers remaining in the queue. Any commissioner comment . May i comment . [indiscernible]. Thank you. I was going to say house of nankink and all the people from San Francisco around the world. That place is amazing, one of a kind and a perfect business to become a legacy business. I had not heard about the lock smith but it sounds pretty amazing. I may have to go pay them a visit. Thank you. I would like to echo that. We have a great list of business brz ubefore us today. Thank you those of you who called in for Public Comment and the amazing words speaking testimony to your businesses. I know the reality of a having a Small Business. Thank you for speaking to that and being there to serve communities especially now during this difficult time. Thank you. Same here. Thank you so much for spending a portion of your evening with us tonight. I also understand how it is working in a Family Business. I appreciate you wanting to continue to propel that in the future. I want to thank the board of supervisors. Its really diverse and a wide variety of businesses. Thats something i really appreciate. Often times, you know, with that, do we have a motion. I motion. Seconded. roll call motion passes, seven to zero. Sorry, commissioner. I was just in such a solid flow. Im so sorry. This next item is very important. First let me check in. Director, you mentioned were having band width issues. Are we back on air. Is everything working . Yes, its working. I can see the commission is up. I lost all contact in terms of being able to hear. Okay. We can all hear fine. Well just keep going. Next item, please. Item five, Presentation Mission statement and possible action. Director of office of Small Business. Let me know when to pull up the presentation. Go ahead and pull up the presentation now. While youre doing that, commissioners, a couple fun fact. We looked at our Mission Statement to update it to include an Equity Perspective in terms oand to make sure that war mission. I would like to thank those who worked on preparing for the Mission Statement. One element in taking a review at Mission Statement is a lot of Mission Statements have the Mission Statement and talk about the work that they do to achieve that mission. We did not have that. What we currently have is a Mission Statement and then history about the office. Currently our Mission Statement as it reads is the mission of the Small Business commission, office of Small Business and Small Business Assistance Center is to foster, promote, and retain Small Businesses in the city and county of San Francisco. If you can scroll down. This is the proposed change. I want to thank you for doing a review of the first draft and the suggested changes. The proposed change is to equity blequitybli support, preserve sl businesses. Our work involves our Business Assistance. We have aspiring Business Owners to grow and thrive in San Francisco through special Case Management services, programs, we protect Small Businesses by offering education and preserve Small Businesses through the Legacy Business Program. Ill read two more that are not visible on the screen. Promote solutions to mitigate challenges to ensure Economic Health of all Small Businesses. We serve as the door to city hall Small Businesses are working with a wide range of stake holdersto ensure that Small Businesses are heard, well supported and especially those from a historically marginalized community. We add a section on the history of how the Small Business commission came into being. Happy to take any questions and feedback. Ill open it up to the commissioners. I think this is excellent. Great job. I lover i love it. Thats all i can say. This is very good. Good job. Absolutely. I was just going to say i think you did an amazing job. You were right to the point. Addresses what needed to be updated. Great job. Couldnt agree more. I totally agree. The fact that this is so concise and still so comprehensive makes me feel like you spent a lot of time on this. I feel one thing is just that im super proud of the fact thai get to bthati get to be on thisn right now. This really makes me feel lik likeim really happy to be a part of this commission right now with this beautiful Mission Statement. Wonderful job. I just want to echothank you. I just want to also note a lot of kudos who rhea who cant be here because she is off. She took advantage of the office of Racial Equity office hours to request that they help review this statement when it was going through a few differentity difft iterations. They were incredibly helpful. Thank you. Ill say for myself and on behalf of the commission, we are all in deep gratitude to the extraordinary amount of work that went into this. Its well reflected in the document that resulted. Its something the commission can stand behind and be proud of. I want to thank secretary and the office of Racial Equity for their contributions as well. Thank you. Please convey the commissions strong appreciation for the work that was put in. We will do. Great. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this item . There are no callers in the queue. Great. Public comment is closed. I would move that we adopt this Mission Statement as the office of Small Business Mission Statement. Second. On the motion as presented, roll call vote. Motion passes seven to zero. Thank you for staying. I appreciate being able to make that unanimous and fully attended. I am going to recommend that we skipwell come back to item six and seven but were going to go to item eight because thats a Racial Equity item update. For cohere en coherence and cony were going to move to item eight. Work as required by the office of Racial Equity. The presenter is the office of Small Business. Thank you. She is sharing a power point. Im going to be providing you with general overview of the office of Racial Equitys charge. What we as a department need to do but also want to highlight while the power point is coming up that our work and our programmatic work aligns with oewd, were currently working with the office of equity and Work Force Development. Were taking a look at the services they provide through the Business Assistance center. Are you able to pull up the slide . I wonder if we want to move out of this and go back to meeting minutes. I think i fixed it. Youll be receiving a copy of this after tonights meeting with some additional documents for you to read to familiarize yourself with the work thats going to be required. It is a division of the human rights division. The office of Racial Equity has the authority to enact city wide equity framework, action plan, analyze the impacts of pending ordinances as well as various other policies and functions. I highlighted this bullet item because this does overlap with the work of the commission. Taking a look at our Human Resources and hiring and promoting practices. Okay. The office of Racial Equitys vision is transforming systems toive included this to give some sort of framework for the commission to set itself in as it embarks on this endeavor. Departments are to develop a Racial Equity action plan. Its a blue print for the office and for the commission for your work. For advancing Racial Equity in all aspects over the next three years. Outcomes from challenges made within programs or policies. Measure it evaluate the af can ascanefficacies and departmentsd external programs. The action plan will be reviewed and scored by the office of Racial Equity, submitted to the Mayors Office and board of supervisors. The review plans will be posted on each departments website. The action plan is to be integrated in with the departments five Year Strategic Plan and annual report. It is due december 31, 2020. Prior to going into covid, i does have discussions with the need to work on a Strategic Plan. We probably wont be able to do that in time for delivering this. When were able to refocus back to our Strategic Plan we can incorporate our action plan. The action plan is broken down into two phases. Phase one consists of seven sections. Those are mostly focusing on internal policies, the citys work force and its hiring. Section seven refers to boards and commissions and thats what relates to you. Phase two is the procurement of contracting grants and services and programs. Thats where the Business Assistance center and the Legacy Business Program will be assessed in that particular phase. As i said, we are work with the economic and Work Force Development to take a look at the totality of the Service Programs together. Phase one for sectionits the paragraph just below this is what is in their goal and has been stated by the office of Racial Equity. Boards and commissions have equity and diverse leadership does not stop with Senior Leadership within the department. Decisions are being made within boards and commissions. The seats must represent the community that the department serves. Bbyebyby laws must be revised ad assessed through a Racial Equity lens. As a board or a commissionthe departmentestablishing criteria for equity legislation. Racial equity including business and ownership. As you start to read the materials around Racial Equity it speaks towards workers, housing, and other needs, but it doesnt speak to a key component of Racial Equity is also around Business Ownership and what we can be doing to ensure that what the city does in support of Business Ownership or what prevents or deters Business Ownership from a racial equitable perspective. Are there policy recommendations that can be taken a look at and three is the Mentorship Program and create a Advisory Board that combines those. With that, ill take questions. Your thoughts, ideas . Questions thoughts, ideas . Do we have anybody . While we wait and see if anybody has any suggestions. Can we go back to that last slide . How would the commission with respect to number one establish criteria for equity metrics . One very simplified example is in relationship to our licensing and permitting. The time and cost to get through that. There is a equity disparity economically which could also mean a Racial Equity disparity because of the lack ofthe access to capital is more challenging. That is one particular look. Also it could be that different pieces of legislation may be impacting certain areas of the city. How does that fare . Im not sure i have all the answers. Im also interested in meeting with the office of Racial Equity to hear what they are going to establish as metrics when they are to evaluate legislation and what legislation they will be reviewing and that particular process. Will different pieces of legislation help or hinder, make it more challenging for Business Ownership, Business Activity through a Racial Equity lens in our city. I would agree. I think that would be a helpful conversation in both directions. We can to the demographics of the Small Business community that see people out side of the Small Business community our purview as advocates and businesses that people dont see. Part of a criteria would be a collectionit would first necessitate data on our part. Looking at the license types and what are the predominate demographics on the types of licenses would it be sus suscepe to a piece of legislation. While we wait for her to return. I dont know what happened. All i was saying was we know that theres certain sectors of the economy and license types that are disproportionately regulated in the city. Certain immigrant based communities. We can create a criteria based on data that we can look through an equity lens to view. Okay. I agree. I just wanted to talk about the Advisory Board and i think that would be a great first step for us and would alsowe could introduce more people to being involved with the city in a less intimidating way at first. I really want to support that. Great. I support that as well. I think thats a great idea. We previously talked about a Mentorship Program. One thing i liked about that, it changes the nature of the relationship. Its more ofless of oh, im going to mentor you. More of, you have things to contribute too. Im going to learn from you just as much as youre going to learn from us. Whenever you come up with a plan or proposal, how do you turn it into action. I think we will have to come up with some form of action plan to actually get this off the ground. Its one thing to talk about something and its another to start issuing invitations and who would be available to serve on an Advisory Committee. How we go about recruiting, how long would they serve on this committee, what time requirements would that entail. How would they interact with the commission. What would the benefits be . Theres quite a few questions that we have to wrestle with. I almost want to form a committee to study a committee on our committee. Theres a lot there. Yes. Definitely, i see there could bei think at least two committees. Item number two is just a bullet, i have it there just because i think its really a missed opportunity when talking about Racial Equity. That Business Ownership is left out. To me as i see it, always thinking about our populations that are usually disproportionately marginalized. Looking at Racial Equity in relationship to Business Ownership is equally as important as it is in terms of jobs and job creation and job growth, things of that stort. Sort. Its an opportunity for us to inject that into the larger pirkpicture of Racial Equity ase move forward. Items one and three could be two different committees. These committees can work onsetting up the criteria. I dont see that were taking any action in terms of inviting people into an Advisory Board until we have that fully established. We have until the end of the calendar year to create that. What does that Program Look Like . Not that we have to have it up and going. Its developing the action plan and the criteria. One thought that occurs to me especially given excellent contributions. Would it be possible to rely on staff to help guide us in looking at what other commissions are doing as you mentioned previously. And what possible best practices might be and how we might obtain the commissions goals. Absolutely. You can absolutely ask staff to help with this. Just like what we did with the Mission Statement is to develop some beginning criteria. Put it before the commission or commissioners and work on it that way. I think thats probably the next logical step. Thank you. One of the things that i think is really important in addition to establishing the criteria for equity metrics is what i think commissioner was mentioning. I think we really need more data in terms of the types of businesses and the different ethnicities and races that tend to open up certain types of businesses. I say that because i dont think racism in San Francisco has traditionally been something thats just so overt. A think a lot of the racist legislation is not specifically targeted towards a specific race but always targeted towards certain businesses. For us as a Small Business commission its important for us to really recognize that and notice thats how we really wiped out and eliminated certain types of groups and sectors. Thats how we make choices in our city of what we value. Clearly weve noticed a real disparity there in our Small Business communities. Its really important that were real with that. That we really look at our legislation and data. Just advocating for the certainlpersonalservices sector. There are certain ethnic groups. As we start to look at Racial Equity as a real structural piece of our commission, its important to talk about it with honesty, with depth and really just going as deep as we can and aacknowledging some of the racit legislation that weve passed previous to our time here. We really need to address those before we can Start Talking about how do we lower barriers. We really need to acknowledge the racist legislation that has been passed in our city previous to our tenure. Clearly thats a thing. Former red lining. It tends to favor overwhelmingly the people who already have capital and because of state tax laws that have made the fee the new tool. We need to understand the context of how laws are made and fee thats are on our books that for some reason are not being reevaluated according to their own legislation. Nexus studies that are triggering a fee that are decades old. Fees were created in the context of National Policy making like brokenlike the broken window era policy that are still on our books. We have fees that are made in the context of gaming junctions that largely fall on businesses and low income areas that are owned by communities of color. I really think that i would like to have a look into fees and a look into a systematic reasons why those were put on our books. I would also like to look at the police code. There are a lot of fee thats are redid you knowe rebunked rer police code. A largely regulatory license, businesses which we know are also very much tied to communities of color. Those are some of my suggestions in terms of making a plan. Let me make an observation. Because honoring our weekly check in calls, you brought up this idea and its a very powerful idea of reviewing pack legislation. The old legislation which nobody is looking at anymore. You brought that up on our weekly call, i really liked that idea. I feel like we see things when they are brand new and come ago cross our desk and theres no follow through. We he dont see what happens a year later. Take a look at some of the historical legislative items. Make recommendations to the commission, recognizing we are all running businesses and have to come to these hearings every two weeks. One wonders how to get these agenda items. If we can empower an Advisory Committee to review some of the past legislative items and make recommendations which we could further empower all fee makers to look at. These are the resolutions in support of, that might be a time efficient way for the commission to address these issues, help empower and bring up new folks into city government, fulfill some of these things weve talked about with mentorship and really wrestle with some of these Racial Equity issues and give it the time that it deserves. How does that strike you . I think thats a great suggestion. Thats a nice way to tie that in and actually get something done within a reasonable amount of time. I appreciate that. Thank you. I think we have a framework here for how we might move forward and put this to work. I think it has the potential to be very powerful and impactful. That leaves me hopeful and excited that this leads somewhere interesting and powerful for the commission to go. We have steps to go to next steps. Well continue to work of line oofflineon how to turn this ina reality. Thank you, commissioners. Is there any Public Comment on this item the Racial Equity update . There are no callers queued up. Next item, please. Im not sure how to get out of this. I think were back on item number six of the minutes. Draft meeting minutes. Any members of the public who would like to make comments on item six . There are no callers on the line. Seeing none. Public comment is closed. I move to approve the minutes. Second. roll call motion passes, five to zero. Discussion on surveying San Francisco Small Businesses. Im just going to preface this. Unfortunately we dont have our full commission. Weve been talking about ways to collect and gather data on the Small Business community. She has made some out reach efforts. With that im going to turn it over. Thank you so much. I have been wanting to do a survey of San Francisco businesses specifically all the Small Businesses actually. I know there have been several studies from the impact force. I feel like thats a lot of great information. I want to see what the entire Small Business landscape looks like. Specifically my goal is to create a picture for legislators as well as our rez department rt our city is going to look like should we continue on this path. And Economic Impact of what is happening right now. I enlisted the help of the chair of the department of economics at San Francisco state university. She is very interested in helping us do an Economic Impact study specifically focused on Small Business sector in San Francisco. Item nine, general Public Comment allows Public Comment on any item that was not discussed today. This is general Public Comment under the commissions pepurview. There are two callers listening but no callers in the speaker queue. You allowed to makes a comment on anything you want to make a comment on except the items in the agenda. If you are listening and would like to make a commentcould you repeat the instructions. Yes. Members of the public, if you would like to call in the number is 408 4189388 the access code is 146705 press pound and pound again and you are ready to give your comment dial star three. For our two listeners if youd like to make a comment, star three. Having just provided those instructions, have any of our listeners converted to commenters . They have not. Okay. Seeing none. Public comment is closed. Next item, please. Directors report. Report on policy and legislative matters. Announcements regarding Small Business activities, discussion items. Thank you. Director, the floor is yours. Thank you. And thank you commissioners. So i will make this relatively quick. One thing i realized that i did not brief the commission on is the last part of the a jepped a. We now have comments and questions. This combined comments and new business items. Often these two things meld together in conversation. In review of other commissioner meetings with other commissions adjendize it in this manner. In review, we decided its a good change to make to the agenda. Quick update in the 24 weeks weve been in this stay in place order the office of Small Business staff has served three thousand three hundred fifty Small Businesses in helping them through a myriad of things. We are beginning to see a reduction in what we are defining as the classic covid emergency response. I think part of that is that were very much in a stand still. Were in a stand still in our reopening phase. Were in a stand still in any kind of financing support coming. Were in a stand still at the federal level. Thats one particular thing. We are receiving a handful of calls of businesses that do want to open a business. Thats a very interesting process because not only are we having to do the standard licensing and permitting but also educating through the covid process and how each agency is working. Also depending upon the type of business they are, making sure they are also aware of the reopening guidelines and guidance. Key updates on legislation that the commission has heard. That concludes my report. Thank you. Is there any other commissioner comment . Okay. I dont have any either. If that sounds good. Thank you director for all your work and keeping us up to date on that. Is there any members of the public that would like to comment on item number ten, the directors report . There are no caller nz thes e queue. Public comment is closed. Any commissioners who would like to close out new business items . Thank you so much for your steadfastness towards the undefined night. I have a few items. One is an upcoming item is on friday were going to be having a webinar in the Richmond District with oewe. It will be on reopening for Small Businesses. Questions such as, i have an exposure, what do i do . Understanding best practices and what we need to do legally . And it will be offered in channels for chinese, spanish, and possibly russian if they can find the means. Im hoping thg wil this will bee model they can continue to do. Thats in conjunction with supervisor too. Theres been this cooperat coopf the ba balboa merchant survey. Just something with what you were saying. Something short, something simple, and really get into the heart of what is needed in the district to help Small Businesses at this time. The nextthe last piece, i didnt realize there wasnt going to be a new business section. I was hoping to also have maybe a presentation or some sort ofsomething or Upcoming Commission meeting of people who offer Technical Services, like one on one clinics or counseling for Legal Services, finance, accounting, bookkeeping that could really help Small Businesses at this time. I notice in a lot of Small Business communities have questions and they dont know where to go to or havent built a relationship with a provider of free Technical Services quite yet. I also spoke to people who are providing those services and they are currently building capacity. I feel like with those two components we could maybe help as a bridge to amplify the fact that these are available in the city. People are building capacity. Lets get everybody together to get the free help that they really need. The other piece isactually this is one more piece. Id also like to explore the ideas or the idea around helping pods in their operation. Maybe budget neutral solutions to encourage san franciscans to reopen their businesses here. It could be a discussion item in the future. Its always a challenge, how do we fit these agenda items in and actually make progress. Yeah. Well just keep plugging away. Thank you for your comments. Those are all really important points. Good luck on your present and facilitation on friday. Two things, im notdid director ever send us a copy of the certificate power point. I would love to have a copy. Its online. Great. And second is there guidance for employers in Small Businesses on how to deal with the current air quality in the city. I think i saw one being circulated but im not sure if it has been more accessible than anan email read to businesses. Was it circulated by oewd . I saw it on a sugary beverage testax committee. I think some guidance would be helpful. Thanks. Director, if you want to find out if theres an anything anyby is doing. Perhaps we can track down whatever guidance was at the sugary tax proposal. Ill send that to you. Yes. Okay. I have stuff but i think it can wait until next meeting. Its more just cooking and not quite ready to take off the oven. The hour is late. Are there any members of the public who would like to make comments on item eleven . There are dee zero callers ie queue. Public comment is closed. That calls for adjournment. Would you like to read the closing statement. Youre going to show the slide, right . Yes. We will end with the reminder that the Small Business commission is the official quorum to effect the vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. The office of Small Business is the best place to get answers during the emergency. Continue to reach out to the office of Small Business. Adjournment. Action item. Is there a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Third. Roll call vote. The meeght ithe meeting adjourn. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone. Chair borden Municipal Transportation Agency commission. [indiscernible]. Please call the roll. [roll call] director you have a quorum. Item four communications. Chair borden due coth chair borden we ask the public to participate remotely. For all comments received in advance of the meeting, we have received an appreciate these comments. Thank you for honoring our request. We continue to urge the public to write the board. While this Technology Allows us to hold these meetings via teleconference, there maybe gap and silence as staff is transitioning the technology between speakers. We are doing our best and we ask for your patience and understanding. If we lose the connection during the meeting, we will pause the meeting until the connection has been reestablished. Lastly i want to thank the village that it takes to keep this meeting possible. This meeting is televised by sfgov tv, theres a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public is seeing on sfgov tv. If you wish to comment, please call the phone line when the item is called. For members of the public who wish to make Public Comment on items on the agenda, the phone number to use is 888 8056929. Please make sure youre in a quiet location and you turn off any tvs or radios. If youre live streaming, the meeting via sfgov tv, that you mute the sound. It will reduce any reverberation so that the board can hear you. At the appropriate time the chair will ask for the phone lines to be open. If you wish to comment, you will be prompted to press 10. This will add you to the speaker line. The auto prompt will say callers are entering question and answer mode. You will be queued in the order in which you pressed 10. There will be an ought th