Transcripts For SFGTV SFMTA Board Of Directors 20240712

Madam secretary, please call the roll. [roll call] clerk madam chair and carrs, you have a quorum directors, you have a quorum. Because we are on soundproducing electronic devices, we will not make this usual presentation. Item 4, discussion whether to invoke the attorneyclient privilege and conduct a closed privilege. Madam chair, it would be appropriate at this time to open the Public Comment line for Public Comment only on the invoking the attorneyclient privilege. Great. Are there members of the public who would like to speak on us going into closed session. Moderator, please let us know. Clerk all right. And for members of the public, the phone number, if you are listening via sfgovtv call 8888086929. The code is 9961164. In order to join the queue for Public Comment, you must press one, zero. Well just pause for a moment to wait for anyone who wishes to address the board only about going into the closed session for matters in the closed session to do so. Great. We cant hear operator press one, then zero. Each question will be asked in the order it was received. You have one question remaining. Operator speaker . Can you hear me now . Yes, mr. Pillpow. Its mr. Pillpow. Okay. I have three points at this time. The agenda and the website indicates that this meeting also on sfgtv. The ocii is on channel two, and theres Something Else on channel one. So can you please advise where the public can watch the meeting . Thats number one. Number two, although the meeting started late, all closed session start with an open session first, so im glad that were doing this. And number three, if the closed session will last for at least three hours, can you please come back at 4 00 p. M. , both by phone and online, whatever the meeting is, and just update the public as to whether youre still in closed session or if youre done with that so that people can plan their afternoons and not just sit around with the unknown time that you may be done by four or earlier or later. I think you could just break at 4 00 p. M. And tell us where you are when you come back. Thank you, mr. Oh, and by the way, i hope you select a board secretary. Thank you for your well wishes. Are there any additional Public Commenters on the line . Operator you have zero questions remaining. And with that, directors madam chair, just for the record, sfgtv is listening, and so they have heard mr. Pillpows comment about the meeting not being on sfgtv. All right, madam chair just out of curiosity, do we know whats going on with that . Clerk no. Because i dont know whats happened. I would say, in answer to mr. Pillpows comment, i dont know how easy it is to facilitate. Could they put something on that were going to go longer because i dont know if theres any way to recess or going in and out of the meetings unless theres another mechanism to inform the public. Clerk i will say what i can do, madam chair. Okay. And with that, we should vote to go into closed session. Is there a motion, directors . Motion to go into closed session. Second. All in favor in. Clerk madam chair, roll call vote. [roll call] clerk okay. Madam chair, thank you. That is unanimous, and the board will now go into closed session. And members, clerk members of the public, the m. T. A. Met in closed session discussing hiring of a secretary to the board of directors and also discussing litigation with the City Attorney but took no action with either matter. Item 10 will be a motion to disclose or not disclose matters discussed in closed session. Motion not to disclose. Second. Madam secretary, roll call. [roll call] clerk madam chair, the motion to not disclose is approved. Moving on, at this point, madam chair, is approval of minutes from the september 15 regular meeting. Anyone on the board have any additions or corrections to the minutes . Seeing none, we can open it to Public Comment for the addition or corrections to our minutes. Moderator, is the phone line open . Operator you have one question remaining. Wonderful. Commenter . Mr. Pillpow, is that you . Hello . Hi. I think i dialled in by mistake. Okay. Are there any other commenters on our minutes . Operator you have one question remaining. Okay. Commenter . Hello . Hi. I think im unmuted. I dont know. Okay. Moderator, are there any other callers on the line or is it just the one caller . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Okay. With that, i will entertain a motion to approve or not approve the minutes. Motion to approve. Is there a second . Second. Secretary boomer, can you please call the roll. [roll call] clerk the minutes are approved. Item 12, communications. Madam chair . Due to the covid19 health emergency, this meeting is being held virtually, and all members and staff are present via teleconference. This will ensure the safety of all members and staff. On the meeting page, weve asked the public to participate remotely by emailing or mailing a comment. We continue to urge the public to write the board at mtaboard sfmta. Org. While this Technology Allows us to hold these meetings via teleconference, it may not be as seamless as we like it to be. There may be gaps and silence as staff is transitioning to presentations and speakers. Please understand that we are doing our best for the hearing. If we lose connections during the meeting, well pause the meeting until the connection is reestablished. Lastly, i would like to thank all those who have been working to make the meeting possible. Clerk madam chair and staff, there meeting is being televised on sfgtv. For those of you watching the live stream, please be aware there is a delay between the actual meeting and what members of the public are seeing on sfgtv. We request that if you are kwauchg via sfgtv and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. When the phone line is open for Public Comment, the phone number to use is 8888086929. The access code is 9961164. Please make sure youre in a quiet location, that you turnoff any t. V. S or raos, and if youre Live Streaming the meeting via sfgtv, that you mute the sound. This will reduce any reverberation so that we can hear you. At that time, the chair will ask that the lines are open. At that time, you will be prompted to press star, zero. At the last meeting, one, zero. At the last meeting, a few people said they were unable to enter Public Comment, but they forget to press one, zero. After you press one, zero, there will be an automated voice that tells you you are unmuted, and you can start talking. When you have 30 seconds left, i will tell you 30 seconds. At the end of your time, we will tell you that your time is up. If you are on the phone line, you need to press one, zero to be added to the queue, and i will repeat the directions a little further down in the meeting. Item 13, items of new or Unfinished Business. Are there any new or Unfinished Business . Director eaken . Madam chair, [inaudible] one of the items that came up in that conversation was just the way that we were communicating with the public about our Transit Service and our availability. Like, our Transit Service and i just wanted to raise that i took a trip on the 5 fulton recently and heard the announcement on the bus that muni is for essential trips only, and my trip was not an essential trip. I was going out to, you know, meet some friends on a friday night. And i had a moment of pause in that moment, just kind of should i be riding this bus . This is not an essential trip. And i think weve lost so much transit ridership, that our Transit System is going to be suffering a lot of challenges, and i just want to make sure that were being very clear with communicating with the public what is the direction for right now . What is the right direction . Are we still in a mode of discouraging the public from riding transit except for essential trips or are we inviting the public who may be making discretionary trips back onto muni . I found myself very unclear what was the message we were giving to the public, and i think we are in a posture where we dont want to pass; that we want toen surgery people back onto muni given all the accommodations that weve made, and all the accommodations for safety. I just wanted to kind of raise that for the director and the board to talk about because i think things are challenging, and its especially challenging right now. I think people are feeling confused as to whether they want them riding muni or not right now. Thank you, director eaken. Director lai . Thank you. I was trying to follow the recent m. T. A. Update to the plan action, and i particularly found the policy around work from home, which is a lastminute addition, troubling, which is the word i think im going to use here. It seems counterintuitive in some regards and certainly damaging for urban centers. So i have trouble understanding how that policy evolved into being part of the plan itself. I think for those of you who have also been paying attention, it fails to account for green modes of availability, which weve been trying to pursue with m. T. A. , and pursuing green energy sources, and just flatly requiring the 60 work from home seems to lack the appropriate evaluation in considering the real life consequences on urban job centers like San Francisco and will have unintended consequences if this requirement is uniformly implemented across jurisdictions. And i think most of us will agree, urban transportation policy is not a onesizefitsall game. I think we agree, and i think m. T. C. Is providing some clarification around this policy. I understand that there are still steps to complete. Theres environmental review, theres the final adoption. So heres the ask. I would like m. T. A. Staff to pay close attention and provide an update on the clarification, on the implementation. How that will affect us locally and as an agency. Continue to question the g. H. G. , the Greenhouse Gas emission that the agency is expecting, and verifying, i guess, trying to help me understand how the workfromhome policy is appropriately offsetting the g. H. G. Emission increases. And then, also to just help us advocate for the Regional Authority to understand the premise of benefits of fostering urban centers of San Francisco, and how we may differ and need different policies than, lets say a more rural area. And i think we may support reduction in emissions, but just make sure that the agencies are being thoughtful in protecting the environment of urban centers and not penalizing cities like us. I think thats clear. I want staff to be coming back to us and helping us track this and understand how this plan will shape us as a transportation agency, whether it may or may not impact our capital planning. As an agency, i believe that there will be consequences, how it may or may not impact our strategies, which is great. Both directors brought up the message that i was thinking of, whether its riding muni transportation now that bars and restaurants are open, and theres no confusion in asking people to work from home. Are there any other directors who had Unfinished Business . Seeing none, we can move on. Clerk item 14, directors report. Thank you, chair borden and members of the board. Before i begin my directors report, let me respond directly to the requests. Transit director julie kirchbaum will be responding to director eakens request around this the tensions and contradictions that were facing with the Health Directives still stating that transit is for essential trips only. The fact that we need additional transit ridership, but at the same time, our primary High Frequency lines are leaving people behind at the curb every day because we do not have enough capacity. We may be able to address the intense work that weve been doing with the department of Public Health on relating the physical distancing goals on transit to the stages of reopening the economy. So that has been a topic that has involved a lot of internal conversation, it involves a lot of complexity. Similarly, yesterday at the general managers meeting, the executive director of the me o metropolitan Transportation Commission addressed us with that goal. Its a long story, not recorded correctly in the press, but it is nonetheless alarming. I have been working further with director mcmillan to collaborate with m. T. C. Staff for more Realistic Solutions on what was a sleight of hand. [inaudible] as well as effective Transportation Demand Management Program in the United States that links Transportation Demand management requirements for employers to impact fees on development and the way we analyze new projects. So we are going to basically loan some of our staff expertise to m. T. C. In order to help them develop a more fist indicates approach on the demand side that is necessary for reducing or emission goals in the transportation sector. So thank you for pointing out those two issues. Theyve been top of mind for me in the last two weeks. Onto my formal directors report, as im sure many of you read in the press, there was a severe and fraudulent mishandling of an sfmta employees e. E. O. Or equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Those are handled by the City Department of Human Resources or d. H. R. We are working very closely with the Mayors Office around resolving this particular issue. The City Attorneys office is also investigating closely, and the Controllers Office is doing an audit to try to discover the underlying problems over at d. H. R. So that what happened to our employees never happens again. We are also, as part of our departmental race Racial Equity action plan, there is a long list of action steps including Building Trust in the e. E. O. Process, but, more importantly, incompetevesting training and management techniques to begin with. The e. E. O. Is a method of last resort for employees who have faced discrimination in the workplace. We want to create a Workplace Culture that honors everyone in this agency so that people dont feel like they need to file an e. E. O. Complaint because our own managers and supervisors are not taking the issue sufficiently seriously. We will be presenting our draft Racial Equity action plan to you all in november, i believe, if that has been scheduled. Let me share my screen now. I want to talk about vision zero and a couple of other topics. So we have been busy on a lot of vision zero topics, but as you probably read in the press, there was a fatal collision at cesar chavez and evans last friday. Our fatal Response Team is investigating. There are a lot of details that will be forthcoming. We also held a virtual and inplace project open house for our vision zero project for our bayview quick fill project. We received a lot of input and consensus, which will allow us to move forward with a series of quick fill projects to help us improve frack flow in t t flow in the bayview. We also received an office of Traffic Safety grant that will allow us to continue the Motorcycle Safety program, and as i know many of you are interested in, well continuing to strategize with the bay area racial organization. Last week, the board of supervisors four of the five ceqa appeals, California Environmental quality act appeals against our Recovery Plan projects, including our slow streets and temporary emergency transit lanes. All of our work had been halted while those appeals were considered, but within 12 hours of the board of supervisors unanimously rejecting the appeals, we were able to move forward on the slow streets project on several city streets, including clay and pacific as well as noe and duboce triangle, and we have also recently completed work on hossl tompkins. And Governor Newsom signed into law california 288, allowing us to move forward more rapidly with considering of how we transition our emergency projects into permanent projects while removing an onerous step of environmental review. Were also here on th, here, moving forward with our p. R. T. This program is helping us to reach our Face Covering compliance goals, which julie kirchbaum will be talking about later. We also, as you know, as we talked about over the summer, this summer was the 30 anniversary of the americans with disabilities act, and we partnered with local artist Deirdre Weinberg who was a former planner in the sustainable Streets Division to design these murals, celebrating the 30 anniversary of the americans with disabilities act. This was painted by city staff and will be hanging in the San Francisco Paratransit Office on 12 street. We are very excited about that. Here is the painting crew who did that work. Finally, this week is transit week, and weve been [no audio] we dont hear it. Director tumlin, we cannot hear the presentation right now, so why dont we postit online, and we can provide a link to the board. Sorry about that. Let me figure how to get out of this and stop sharing my screen. There we go. All right. So it is transit week this week, and weve been partnering with the San Francisco transit Riders Association in order to support that, and as you do not see, weve been working with them to produce a series of videos. They will also be presenting awards to many people throughout the sfmta, staff people who have gone above and beyond serving the people in these challenging times. That is the end of my report. Thank you, director. Are there questions from members of the board before we open it up to the public . No . Okay. With that, moderator, can you please see if theres anyone on the line for Public Comment . Operator you have three questions remaining. Welcome, first caller, please. Hello . Good afternoon, chair borden. Hello, can you hear me . We can hear you. We can hear you. Oh. Good afternoon, chair borden and Board Members. My name is deanna, and im an sfmta employee. Im calling in support of the sfmta Employee Alliance. What all the statistics point to is that black people have no chance or opportunity to succeed from the moment that they are hired being at the beginning of the interview process. Interview channels are being touted and jobs are being given to specific persons in mind, so a lot of these interviews are dogandpony shows. [inaudible] based on their representation in the workforce. That is a problem. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. Next speaker, please. Clerk members of the public, if you could be reminded that this Public Comment is on matters that were addressed by director tumlin. There will be Public Comment on matters in the boards jurisdiction and not on the agenda. Okay. Can you hear me . Yes, mr. Pillpow. So i was monitoring things this afternoon, but i could not get back in fast enough on the minutes. If we could go back on that. On page 8, the draft minutes, in the middle of the comments, i think its more accurate to say actions by the city traffic engineer arent necessarily exempt by ceqa. If you could make that change, i would be appreciative. Thats on the minutes. On item 13, you didnt ask for Public Comment on that, and i did have a comment on director eakens point. I dont believe that an emergency, including this current emergency that were in, supersedes the citys transit first policy, and i think we should endeavor to message the idea that transit should be the mode of choice where theres a choice. And i agree that theres been confusing messaging about essential trips and nonessential trips, but to the extent that people are making essential trips, if those are the only ones allowed or to the extend that those are allowed or will be allowed, they should be choosing transit where transit is an option. So i think that transit first policy and the emergency are not mutely exclusive, and you should be able to harmonize those two and encourage people to ride the bus in a safe manner where their trip requires that. And then finally, on director tumlins report, once again, if theres a written presentation or a powerpoint, if that could please be posted to the website. And just on an ongoing basis, if that would be posted to the meeting if its only before the day before or the day off thats your time. Okay. Im not sure that i got two minutes on each item. Can i complete my thoughts on each item here . Sure. Okay. So that was my point about posting the presentation. And just finally on the directors report, i wanted to follow up on a comment from the last meeting where director hemminger requested a list of the various temporary programs. I received a cryptic onepager in the mail from caroline which referred to a list of slow streets and shared spaces projects and locations, but i understood director hemmingers requesting to be broader, asking for a list of all the temporary m. T. A. Programs as a result or in response to the virus emergency, including shared spaces, slow streets, e. T. C. , the temporary emergency street changes program, etc. , with a description and a map or a list of locations. So thats what i understood was coming, and i have not seen that yet. So im hoping that i understood correctly, and if not, could someone please clarify that. Thanks very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have three questions remaining. Next speaker. Moderator, is there a caller on the line . Yes, hello . Yes. Hi, can you hear me . Yes, we can. Okay. Its Hayden Miller. Just wanted to call in. In regards to a. D. A. , its great that youre celebrating that, but muni has some work to do in terms of a. D. A. Theres some seats tied up, so drivers need to be educated on that. Also, the cars blocking the sidewalk. While it seems that some memos have gone out to Parking Enforcement that that does need to continue being endorsed during the pandemic, ive been told that its not being enforced during covid. This needs to be enforced because some people cannot walk down their sidewalks safely. If people are being told that they can only use the bus for essential trips, and they cant drive, they need to be able to walk down the sidewalks, so you guys need to be enforcing that. Thank you. Next speakers, please. Operator you have four questions remaining. Next speaker . Hello, chair borden and Board Members. My name is [inaudible] and i work for the department of homelessness and supportive housing. Im calling in support of the black and African American afint group and the letter that was submitted on monday, september 2 septemb september 28. In that letter, they raised four items. [inaudible] that will be implemented to replace these punitive disciplinary processes. Three, the letter that was sent to the sfmta last january 20, 2020, that all members, managers, and director undergo antiracial and implicit bias training. Dedicate Adequate Funding and Staff Resources to create a fully functional Racial Equity team, rather than one Racial Equity officer position. Provide a plan and deadline to implement all of the recommendations from the delores liming report. I just wanted to show my support. Thank you. Thank you, ne. Next speaker, please. Operator you have three questions remaining. Next caller . Yes. Barry toronto. It would be great, if we got actually distributed to the cab drivers and the Cab Companies where these slow streets are located and not just by using a map. The map is very small to see on our phones, and it would serve us best if we got advance notice. To tell you the truth, i went through some of those slow streets because theyre the best way to get my passengers or get access to my peaks that i have to pick up because some of them dont make sense, and some of them prevent service to people who need the service. So its a problem to be adding streets without prior notification, without even advance warning. Should be a sign above it, like example at haight street. No through access on haight street not haight street, page street. We notice that california avenue has a lot more traffic on due to the closure of haight street, which i rarely go on, so it doesnt matter. But it would be great if there was some help helping us know where the slow streets are located. If you keep adding, at least give us advance notice. Too bad the appeal was set out better regarding Environmental Impact because it does create confusion on the streets regarding this. Regarding the essential trips issue, i want to say that ive seen particularly the 14 and 49 buses clump up. You can see three or four buses right behind each other, especially on mission street. Theres way too much clumping, and then, it takes at least a half hour, 45 minutes before you see another bus. Theres way too much clumping. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Next speaker, please. Operator you have two questions remaining. Hi, good afternoon, chair borden and Board Members. My name is harun davy. I work with the sfmta. Im calling to support the black and african Employee Alliance letter to the board that was sent on september 28. Im here to discuss adversity issues that persists at the sfmta. The black and African American Affinity Group wrote to the [inaudible] only 27. 9 of the sfmta staff yet makeup 50 of the disparity action. In october 2018, the Lawrence Landing was [inaudible] to the sfmta to investigate these issues and provide a report, and make recommendations to the mayor based on her findings. In april 2019, the sfmta received the report, and it appears that theyre [inaudible] that a port finding is ridiculous. There were accommodations that delores gave to all leadership and [inaudible] going forward. [inaudible] they were given the recommendations, and they have not followed this condition. So im asking, what are you guys going to do about this. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have one question remaining. Hi. My name is darryl robinson. I am an employee of the sfmta. I am calling in support of the black african Employee Alliance letter sent to the board on monday, september 28. I am calling attention to how the sfmta has [inaudible] as part of the Climate Action plan. [inaudible]. Thank you. Moderator, are there any additional callers . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Thank you. That will close Public Comment on the directors report. I do want to thank members of the sfmta for taking time to call into the board. Next item, please. Madam chair, item 15 is a report from the citizens advisory council. We have mr. Ballard here to present the report. Good afternoon, mr. Ballard. Thank you, directors. Ill keep it brief because i know youve been at it for a while. At our september meeting, we had presentationed on the rollout and then the subsequent roll back of rail service back in august, and we made two recommendations on that subject. Sfmta c. A. C. Recommends the l. R. T. Surface outside the met market station [inaudible] and free up buses for other needed service. So to summarize that, because the wording is a little walk arrested, we would we would love to see l. R. V. S running on the surface. So our second motion on that topic is sfmta c. A. C. Supports the eventual entry of four car shuttle strains, trains trains, operating between market and west portal to reduce crowding. Those are the two motions on that item. We also heard a report on congestion pricing, and we made a motion in support of continuing to study that Congestion Pricing Program in San Francisco. The c. A. C. Recommends that sfmta continues to develop with its Partner Agencies a congestion pricing plan for all privately pricing automobile plans in San Francisco with substantial discounts for lowincome drivers and an exemption for Wheelchair Accessible vehicles. There was one vote against that motion by a member who had concerns about the impact of congestion pricing on commercial vehicles such as those conducting dliefr reservice. That will conclude my report. Thank you, directors. Thank you, mr. Ballard. Directors, do you have any questions for mr. Ballard or the c. A. C. Report . Seeing none now, well open it up to Public Comment, see if there are any questions or comments from the public. Moderator, can you open the line . Operator you have two questions remaining. Great, and this is on the c. A. C. Report exclusively. We will have recognize Public Comment in a moment, after this report. So if youre calling to comment specifically on mr. Ballards report, this is that time. Hello . Yes, hello. If you can hear me, my name is benjamin ballos, taxi driver. Would taxis be exempt from the congestion pricing in our attempts to get passengers where they need to go or would we have to still include that into the fare or Something Like that . And unfortunately, this is not a questionandanswer session, and i know this is being studied, so nothing has been determined yet. Okay. Well, i would like to advocate for taxis to, like, maybe, like, exempt from the congestion pricing so we can get our passengers where we need to go to from the financial, and thank you very much. Have a good afternoon. Thank you very much. Next caller, please. Operator you have one question remaining. Hi, its Hayden Miller calling in. I just wanted to support the motion in regards to surface l. R. V. Operation. I think that would be great to free up buses, as well as opening up the [inaudible] Creek Division on the weekends. Im seeing some of those buses out, which is great. Just getting the l. R. V. s out, it would be great and safer for passengers, and we can have more buses. Overall, its a great idea. Thank you. Thank you. Moderator, are there any additional callers . Operator you have zero questions remaining. So with that, we will close this item. Clerk thank you, madam clerk. Item 16. This is an opportunity for the members of the public to address the board on matters that are within the jurisdiction on the m. T. A. Board of directors but not on todays calendar. And i just want to remind the public this is things that are not on the calendar later. This is not a questionandanswer question, so we are not able to answer your questions, but we will have people follow up to you, or your answers rite be revealed through might be revealed through conversation. Moderator, are there calls this may or may not be the last opportunity. I just wanted to have that there for all of you and anyone whos listening. Thanks very much. Thank you, mr. Pillpow. Next speaker, please. Operator you have five questions remaining. Hello, this is Hayden Miller. Theres been some confusion on the slow streets webpage. It directs people, if theyve seen some direction on signage, it directs them to twitter. However, when theyve been doing that, m. T. A. Directs them to call 311, which is sending them in circles basically. It would be better just directing them to 311 if thats the point of contact. The second is in regards to bus shelters through Clear Channel. The maintenance has been going downhill. The bus shelters have been dirty. Broken glass, everything. Theyre not very durably built, so theres no reason why the city should be giving Clear Channel a discount when theyre not performing the service. Thank you. Are there any speakers on the line . Operator you have four speakers remaining. Yes. This is barry toronto again. I want to ask that you pull the calendar item 17. 4 related to taxis, so we can have a separate public presentation and separate Public Comment. Second, i know this is going to sound like a broken record, give a shoutout to philip kana, for the cutouts. Drivers are reporting getting fares from that location. I have myself. The problem is the one by walgreens is constantly occupied by private cars. Id ask you to step up enforcement for a while until cars get the message they cannot park there. The signage is up, the curb is painted, but were having a problem with enforcement. The second topic is related to the issue of the essential ride home program. We either expand it or promote it more. Later at night, it would be great if we had essential workers and also city staff, that there are programs for them to take taxis. So were not seeing enough of that business, so please promote that. The next issue is regarding, all of a sudden, the m. T. A. Taxi division decided to enforce some rules that were not enforce for a number of years, and its a problem, and its during this pandemic period. Certainly things need to be given more leeway. The driver requirement letter, we send you a letter from the San Francisco taxi workers alliance. We appreciate you reading that again, and the use of an acard, especially if they have a medical exemption. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Next speaker, please. Operator you have three questions remaining. Good afternoon, sfmta board of directors. My name is kenyon lee. I joined in in the middle of the item 12, and i think that item 12 means that you guys have read that kamala cooley received. I say thank you, and i hope that staff can get a solution for that brought up. Thank you, everyone, for everything that youre doing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have two questions remaining. Next speaker. Hello, board of directors. This is benjamin harris, board of taxis. I think diligent efforts helping to arrange that stand, we should put a little sign there, and it should be called the barry toronto taxi zone. Lastly, i do want to mention that comment about the essential worker ride program. A lot of these workers dont seem to know about it, and the essential rider 65 and older. I pick them up from the Grocery Stores, and i say, do you know that you can get a discounted ride frto and from the Grocery Store . They say oh, im 83. My taxi is safe. I sanitize between every rider, so its safer than trying to ride the muni bus. I know youre doing what you can, and its tough times for all of us. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have one question remaining. Next speaker. Good evening, Board Members. My name is safana manayon. Im calling to report the black and African American employee lines letter sent on september 28. We request that the six actions in the letter be taken, and we ask that the Senior Management and director discuss how they plan to address these. Thank you. Thank you. Moderator, is there any further public speakers . Operator you have zero public speakers. Clerk for members of the public who wish to address the board on any of the public consent items, i will read all the items, and then, the chair will open the phone line for comment on any or all of the public items. Please be reminded if you are on the at t phone call, you need to press zero, one one, zero, in order to be added to the queue to address the board on any calendar consent matter. This is the jason kurt matter on july 15 for 50,000. Item 17. 2, various traffic matters. I will not read them individually. 17. 4, approve the reprogramming of the remaining balance in the taxi fund to implement a Marketing Campaign to support the taxi industry. And may i remind everyone since we are doing things a little differently, you can comment on any of the items. Were not doing the pulling thing separately, unless the Board Members indicate you want to vote on an item separately, so if you, at some point, decide you want to vote on an item separately, let us know, and well open it up to Public Comment. Operator you have one question remaining. Great. Moderator or speaker . Hello, speaker . Hello . Do we have a commenter there . Operator you have one question remaining. Okay. Commenter . Yes. This is barry toronto. Are you going to pull 17. 4 from the consent calendar so i can address it later . Sir, what were doing is commenting on all the public items right now. Okay. Ive got to talk fast. Loomis and oak dale, they want to put a traffic light there. Six hours a day, including on sunday, the traffic counts are low. Thats ridiculous to put a traffic signal there. Its right by the Cab Companies. We use it all the time. At least have it timed for the left turn going from bayshore to oakdale there so its timed for green or maybe during the off hours, its flashing red. Its ridiculous to have a traffic light there. Regarding the markieting plan,i am in support of the remaining money going to a marketing plan, but it needs to be held out until we see the outcome of proposition 22. Vote no on proposition 22, otherwise, we want to make sure that the town haul that they would hold has enough publicity and enough lead time so that everybody can participate and maybe even have two sessions two or three sessions to allow drivers to give their input on this important issue for our industry. But finally, better late than never on this. So i appreciate that they want to do this, but we need to make sure theres enough feedback, and the board needs to make sure that the sfmta allows us, and the tools, to be able to do that. So through the various methods. So i appreciate taking this up. The only thing is is that theres a different pieces of opinion or differences of opinion of how this would take shape. Whether it would be to recruit more drivers or to convince the community to take taxis and why we would be preferable to the competition. And in close about that, it would be great, as a friend of mine talked about it. The marketing plan should relate to different demographics. We should one direction toward younger people, and one towards the seniors skb disabled. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Are there any other Public Commenters on any of the items on our consent calendar . Operator you have one questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Hello. This is Hayden Miller. Wanted to call in about the traffic modifications, particularly on kezar. Its funny how we get something immediately when a bus gets hit, but when a biker is killed, the m. T. A. Takes no action. I biked down there today, and even the seven drivers are not giving me enough space to get down there safely. Weve got to eliminate parking on one side where there is no housing. Just eliminate that, make it a twolane cycle track, and it would be perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any additional Public Commenters . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Okay. So before we go into questions, i know a couple of Board Members want to talk about item 17. 3. I guess the question is, do we want to sever it out from the vote for all of the items or you just want to have a conversation about them . I guess well start with director lai. Thank you. Is staff available to answer questions . Hi. So could staff explain a little bit about the considerations for learning hubs and what options or support can we provide to them in terms of residential parking . As i understand it, learning hubs are essentially functioning in place of schools and in person, basically, for the duration of the pandemic. Im a little i think its also telling in the comments that weve received or the support letters on this request are basically just from private institutions or preschools, which makes sense, because right now, sfusd is not operational, at least for inperson instruction. So although i dont have an issue with supporting providing permits additional permits for schools, it does beg the question for me as to why were not also expanding that support to the learning hubs, which are taking on a lot of the function that that schools would have otherwise during the specific pandemic emergency. Thanks. Mr. Olsen or mr. Mcguire . I dont know whos going to answer, but maybe you should introduce yourself, mr. Wilson, if youre answering. Im hank wilson, and i lead the curb Management Program at the sfmta. Thank you, director lai, for the question. Its a great question, and the answer is theres certain groups that are specifically enumerated in the transportation code that have access to residential parking permits, and education institutions are one of them, and theres a specific definition of Educational Institutions, and the learning hubs dont fit that. The Educational Institution permit is all about a physical School Building that has fronted you know, curb frontage, and thats how we measure how much permits they get, is the curb frontages. So thats why were amending the transportation code to allow for emergency sort of extra permits for teachers. The learning hubs are hopefully a very temporary situation so that when were not in shelter in place anymore and when schools can open back up, they can go away. It didnt seem right to include transportation hubs into the learning code, and adding everyone into the residential parking permits is a larger policy conversation that were certainly happy to have and happy to come back to this board at the appropriate time to discuss in more detail, but learning hubs are just one sort of very worthy group of people out there as to why they could make a residential parking permit argument, and this sticks with the other parking groups that have already been enumerated. [please stand by]. I understand the Financial Institution incorporates private and preschool which i am super glad you are in this case to support a very unusual situation. I want to highlight and thank all the learning hubs made up of mostly communitybased organizations and other City Departments who have stepped up and to go outside the norms and play the role of supportive educator. That is also conventional for them, right . We want to make sure that we are responding to the communitys needs. So if you can go back to my question, sorry, my request about explaining what options they have or what we have. Thank you for clarifying. I dont want the learning hubs to go away. I want the pandemic to go away and the learning hubs to be necessary. And to your point about we need a nimble solution to something that has been put together really quickly to as a covid response. Changing the transportation code is not one of the more Nimble Solutions that we have. And so we do have an Emergency Operations center and a good place that is a group that could be thinking about what is a nimble solution to help support these learning hubs. And so that is the ccc has its own organizational and command structure. And i will definitely take your concerns and the concerns of the District Three Office and others who have talked about the need for some help for learning hubs to them. In fact, we have already forwarded that over and got them thinking about it. So thats again, i am certainly also happy to have the discussion about adding learning hubs or other sort of deserving nonprofits and into the rpp section of the transportation code. But thats that would be at least a slightly longer process and come up with the rules around that. And we have to make sure that they will consult to bring to the board for consideration which takes time in and of itself. Awe thank you. I appreciate that clarification. It sounds like from what staff is saying if i can restate it that it would not be easily doable or possible today to amend the language live and to incorporate it and it wires more thought and planning around incorporating learning hubs as part of the transportation code. There is this option of going through the emergency center, Operation Center i forgot the new name already. And i believe you also mentioned to me that it is possible for the school of institutions to transfer the permits to the learning hubs. Can you explain that a little bit and what that would be like . I think theres one example of that that i am aware of at mission high. Where mission high has permits for teachers and they also have i think an Afterschool Program that runs out of mission high. And the principal and i cant remember exactly. This came up a couple of years ago and i cant remember the details specifically, but i think it was whoever is at mission high who sort of deciding who gets those permits, decided that a few of the permits should go to folks who were part of the after School Program at mission high school. So its a slightly different situation than what we have here where the learning hubs i think in some cases are in School Buildings and in some cases are in community centers, or other place where is they wouldnt fall under a definition of an Educational Institution. Depending on where they are located they may fit into that and it wasnt designed to awarding permits to things that have been put together quickly and not necessarily designed to last more than several months. Looking at the definition now is something that i am willing to take a look at and come back with more information on. Awe thank you, chair. No more questions. Director eaken. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask a question about the extra permits that we would be authorizing the director to issue. It seems like there is a very clear sort of guidance about between three and 20 permits per school, and then sort of some very specific requirements around curb space. And then additional two or three permits. I couldnt find in the staff report any upper bound of a number of additional permits that we would be authorizing the director to approve. And because our p. T. Program is intentionally crafted to manage limited space for valuable resource, i want to fully understand the implications of what we are doing here. In theory you could go ahead and multiply by 10 based on what we are authorizing today the number of permits granted to any school. I dont see an upper limit. I wanted to hear staffs thinking on what were actually authorizing and whether thats considered in the context of the rpp program and whether this board feels comfortable giving sort of limitless direction to the director to authorize the number of permits. Thank you for answering my question. Thank you, director eaken. This is hank wilson from mta again. And you are right that theres not an upper bound. There is not a limit. I will say that weve gotten a lot of requests from schools that are planning to open, and they range between two and seven extra permits requested. And for a reminder for folks who dont know, the general limit is 15 per school, though they can schools can apply for an additional five under certain circumstances. You can get up to 20. So if that gives you perspective for how two to seven permits would compare to 15 or 20. I dont think that its going i think given that this is very clearly an emergency measure and only applies when there is an emergency declared and they go away once the emergency is over. And there is still there will still be opportunity for staff to interact with schools who are making the request to make sure that theyre requesting for only what they need. But its just given how hard given that covid was unpredictable and the situation that we find ourselves in now, it wouldnt have been predicted several months ago if ewith just didnt want to say put some limit of threer o five or Something Like that because we really wouldnt know in advance what the emergency was requiring. Director heminger, i know you have had opinions about parking in the past. If you want to weigh in on this one. You are trying to suck me into your battle here. There was nothing in the staff report about how many Outstanding School permits there are. Was it like 1,000 . Id have to go back and look. I dont have that off the top of my head. I mean, i hope you read your reports as closely as i do. I will make an excuse for myself and say i am subbing in for the person who wrote the report. She had an emergency and got pulled away. I wonder even at that scale if you have 1,000 outstanding, what about a cap of 50 o more . And is there something thats not infinty . A just for clarification we currently have issued 1,150 of the permits. What do you think the demand might be, tom . Is it another 300 . Another 500 . Another what you have an i guess it would be helpful to know is that in addition to in a normal year absent covid, how many of those two we issue typically. 1150 is the normal year. They are renewed every year. Theres not been an additional net new allegation for covid, per se. Not yet. That is what todays action would be. Right, right. I am just saying that is and just is a totally fair question about the upper limit. Our thinking was that it would be the end of the emergency or the beginning of the school year. But the language is written so they have the natural sunset and certainly no later than the end of the school year and the spring of 2021, but also hopefully soon as the end of the emergency. However, you asked a direct question, director heminger, which is how many, and hank, is there a specific request or is there a number that the e. O. C. Or specific schools have asked us if that we could estimate from . Like i said, i had the two and seven and the range from two permits to seven additional permits has been requested. And i can i can try to pull up my notes. Currently 130 schools. So were doing math on fly here, but thats, what i found the number. The other thing thats worth keeping in mind is and we all hope this isnt true, but this emergency could very well last a lot longer than we think today. So we are sort of in a semiquasi, i dont know, new normal, and it will take a bite out of neighborhoods because you have a lot of people staying home. I will just throw in that i found number. 11 schools have requested additional permits so far. 11 out of 130 who sort of typically get permits. Direct to brinkman. If there is one thing we have learned in our mta experience is people dont like losing their parking. When they get their parking, they are not going to want to have you take it away. I just think it would be very natural to think about an upper bound here if that is 50 increase per school or if we want to think about it as a total number upper bound. I would feel more comfortable with that kind of proposal than unlimited authorization. Okay. Director brinkman, you had a comment . Thank you. I agree with what i am hearing which is we do have to be careful about just expanding the number of permits, and we do need to keep a close eye on it, but after having volunteered at chariton elementary school, i do have a lot of empathy for the teachers who are coming from quite a distance and are trying to take Public Transit. It is challenging. It is challenging for them. They need to be there early. Mr. Williams, can you remind me, the last time we talked about the permits for academic and nonprofit and the social services institutions, did we talk about their Transportation Demand Management Plan . We did. Thank you for that question. We have been in contact with the i cant remember nicks title but he is the sustainability coordinator, i think, talking about their plans for tdm and we brought to the board the idea to move teacher permits into something more akin with what the transit accessibility was and whether they had a tdm plan. And that we stuck with what is in the transportation code now that it is based on curb frontage more than anything else. I know that nick has been doing a lot of work on the tdm side. I think he is also taking a sabbatical that he is on right now, so i dont know what sfufds tdms plans are right now. I am inclined to support this simply because i know that staff take this is very seriously and wouldnt recommend this without kind of having an idea of the larger picture. I am so empathetic for the teachers coming from great distances and the ones at the school i volunteered at who walked from the bart station which was a good little check trek to get them there on p time. As long as they have a sunset date in there, i am willing to support this and i will move to approve. Great. Is there a second . Im sorry, chair, can i absolutely. But there is a motion. Do we have a seconder to motion dies . Is there a second . There is no second to the motion. Okay. Then i guess we you can go ahead, director lay. Im sorry. I have a follow up question. Can you go into more detail around how staff would go about allocating the additional permits . Sort of who the sort of through the lens of how do we share the resources with comments that need it most. I guess i am addressing the equity issue here. Obviously the Residential Parking Permit Programs are defined by geographic areas already, but maybe talk me through a little bit about how you were thinking about who we prioritize giving the permits to. Is there a policy in place . How do we ensure that theres exneck this . How do we ensure there is equity in this . Thank you. Great question. The main i think points that well look at are whats the parking occupancy in and around the school now. And that is something that we use in other in other parts of the rpp program. When residents have reached their maximum that they can purchase, which in most neighborhoods is four, they can ask for more and we will award them, but only under same circumstances and the main circumstances if there is enough sort of available parking to warrant it. So if the parking is already totally full, we are not going to issue even more permits to an already full parked up area. So that is one of the things well look at. Well also look at whether transit is running by those schools. I mean, i think a lot of the requesting we have got vn said we used to have a transit line that ran by the school but we dont right now because of the because of of the changes that have been made. So thats a major issue. If there is not a bus or train line that is running by the school, then thats going to be a major factor. Im sorry. I think my equity question is how do you assess between the schools and what communities they serve . So as i stated already at the beginning, right now the only schools that have inperson or about to have inperson instruction are private schools, preschools, and learning hubs. We are not providing parking permits for learning hubs, and then we are opening the resources for private institutions and preschools, right . So does staff take into account when you authorize additional parking permits what ami levels or Community Demographics the individual schools serve . Hank, let me jump in here because i think its an interesting question, director. So our work on this when we give the teacher permits for rpp, its request driven. We are not doing we are not doing a thorough Equity Analysis of whether we are reaching the most quote, unquote, deserving educators or the most atrisk students. By definition this program and these permits are only relevant in and around schools that are in rpp zones. There is lots of schools that are not rpp zones and the teachers also dont have on site parking and they simply compete like the rest of us do for that scarce onstreet parking space. Its a little hard to compare the users who get a permit under any version of teacher rpp permits with the Larger Population because students or educators because it is constrained. And then the way the rpp zone. And then the way the permits are actually distributed, that is not something we weigh on. When a school ask us for inperson teacher permit, we use the metric that hank described. Proximity to transit, but we dont get into whether the teacher versus the administrator or the paraprofessional. That is handled within the school. We are trying to not have, i guess, too heavy administrative hand for the m. T. A. In this, but it sound like its important to you we make equity more of a consideration. Reality of where we are with this program. It doesnt apply to every school and cant through this method. Thank you. I appreciate that. And you did remind me of one fact that obviously in these school situations, they are requesting fewer permits than they have teachers. And the individual schools i know in some cases prioritize providing permits for the faculty who have disabilities or other health needs or highrisk individuals. And certainly i can appreciate that we probably dont with v the capacity to collect information or interview the end user of the permits, and also, of course, the permits are transferable. I think my main reservation about this is that i guess i have some still percolating thoughts around how present the equity considerations are in the Residential Parking Permit Program in general. It sounds like maybe there is room to expand on that. And for todays discussion, i do think that it is it seems an odd request to expand the schools parking permit without offering it to the learning hubs which are picking up the flak. I think my followup and i will make this the last question. What is the turn around that it would take for staff to come ba back with the language under the transportation code . In terms of putting together the language, that would only be a week or two. If we have the direction and what learning hubs are and thousand they can be defined can be done fairly quickly. It is more just whenever were making changes to the transportation code, we are concerned about making sure that were we are doing the necessary outreach and making shoo you are that everybody is aware of it and that we are not setting a precedent that other folks say because we certainly we as staff gets lots and lots of requests every day for parking permits and enforcement and people in all kinds of different jobs and to tell the story about why they might need a parking permit or exemption. We cant grant them all. So that is the main concern is that its balanced. That is why in this case we are sticking with institutional permit. We are not trying to expand the list of people in the transportation code. But all that being said, i think a couple of weeks to put together with the language if we are in agreement to add learning hubs into the transportation code. A great. I want to get clarification. Among the board, is there agreement that they would like to explore this . If we are okay with the staff going this that direction. Are we talking about approving this item or hold this item . If we approve this, it would be good for staff to look there we could not add learning hubs today and not noticed there is no map right now or knowledge of where they are, etc. And we couldnt if we wanted to and as a board do we want staff to come back in a coup of weeks to explore this issue . And separately deal with the issue as pointed out and this program is the request to have the rpp program and have it and those who dont request to have it dont have it. And there is controversy in the situations where people, when some people want it and others dont want it. So i think thats an important item to note. I would also say because we have cut transit. Because regional partners have cut transit, it is more complicated for people to get to schools. And considering the considerations from the mixed message and mtc about working from home and we have to consider this differently. And the permits have been considered to be time sensitive and they are not in perpetuity and i trust the director to not go crazy and the last and final thing on this piece is that pedestrian is not known as a city that is very friendly to family. And i think thinking about how we are supporting families and then the teacher who is dont make a lot of money and who are driving here and having to park and is critical and the families might be of a higher income and the people working the jobs typically are not. So i just wanted to say all that in consideration and i think director heminger, you had a motion. Yeah. Lets see how this goes. I would move approval of the item with a maximum limit of 300 additional permits. To me it makes more sense to have the cap if were going to have one at a global level because there is going to be variation among the schools. And if the staff burns through that authorization unexpectedly, then they can come back and we can talk about it some more. But that could be my motion. Your motion is also to sever to sever 17. 3 to consider separate because we havent actually dealt with the larger consent agenda. So well make a note that motion is specifically on 17. 3. I dont know if it matter, secretary boomer, that we didnt yet should we take a motion on the other consent items together . Yes, madam chair, ethisser way. Take a motion to i a prove the consent calendar with item 17. 3 severed. And then you would take a motion on the item the amendment and then a motion on the item as amended. That is great. Is there a motion because i am trying to stay in order of items. Is there a motion on the larger consent agenda, which includes the other items 17. 1, 17. 2, and 17. 4. Motion to approve. Is there a second . Second. Secretary boomer, can you call the role . [roll call] madam chair t consent calendar is approved with 17. 3 severed. Great. We have the motion from director heminger. Was there a second . Sure. Ill second it. We have two seconds. All in favor, roll call please. Unless there is anymore discussion. Okay. All right. The motion to attend resolution 17. 3 to approve limiting residential parking permits for Educational Institutions to a maximum of 300 permits. [roll call] madam chair t amendment is approved. I just really quickly, everyone, so are we in confirmation to have staff look at the learning hubs and whatever additional kind of things that should be thought of in this section of the code for the state of the emergency . Yes, it looks like we do. Great. All right, madam chair, it would be appropriate for a motion to approve item 17. 3 as amended. Motion to approve as amended . And there was a second . Second. And director borden. Aye. Director brinkman. Aye. Director eaken. Aye. Director heminger. Aye. Director lai . Aye. Madam chair, the motion as amended has been approved. Madam chair, so moving on to the regular calendar, item 18, presentation and discussion regarding Transit Service. Thank you. And we have is director kirschbaum with us . I feel like its been a long time. And madam chair, forward, and madam chair, forward, director lai does have to leave the meeting at this point. We are sorry to see you go. Did you want to say goodbye . I think she is gone. All right. Director of transit. Can you confirm that you can see my screen . We can. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present to you. I know its been a very long day. We havent done a transit performance update in a long time, and i have to tell you that i am very excited to be doing it now and to be bringing what i think to be relatively good news in terms of transit performance during what is obviously an incredible and difficult and gruelling time. To take you back to the beginning of that time in march of 2020, the pandemic unfolded very, very rapidly. And we saw almost an 80 decline in ridership in two weeks. And everything that we were doing was not working. The Staffing Levels and dropped in part because people were vulnerable and staying home for comments like taking care of themselves and taking care of their children. We had a lot of uncertainty. We were limited to certain times of work to do because of the health order. And the transit staff and really the staff across the agency is just incredible at accepting new challenges and creating solutions. And a lot of the solutions are bearing fruit in terms of very strong transit performance under difficult conditions. And when we have to reduce the service, we had a couple of choices and try to do everything we were doing but do it badly. Or we could make very difficult choices about where to allocate service. We did take the latter approach and we shut down the rail system and focused on the bus system which is continually proving itself to be incredibly resilient and flexible. This is a map as of june and this thickness of the line shows where we are providing frequent service and the pink shading shows the communities of concern where we have heavy concentrations of people of color, and people in low income households. And providing Transit Service to them and to other people making essential trips has been our guiding focus throughout this period. We have been making these hard decisions based on very extensive data analysis. And as one of the things im most excited about is that we have made that process completely transparent to the public. We have more information under our covid data page than we have ever had before. And in charts like this that show where we have crowding and the yellow and red circle and versus where we dont is something we are monitoring on an almost daily basis to make available to the riding public. And the first thing i want to talk about is the service management. And they are, as i said, and we have seen the best examples of staff innovation and staff willingtons do do more with less. As youve seen from presentations from shawn, one of the biggest changes we saw overnight with covid was a very quick reduction in travel times. In a lot of scenarios, i would have welcomed with open arms, but when you are trying to run a Transit System based on a schedule and suddenly the schedules are meaningless because what used to take 15 minutes now takes six minutes and what used to take 10 now takes four. It put the transit operators in a difficult position. They were either crawling through the streets and with frustrated customers or traveling against the schedule and creating a lot of early trips. And what we quickly realized we needed to do based on feedback from the operators and the staff managing the service was go to a system wide headway based schedule. We also very quickly altered the technology on the buses itself so that operators instead of seeing if they were ahead of schedule or behind schedule, they can now see if they are too close to the bus in front of them or too far away. This yellow bar here is an example of what the operator sees. This is part of what we use to train the operators on these new techniques. I am really just excited about how the Transportation Management center and the supervisors and the street have embraced the new approach. We are also getting very strong feedback from our operators because they can drive to conditions. And in a city of dense and unpredictable as our, travel times are unpredictable and some days you may hit all the lights and other days you may have multiple people and may miss life and other unexpected delays. And i believe this is something that i know we have talked about far long time and doing something on the most frequent routes and that they are operating at 15 minutes or better headway and very good performance. And this graph here shows the headway performance. And as you can see before we made the decision in april, to significantly modify the service and operate a headway base schedule, we had big gaps in service and customers did not rely on what we were providing. Since then we have been really been above 80 and whey mean by headway performance is that how often is the route scheduled to come . If the route is scheduled to come every 10 minutes, we look at how many trips are arriving within 15 minutes, so the headway plus five minutes. And a 10minute right would look at anything better than 15 minutes on a sixminute route, we look at anything better than 11 minutes. And basically saying to customers 80 and in some routes 90 of the time you are not having to wait five minutes longer than what you would expect to see. This map here shows all of our routes and as well as the black line on the top and shows the rapid bus routes and the strongest performance that we have seen since my tenure at this agency. And doing that under covid and under all the constraints that were facing, i am very proud of. We are also on routes that come every 20 to 30 minutes and we are managing the routes at headway on a schedule. And we are tracking the schedule appearance for those routes. In some cases were doing a little bit better under covid. For the post part, though, we are seeing a little bit of a decline in ontime performance. And that is primarily because of early. And we are still trying to match schedules to the travel time on our city streets. And continue to make the refinements and continue to work with operators and on the routes so that customers can plan and if the 805 trip is supposed to leave at 805, they know that and they can count on that. Theyre also, as you know, working to continue to have some of these travel time savings both because theyre critical for Service Reliability as congestion builds back, but also because we are financially strapped that having buses stuck in congestion instead of carrying customers is really something we cant afford. The lanes and the Downtown Mission are complete to about Second Street which i believe has been very exciting to see and work is underway on 7th and 8th with a lot of Community Dialogue and routes that are coming next and having next completed routes and dialogue for the 1938, 43, and 44. The first route we will do is under the city traffic and Engineers Authority and after having a good Community Dialogue, this is one of the corridors where we are seeing travel time degrade. So to bump that and to focus on community constituents. And they will be reversed unless made permanently. A cleaning and maintenance is front and center. And in some ways and and to go through other viruses and h1n1 like sars built into the Standard Operating Procedures and training how to handle viruses. The custodian staff have shown up every single day with incredible attitudes and with the ability to adapt to the changes and we are currently pulling all of our buses in and out of the bus division. And sometimes two or three or four operators would drive in and hand off with service and what we realized is that can create the need to quarantine a lot of people. With the exposure in and out of the division. So this is very well received. And they are getting some of the cleanest buses in the country. And it has some constraints. This photo here is from the woods yard. The yard is completely empty and big pavement area is often filled with buses. Pulling buses in and out of the yard is very vehicle intensive and requires the maintenance staff to prepare the buses twice a day. One of the challenges that we are running into is we have a lot of operators who have come back to leave and come back to work and are deploying extra operators right now as ambassadors in our system to hand out masks and are working at optimizing the yards to potentially get more service to our customers. And the maintenance and management teams have stepped it up. And which is essentially how frequently is a bus breaking down because of a mechanical breakdown. When we first started the bus replacement program, we were having upward of a dozen breakdowns a day. Were down to two or three. And on average our equipment is out for 18,000 miles before its having a breakdown. This is not just because the vehicles are new. The reality is that some of the vehicles arent so new anymore. Theyre kind of hitting the second half of their useful life. Its because in addition to the new vehicles t maintenance teams have so embraced a culture of preventive maintenance and really committing to use data to fix things based on friends, before they break, rather than the customer experiencing the breakdown in service. So to have our what appears to be our highest bus performance month in august of 2020 in the middle of covid, in the middle of everything that were asking of our shops and our maintenance staff i think is incredible. Ridership and crowding is one area where we have been working continuously to try to stay in front of. And i still think there is more work to do. This bus here shows a drop off only sign. That is what operators are using when they have too many people on their buses. And unfortunately, that is happening dozen of times a day while our operators are out in service. So to kind of speak to discussion about should muni just be for essential trips . That are something we are grappling with. The Health Department has expanded the definition of essential trips to include all the permitted activities including Outdoor Recreation and patroning open businesses. And on some routes sometimes having extra riders would be wonderful. But we have a lot of routes and a lot of times of day where we really dont have capacity and were struggling to keep up with the customers that we need to serve for essential trips. This graph here shows top bar are 2019 bus boardings. It was hovering around 500,000 people. Were now closer to about 150,000. While that is significantly lower than anything we saw precovid, i do want to point out that its almost double what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. Part of why were facing crowding issues is because we are significantly restricting the capacity on the vehicles. And were working very closely with the department of Public Health because we believe that three feet per passenger spacing is much more in line with what european and Asian Countries that have done extensive Contract Tracing and has shown transit to be a very low focal point for covid transmission. This is something we are continuing to work on and we do think that be successful that we do need to start welcoming more people on board the vehicles. No matter how much service we are adding, we are still seeing crowding growth. This graph shows the percentage of trips crowded per week. And you can see a coup of dips in between the end of august and beginning of september where we added service and that service got immediately gobbled up in september. So we are currently working to try to add more service by the end of the year. But were increasingly challenged and when we have crowded trips, it means we are leaving customers at the curb which is impacting people making essential travel and impacting the economic recovery. And it is something that we take very seriously. This is a graph of the crowded route by route. This is approaching about 3 4 of the precovid ridership. To add to the routes and continue to keep the board updated as we make the refinements. Were particularly with that flexibility on the Trolley Service where we have buses and with the c. D. C. Recommended we are also pursuing surface rail routes like the jline and the tline. To provide more capacity and to invest service in other parts of the system. We continue to hold a Strong Equity lens up to all the work that we are doing and we have been working very closely with residents in the bayview and in the tenderloin. In the tenderloin we have been particularly foes kued on the 27 which is a route that the community has told us is really important for them to make key connections, for example, to Grocery Stores. We are looking at realigning that route to use 7th and 8th street so that we can take advantage of those new dedicated lanes and really keep the buses moving as quickly as possible during this emergency. In the bayview, were working to design an express bus and with the bayviewened a we believe that the combination of buses and trains will give them flexibility. A new metric, one that you would not have predicted we would be talking about in january of this year is mask compliance. And part of the work on trying to move towards higher capacity buses is and we have been fortunate that most weeks we are seeing it and over 90 and i want to flag the purple line which is partial compliance, those are people Wearing Masks so gooden o them for trying. But they are often wearing them wrong. Which is something that i think as we get further and further into this you will see less of and may be wearing a mask and the nose is stick out and to wear a mask and 95 mask compliance important for the safety of the customers and the operators. And also finding it very closely linked to assault and verbal altercations. Everybody in the with the extra anxiety and who is not wearing a mask and refuses to wear a mask and too often our operators have been receiving the brunt of that with close carter inship and where the Union Partners and as well as the police and Security Team to have a down hall and mayor breed and the police chief and d. A. Addressed our customer facing staff directly. And really talked about how committed they were to keep our staff safe which we are incredibly grateful for. We have seen an overall decline in results but i temper that because we have seen that with Huge Investment and significantly seeing operator and customer altercations on a daily basis. So this is something that we are continuing to work on and really excited revamping our transit fare Inspector Program. And extra training to focus on compliance father than punishing people to be there as extra support for operators and can often deescalate a situation. We start this month the longawaited Customer Experience and deescalation training for our operates to. That will receive that training over the course of the year. Shutting down rail is probably the most difficult choice i have had to make in my professional career. That is allowing us to preserve service and be ready for changes. More tharn anything we are seeing the radical resilience of the bus system. It is reliable. It is not breaking down. It is able to scale up. We will continue to make the service refinements as well as to continue to look for opportunities to protect transit from congestion and i will talk about the work in the subway next time. We have identified a Multidisciplinary Task force that has been working for weeks. They have strung new wire from feeder to feed arenaed have removed 18 of our slices. The new parks will be coming in the next week or so. But there is a big umbrella package of work. And that work falls into three categories. Some of it is critical to safety. For example, replacing corroded railroad ties, fastener, i mean. Some of it has to do with reliability like the overhead work. As well as customer convenience, slow zones and some with maintenance efficiency to get better lighting so our folk cans do better inspections, more efficient work when they need to. So while we have been very foes kued on the surface foes kued on the surface, we are also conducting a significant amount of maintenance and capital campaigns to get our system into a state of good repair. So with that, i will did i shop sharing my screen . You did. We see you now. Thank you for your time. I am happy to answer any questions you guys have. Wonderful. Thank you for that very thorough report. I think director heminger would like to kick off the questions. U an i think director brinkman has the jump on me. So sorry. That is okay. Thank you, director heminger. Julie, thank you. Great presentation. When you started talking about and showing the success of the headway scheduling, i was thrilled. My heart went pitter patter because that is something we have talked about for years and years and then to see that it works as well as we always thought it would work. My question is, will we be able to keep the headway scheduling postemergency or are we going to need some sort of legislative or policy address to keep that going like that . Thank you for asking. No, i believe that this will be our new standard operating procedure. There is strong staff buy in and operators are appreciative of it. And especially in that transition period, its going to be very, very important because we dont know how traffic is going to come back. We dont know if its going to come back lumpy. We dont know if the commute is going to be bad. If its going to be bad throughout the day, and so the headway schedule allows us o to make changes based on conditions on fly and we will be using it moving forward. Thank you. Julie, i wanted to ask you about whether we are striking the right balance some of the avenues you are mentioning. And the cleaning schedule is affecting the availability of buses which is going to effect crowding which effects ridership which the next item will show us effects our budget. Not a good circle. One of the things is are we, to put it differently, overdoing it on the cleaning . Neither of us are scientists but the virus is a lot more than aerosol threat than one you pick up from a surface. The cleaning probably does a lot for public confidence. I am not sure it does as much good for the virus. Would it make sense for us to back off the cleaning at all to try to get more vehicles out there so that we had less crowding and get more reed irship . I think that is a really good yes. I dont have all of the answers on it. We are going some cleaning in the system and it was very, very clumsy and labor intensive as we were starting to head into rainy season, we didnt have a good kind of plan to keep staff dry. So even our kind of small pilot on it, we backed off. I think that where this is something that in particular the operators are asking for. And given Everything Else and the uphill battle to change, and we are going to hit a ceiling in terms of our ability to deliver buses. We are Getting Better at stretching within the constraints. So we are using operators as Department Service workers and theyre cleaning buses instead of driving buses. And were flipping buses around as soon as they come in and get kind of a scrub down and head back out. I dont know the right balancing point, but we did get a lot of pushback when we tried to ease off of it even just a small amount. And in a related question, i know youve been tussling with the department of Public Health with about 3 or 6 feet. Are you making any progress in that struggle . Jeff, do you want to talk about that . Do you think we are making progress . Youre muted. I think we are making progress. And the department of Public Health is by nature conservative. They are responsible for protecting the health of the public and of our work force. And they are reliant on the science. So we have been collaborating with them in term of collecting the global data, and also revealing and being very transparent including putting the information stuff on our and what are the conditions for example on the plans. And what are the conditions at sfmta and what are the conditions in the ambient level of virus. And to move forward on tighter requirements and partner with usfc and to do a much more rigorous testing in the transit and virus transfer on transit. So i right now think we have a very Good Partnership with the department of Public Health. I really honor how much they have engaged with how much they have engaged with us to address the unique considerations of Public Transit that while the bus is in a closed environment, the air Exchange Rates are extraordinarily positive with the buses with the win dose open and even on the trains and the doors all open every two minutes. And i think thats why were suspecting that there are, nfrt, no known cases of significant virus transmission anywhere on Public Transit anywhere in the world including from countries with far more rigorous Contact Tracing that is possible in the United States given our privacy restrictions. Are we sending the buses out with the windows open . Is that sort of like the new default . We are. We are not locking them open because when they go through the bus wash say no more. But we are keeping the windows open. Great. Thank you. Except on the bad days. Which seem to be more frequent. That is right. Because, 2020. Right. Anymore questions, director heminger . I see that we have one from director eaken. Thank you so much. My question is really related to this idea that the operators are having to bear the added burden of kind of mask enforcement that was nowhere in their training or job description. And just sort of on top of Everything Else they are juggling, they have to handlerer mask compliance and assault and it breaks my heart. What Additional Support can we provide to the heroic operators to not have them take on this burden . And as you remember in the budget presentation coming next, a slide about a shifting roll for our transit fair officers and shifting into a support role. If you can talk about that development. Thank you for your comments on that. I think you really articulated what i was trying to communicate in this area that with everything going on, the fact that somebody would get on a bus without a bask and be a jerk about it is i dont even have words. We are actively instructing our operators not to engage around masks. It is not safe. We are having them call the tmc and they are intercepted by an instructor or in some instances by police to try to deescalate the situation. We are also a button programmed for the operator so if people come on board without a mask, they can press the electron exmessage. We are found when there was a depersonalized message rather than the operator talking into the microphone, that it seemed to have a little bit more of a deescalation effect. And we also have the operator barriers which is providing some needed protection with doing everything we can to publicize this issue and to encourage mask compliant. We have our Ambassador Program and that busy stops and are handing out masks to people who just forgot for whatever reasons. You are, as we said, revamping the transit fare Inspector Program and they are going to be a critical support piece to our operators out of the system. Great. Any other questions before i open it up to Public Comment . We can ask for questions. I will open it up to Public Comment. Are there callers on the line . You have three questions remaining. Madam chair, before we take Public Comment, i want to remind people who are on the at t bridge line to dial 10 to join the queue. If you are watching via sfg tv and wish to i a dress the board, call 8888086929. The i. D. Is 9961164. Hello. This is caden miller calling in. I have several comments. Right now muni service is really failing the capacity limits are too high. We are already operating basically at 3 feet distance and the e. T. A. Is limiting capacity to 11 people on the 650 foot bus and muni standard is 30 people. Operators are not understanding that with segue mode they can arrive early at the terminal. A lot of times like before the sales force transit senter is 10 buses lined up because they dont want to pull into the terminal and get written up bring if early when that is not a thing right now. The metro buss are too full and shouldnt be stopping at all the stops on Market Street. That is unnecessary and slows down the bus. Not compliance is down. Ambassadors arent helping out. They are standing around. They are not placed in good location. We need to open up kirkland. I am glad that slayed creek was opened on the weekend. We need Shuttle Service on key sections of lines, not the entire line. Just have a suting going around china town. Have one on gearry between Market Street and philmore. And these are the sections that are very crowded. And assault, only 31 assault. First of all, thats terrible. Second, that is underreported. Operators are not calling in and thats just assault. There are verbal altercations every day and its not safe to pull over, call 30 second. And call somebody. It is really dangerous right now. And there needs to be more support from the fare inspectors and they are not riding the buses. One of the reasons bart ridership is declining is people werent paying the fares and that is what is happening on the trains i dont want that to happen to muni. Thank you. Next speaker please. Go ahead, next speaker. Speaker, please unmute yourself. Can you hear me now . Yes, we can. Thank you. I have nine comments on this item. I will be very quick. On each of those. Equity must mean Different Things to different people. I think equity is providing service everywhere across town, proportional to what the need is. But to not select certain routes or certain areas and ignore others. Thats what equity means to me. Two, the data here is misleading. It doesnt show routes that are not in service or people stranded or forced to walk long distances to the few routes that are operating. So you can take what you want from that the data. But its necessarily incomplete. And what julie is calling Line Management or something and what i call street supervision relies too much on technology and the tmc and at this time in opinion. And to the provision and the field and that would be more useful. And for vehicle cleaning, it is clearly a real constraint. And i believe that most mobile cleaning teams at relief points would help in a number of ways including facilitating road relief and decongesting the yards and all kinds of good things happen with more mobile, small mobile cleaning teams. 30 seconds. On crowd all right. I will speed up. Item five, obcrowding, there is too much Early Morning and late Evening Service right now and not enough service in the midday. Six, still enough operators and vehicles for saturday Level Service on all nonexpress routes. Seven, to repeat, m. T. A. Needs a plan to i a dress passenger Behavioral Health issues and there are many. Eight, next steps should include one or more town Hall Meetings on Transit Service to reach real passengers and nine, again, broken subway lights should be replace and track and walls washed to remove grime in the subway. Thank you very much. Our next speaker please. U awe next speaker. Two comments. Alameda county a. C. Transit issued an email explaining that their buses operate with the windows closed because open windows create problems for the air conditioning system they have on the buses. I realize all our buss are not air conditioned but the ones that are should be utilizing the air conditioning system to exchange the air. Second, a. C. Transit and v. T. A. Have installed dispensers for masks. So that should solve the problem with people not having masks. Thank you. You have three questions remaining. Next speaker please. Go ahead. I wanted to raise concern about the questions about cleaning when the agency recently retired around 50 other coaches and currently has reserve fleet which the reserve fleet is kept for situations that would require such as emergencies and like earthquakes or other extraordinary situations with the pandemic that were in currently, then my concern is that the cleaning, of course, helping to make sure that the bus is sanitary and that possible contamination from the virus is rude. And my concern is that we are going with this agency would go in the direction of oh, we will need more buses and stop cleaning when there are other options like extra buses or extra operators being assigned to be ambassadors and every metro station and to the customers not there and no routes coming whether there are not people transferring. So my concern is that the agency is really trying to move towards that when there are other options and maybe not retiring all the beginning of the pandemic. And assigning operators that are basically sitting around doing nothing all day at by the montgomery, sunnydale, west portal, caster, you name it. And whether they could be providing service and helping to reduce crowding. 30 second. My last comment is there be more Service Provided with the existing options. And health and safety on the line by reducing and and cool. Thank you. Next speaker please. You have two questions remaining. And this is eric williams. And i am working with the dsw and car cleaning team. The observation and i think i can possibly add to the issue of getting the buses back in service as soon as spobl. My observations are that the buses pulling in off routes and making 30 minutes away. Then it is another 15 minutes for cleaning the buses. Then its another 30 minutes to pull out. Is it possible to open up the temporary bus yard over by off of main so we can move cleaning operations there and have the buses pull in right there, make the release and pull back into service opposed to going all the way to woods to get cleaned and come out. That is time. That is taking time right there. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker please. You have one question remaining. Go ahead, speaker . Unmute yourself if you are muted. Is there anyone else left on . Is there anyone on the line . You have one question remaining. Next caller please. Go ahead, speaker. Please unmute yourself. Give us your comments. Hello. Is there another you have one question remaining. Next speaker. Moderator, is there an issue with the line . Hold on just a moment, madam chair. We are hearing clicking but no speaking. The moderator says they cant seem to unmute themselves. You have one question remaining. We cannot unmute them. You may add your Public Comment after atem 19 which is the next item on the calendar. Item 19 is a presentation and discussion regarding sfmtas budget and fiscal status. Thank you. And thank you for all the buses. Yes . Hi. I am the sfmta cso and in just a moment i will be turning it over to tim and gail. Tim is our budget manager and gayle that advertising officer. And with the policy presentation and which relates to the proposed use to the contingency reserve. We havent really discussed this previously with the board. I dont think it will be a surprise that all other transit agencies in the country we have an extraordinary decline in our revenues. Now we anticipate needing a portion of the reserves and to be prudent and transparent and that is a very number we need to be working towards as we manage spending through the year. And we have a budget team that has come up with a proposal and to look forward to the questions and comments. Good evening. Can everybody see my screen . So i manage the budget and i am here to give you a bunch of presentation and update. And where with are we at . And with the minor technical adjustments and that went to the board of supervisors. And which we will get to many later slides. In terms of the budget and two months of data and into the fiscal year, we are seeing these decline and is likely going to require that use to keep 10 and with based and what we are seeing and in terms of revenue declining is probably a good time to adjust that shortfall in the budget. And in terms of ridership and with transit opens up and in terms of the federal support and a big boom to the budget that will be effecting our budget. Okay. So on june 30, a lot of you guys or the board might remember this slide and so the top scenarios we dont think are plausible too much for the fiscal year. And so we think that we are in the bottom snare joe in terms of the bottom line and with the capacity being down. And are about what we budgeted. And the with the which we are not sure if we are going to hit in this fiscal year. And potentially accessing the contingency reserve. So this gives you a sense of where we got to and we had the board workshop and june 30 with the budget adopted by the board. And on the right in bold. And where revenue was adjusted down about 11 million. And with the general fund from the city and compensated for that with the use of fund balance in the fiscal year and went up and to go from 22 to 21 with a sensz of how we got to where we got to and minor adjustments. The only not significant but the only move would be that the work orders and the final budget that went into effect on october 1. The Budget Office uses a lot of data to guide the budget decisions and this is data we showed the board and the tashg blue line and the baseline of transit and taking trips now. And starting to stabilize about 65 down from prepandemic. This 65 down metric that guides some of the decisions for projects. Similarly, they publish data with a completely different data set that is from 65 that is with the driving and new york, los angeles, seattle. And are in the cities so with the budget and in terms of the readership in the agency and with the capacity of the Transit System that are down from what we budgeted. With two months of data to the first two month of the year with the different revenue categories with the projection made from what is projected to be at budget and that relies on the growth targets that we are not entirely certain we are going to hit. This shows you more details and with the park fines and fees to be about budget and that is reliant on us again with both targets which we are not sure that we are going to hit and there is a discussion earlier about the transit fair inspectors and their roles being more focused on compliance and education to help people pay their fares on transit. Another big thing is we are trying to do a Promotional Campaign to get people to pay their fair share. And the shared Spaces Program is a big program that impacts revenue maybe not as you might think but it does cost the agency money to do the program so when you think about it, right, the spaces that they are taking up in the streets and you can see here in the picture, wrer the shared Spaces Program is implemented, there are parking meters taken out of service. We were estimating that to be about a 2 million hit in terms of revenue and in terms of staff working on the shared Space Program that should be considered as part of that. And so all that said, i did a lot of talking and i will turn it every to my colleague to get into more detail about the advertising contracts which is a follow up from the question and a couple of board meetings design. We have one slide about advertising contracts and i just want to make one quick correction. This is the correct slide and the slide that was posted actually inadvertently had the contractors named flipped. I want to give very quick background. Clear channel is our transit contractor and that started in december 2007 and there was a 15year to be a part of the contrast and there are shelters and contracts and if it went the full 10year term and to total 306 million and through Clear Channel is required to provide new shelters and power and to relocate shelters for the many city and sfmta projects. Intersection is our contractor and that contract started in july twur and it is the second contract with that contractor to. And defy the initial determine and we exercise the first option two years ago and i believe two of you were on the board at the time. And over the full 15year term, the minimal annual garn teen payments would be 96,750,000. That contract has an option to add advertising and the contrast agreement. To approve any transit shelter contract amendments and section 9. 118 of the city charter and both of the contracts would also need to be improved and would need to be approved by the board of supervisors. So looking at the slide, we have the monthly numbers for the minimum annual guarantees. And it refers to fore jr. Bearance agreements. At the beginning of the pandemic, both contractors to in about april approached us to ask for reductions in the guaranteed payments because of the reduction in revenue due to the shelter in place and also fewer vehicles on the street. We did agree to forebear payments now through the end of 2020. This is not forgiveness. Forgiveness would only happen upon a contract amendment with full approvals. If not contract amendments are approved, those monies would become payable. As of now we expect to bring some proposals to you next month which will be followed by assuming you approve it, the port would need to approve the amendment and we would ask them to do so probably in december and to introduce the items to the board of supervisors by tend of the year. Just one final note. You will see in june 2020 for intersection, there is a negative number. That is because the of the amounts that were paid for advertising on lrvs and cable cars prior to pandemic and which needed to be refunded. With that, i will give it back to tim, but i am certainly happy to answer any questions. Thanks, gail. And so thats all on the revenue side. What is happen on the expense side at sfmta budget . We do actively try to manage our budget given what you saw with the shortfalls, we are trying to control expenditures within the agency. And labor makes up the majority of our budget. So it is a big thing that we are trying to manage. So on the expenditure side, you will see here that with the controls that are putting in place, there is about a 50 million savings over what but budgeted. And then the board will recall we did have a board reserve to the tune of 60 million that we had. Just in case our revenues went even higher and the appropriation authority and revenues arent coming in higher. So we are cutting that 60 million from the projection. I mentioned labor is a big thing that we are trying to control within the agency. Overtime is a big part of that. It is trending lower. The current projections for overtime than it was precovid is something were actively trying to manage. And we also have a hiring freeze in place. We are only focussing on hiring Mission Critical position and also have the custom control committee where every position must be approved and shown as Mission Critical. And again, all that is leading to 50 million labor savings that were projecting in the budget. Okay. So where are we at . The budget that was adopted and moved forward with the board of supervisors at 1. 259 billion and on the revenue side we are projecting a 98 million deficit for revenue. And similarly on the expense side, base and the labor controls and cutting of the board reserves that mentioned earlier, we are projecting a 76 million savings on the expenditure side and do the math and then you get to the bottom line which where we are projecting a 32 million deficit overall and for the operating budget. All that is to say with you will see on the right sfmta does have a 10 reserve. We have 125 million sitting on the rainy day reserve. It is the thing we want to still have in conversation on with the board to see what we might potentially do in terms of accessing that toed a just the deficit. And so all that is to safe as i was just mentioning, the city the city also has a rainy day reserve. And with the citys rainy day reserve, they do put balance in terms of how much the city would access in any given year. Taking into account the 32 million deficit, we want to have the discussion on if we put a balance on the use of the rainy day reserve and it is important because it will help us manage the expenditure side and if it was set at a lower use of the reserve then we would probably control expenditures even more. So this is a conversation we want to have. Thanks for sticking with us. I will open it up for questions. It looks like the first person is director heminger but let me know if i got that wrong. To question . And you got it right, madam chair, i think. Thank you. Let me start with the last slide. What will the process be for accessing the reserve . Is that some board action after quarter two or three . Or what when do we pull the trigger if we do . Ill take that one. I think what we expect to do is when we would normally do a sixmonth report, which would be after the december data n late january or early february is when we would make a more refined proposal for the balancing of the year. That is when we may have more information about whether there is any additional federal aid and ask for board action to access the reserve is the appropriate thing to do with our projections to how much we need. U agree with that. Quickly, i think as an example to request may be a slight reformatting of the information. What i am used to seeing is a budget to actual comparison. So that we can see after 2 12 of the year has elapsed, are we 2 12 of the way of spending the item or gaining the revenue. You mentioned the parsing revenue which right now is nowhere near meeting those targets unless it really ramps up. And i suspect you were counting on some kind of ramping up, but it would be much easier for us to discern which of the items are really lagging behind if you depict the information that way. Just put that in your inbox as a request. Thirdly, if you are asking for a reaction on the Rainy Day Fund today, and let me give you a little bit. I dont think i am on principle against the idea. Its raining outside pretty hard right now. On the other hand, you want to do everything you can to avoid it. I know how painstaking it has been for you and the prior c. F. O. And the whole organization to acquire this fund. And so you want to spend it as a last resort. There are two ideas that i really didnt see indicated in your presentation that are worth considering. One of them is whether there are any lower priority contracts that we can either suspend or terminate for convenience. Obviously we are not doing anything that we think are wesful, but there are certain contract items that i would expect are more than less essential. And looking for a prioritized look at that would be useful. The other idea is we have talked about in the past and with the tell commuting mandate and help us out on this. What is available under federal law is the ability to essentially convert funds from Capital Projects into operating expenses. By essentially putting the money into preventive maintenance. And i see jonathan shaking his head. You are familiar with this. I realize it involves tradeoffs because you head to defer capitcap projects with a system as old as ours. So what weve really got is a revenue influx. And so to hit that low. And the first thing that i think we should make clear to the public and you the board is that the agency is running large on the First Amendment of the federal cares act. So with regard to budget, we are looking horrible as an Enterprise Agency and as business with the cares act money aside. What we did when we developed to your point is we assumed certain target points in growth that we would have to hit essentially replacing that cares act month to month. So i often explain that we are like spren which you are capital and for business to run. What it is liking is we will not catch up in time to cover. And the point with parking is we have set certain growth targets month by month and you are correct in noting that now we have to hit such high peak months better than we have ever done before to hit budget is probably likely we wont. There are a lot of things and you are not prepared to do that yet and the growth pattern looks like before making an official revenue change. On the Capital Projects and with the federal allegations of funds. And there are discussions in the region about that now. And shifting the funds to preventive maintenance. The challenge as an agency is a significant number of Capital Projects and act of construction that were counting on the grants to pave the construction contracts. What we are looking at is perhaps shifting our management of those projects to cash flow rather than encumbering that money in a contract when we only need to keep up with invoices. That is a way that we will look to possibly add revenue and to smooth the use of reserve. And when we look at the second and Third Quarter of the year. Thank you. Thank you, director brinkman. Let me unmute myself. A little slow. You are unmuted. Thank you. And to go through the expenditures with the fine tooth comb and when the team went out to contractors and asked for a reduction in expenditures and. We go ahead and go to north koreabearance and are in our pain. The parking thing we cant do a quick pivot on this, but losing that parking space revenue, the parking meter revenues is fabulous because we need to keep our businesses alive with the shared space. And we also need them to agree that we can extend the parking meter hours into evenings and into sundays to make up some time. I know that is not a quick thing to do. It is not just like turning a switch. There is an outreach and reprogramming and everything. But if we can look it down, that would be great. And i want a strong presentation on what we have done to try and decrease expenditures before we go ahead and approve spending that Rainy Day Fund. Can i just respond that we have indeed been contracts to reduce a minimum that is need. And a number of successes and with the meaningful expect of savings. It is very soon to that that. We can start to do it the next budget presentation. We can give a summary of the areas where we are seeing savings. And we do expect this time we only wanted to project the labor savings that are the farmest about this time of year. We can probably going to need them because we will probably have additional revenue outside of everyone. And we are elsewhere. I should have started off by saying thank you for all the work. This is a fire drill every week for you to keep up with everything that that is going on. Really preet the work and yes, thank you. Any additional comments or comments . Or questions . I know we are late. I will keep it really brief. To think back to the budget choices and the tradeoffs and the prose and cons and i have used that example to talk about how i see sfmta really shining in terms of public outregion and from the board discussions. Think about that model and we will have a thoughtful discussion. Thank you very much for all your work. I think i share the comments that everyone said. And we will open it for Public Comments on the budget presentation. It is not an action item but an exmr exploration of the budget at this time. Reminder if you wish to address the board, please dial 1,0. You have three questions remaining. Wonderful if first speaker please. Caller . Speaker . Are we having i hope we are not having the same problem as last tomb. Hello . We hear clicking but not a person. Madam chair, it is the speaker who had the issue previous. So the speaker is not able to unmute themselves in order to be heard. So possibly if the speaker could leave the chat and come back in, maybe that will help. In the meantime, we can move to the next speaker. Thats great. We have tried to unmute them, but we cant do that. You have two questions remange. All right. Please, go ahead, speaker. It is aidan miller and i wanted to voice my concerns about again about giving clear manl an a discount and it seems like the surface and maintenance at the bus stops has also decreased 90 . So i do have my concerns with that. Also about the back First Program and at this point i doubt its coming back. And in terms of sunday and evening leaders and to volunteer on valencia street and it is a lot of demand for parking. And not as much double parking that can be helpful during the evening and weekend hours. That is about that is all of my comments. Next speaker please. You have two questions remaining. Can you hear me now . Yes, we can. Okay. Are you the person not me. I didnt do it. I didnt do it. Okay. All right. And is it me or does it seem like this meeting started four weeks ago . All right. Never mind. On the budget, i had three written questions. I may refine that a little butt. The first is how large a federal bawlout would be needed with the contingency reserve. And two, if biden is elected, mouldnt moderate Senate Republicans ultimatecally decide whether to bail out transit agencys . Shouldnt we in a crazy coalition to see what the local tran sut needs are in, oh, i dont know, alaska, maine, and ut snut and and see how that position stood up to the whole transit industry throughout and other. And third, how close is mta to a fiscal emergency under ceqa and how much how close are we to negative working capital and those are my questions. If you could put to staff, i would appreciate it. Thank you very much. Awe thank you. Are there any additional callers on the line . A you have one question remaining. Caller, please go ahead. Madam chair, it is the same caller again who is not able to unmute. At this point were not successful in hearing from them directly, so i would urge them to send an email to mtaboard sfmta. Com. Mta board sfmta. Com. Correct