Transcripts For SFGTV SF Police Commission 20240712

2020 meeting of the Police Commission. I think its probably fair to say that we all have our minds a little bit elsewhere tonight given everything thats going on in the world, and this being probably the consequential election of our lifetime. Were glad to be here with you all and we will all take the pledge of allegiance tonight with maybe a little more awareness of whats going on in the world. I will ask everyone to place their hands over their heart so we can say the pledge. [pledge of allegiance]. Thank you, and as always, if i could ask for the commissioners to mute their microphones. If you would like to be heard, just put your name in the chat box. Members of the public who are dialing in, i would ask you to please mute any background noise so that we can hear you and there is no feedback. The dial in number is [indiscernible] 0001, access code 146424 [indiscernible]. You will have two minutes for Public Comment. Please call the roll. [roll call]. You have quorum. [indiscernibl [indiscernible]. Thank you. Im getting a lot of feedback, so im going to ask everyone again to please mute your microphones. Please call the first line item. Line item one [indiscernible] meeting of september 16 [indiscernible] of 2020. Do i have a mover . [indiscernible]. Second. Public comment [indiscernible] regarding the adoption of minutes. Please call 41565 0001, access code 1464241219, press pound, pound again and then hit star three to raise your hand. For members of the public that are already logged in, please press star 3 now if youd like to make Public Comment on line item one. There is no Public Comment. Is anyone else [indiscernibl [indiscernible]. A lot of background noise, yes. [indiscernible] and i dont know if youre able to mute people on your end, sergeant, but that might be helpful. Is that better . It sounds better to me, yes. Okay. All right. On the motion for the adoption of minutes, commissioner how do you vote. Yes. Commissioner elias. Yes. Elias yes. Commissioner . Yes. [indiscernible] how do you vote. [indiscernible] and i have not reviewed the minutes thoroughly. [indiscernible]. Yes. Commissioner, unfortunately under the charter were not allowed to recuse yourself. [indiscernible]. Commissioner cohen is aye on the adoption of the minutes. And commissioner taylor you have five yes. Okay, please call the next line item. Line item two, reports for the commission. Chiefs report. Provide an overview of events occurring in San Francisco. Major significant incidents, provide a summary of planned activities in advance. This will provide a brief overview of any unplanned events or activities occurring in San Francisco having an impact on Public Safety. Discussion on activities determining whether the calendar for future needs. Presentation of the fdrb findings and recommendations and investigative summaries Third Quarter 2020 and presentation of family [indiscernible] through june 30, 2020. Okay. [indiscernible]. Good evening. Hi, president taylor, commissioners. Welcome back, commissioner cohen, and congratulations. And good evening, chief of staff hawkins. Ill start the presentation with the crime trends for the week. Ill start with the not so good. We continue to see rise in burglaries year to date. We are 44 above where we were this time last year. I would like to say of note there was a significant arrest made in connection to several garage theft burglaries, which is one of our areas that we were really trying to focus on in the city. An arrest was made on october 30, and during that arrest and subsequent search warrant 18 bicycles and one scooter that had been reported stolen was recovered from this particular individuals residence. That brings a total of 15 suspects arrested over the past two months in connection with garage thefts. Our investigation [indiscernible] continues to work leads in those cases, and again, we are really trying to focus on the significant or individual that we identified because of their criminal history to be chronic offenders, and hopefully that will bring it down and make a dent in not having as many victims. I want to just remind our residents in the city please secure your garages, lock your bikes when you can, scooters, regardless of whether or not they are stored in the garage. We know how difficult it can be, and sometimes what we find is some residences are easier than others to victimize, so please secure your garages, lock your bikes, even if its in the garage. Please register your bike, and can you do that through sf safe, and if you go on their website, www. Sfsafe. Org you can register your bike online, and that really does make a difference when we recover stolen bicycles or if we come across a chop shop investigation when bicycles are registered we are able to return them to the owners. Unfortunately for the 18 that were recovered, we were fortunately for the 18 that were recovered we were able to return many to the owners. In terms of other property crime, we are continuing to add this portion to our year for burglary which was down 43 year to date in reduction of car burglaries when compared to 2018 were down 45 and when compared to 2017 when we were at our height we are down 53 . So again, same strategy, focusing on those that we believe because of their criminal history to be prolific, many of the individuals that we come in contact with are working in an organized fashion, and we are also trying to identify crews that are victimizing people in our city and addressing those crews. In terms of violate crime, we are down year to date 22 . However, as i have reported in Previous Commission meetings, we are up in homicides, and that is concerning. We have right now to date have 42 homicides which exceeds last years total. We ended the year in 2019 at 41 and we are already up to 42 with seven weeks left in the year. At this time last year we had 33 homicides. The good news is that we did not have any homicides or we have not yet had any homicides this month yet. There were five homicides in october, and of the yeartodate homicides, 22 of the 42 very cleared, which is 55 of this years homicides. Our overall clearance rate for the year is 71 , and that includes previous years homicides that have been cleared this year. Looking at this district, eagleside has the largest increase. They have gone from 2 in 2019 to 8 to yeartodate this year. Tenderloin has a 38 increase going from 8 last year to 11, and the majority of those homicides are firearmrelated homicides. In terms of gun violence, we are up 22 for the year. There have been 130 shooting incidents resulting in 135 victims of gun violence. 26 of those have been fatal, and 109 of the 135 have been nonfatal. We had five shooting incidents last week that caused injuries to five victims. In terms of the district stations, the districts with the largest increase in gun violence are tenderloin, which is a 110 , 10 last year, up to 21 this year. Eagleside is 100 increase, 8 last year and 15 year to date. Mission had 67 increase in gun violence, 9 compared to 15 this year and bayview has a 29 , 35 last year versus 45 this year. Central area and central district, Northern District and Southern District all have double digit decreases in gun violence. Central has a 53 decrease. Three this year compared to eight last year, and northern has a 40 decrease, six this year versus ten last year and southern has a 13 decrease, eight this year versus nine last year. In terms of significant events for the past week, a few things on homicide. We did make an arrest of three suspects from a 2019 homicide that occurred on december 20, 2019. In that case we had two victims in their vehicle near the Southwest Corner of leaven worth and ellis when the suspects vehicle pulled up next to them and opened fire striking the passenger who succumbed to her injuries. On october 27 our investigators served a search warrant at various locations in San Francisco and as a result three suspects were arrested. One of the suspects is booked for the murder, a gun was recovered in that with those search warrants, and that is good news in the arrest in that case. Other significant incidents this week are we made an arrest on a series that occurred in the Pacific Heights community over the past several months. On october 29 our Northern District plains clothed teams spotted the subject matching the person suspected in these crimes. A subject who approached females and then sexually battered them, touching or squeezing their buttocks and then fleeing from the scene. The officers identified a suspect who matched the description and actually made an arrest in this case after conducting a surveillance. We also used a decoy operation in order to bring this case to resolution. The officer and the decoy operation was placed out on the street in the area where the suspect had been seen or victimizing his victims. The suspect followed the decoy officer for several blocks, and when they reached the area of 3200 block of clay the suspect came up from behind and sexually battered the decoy officer. The suspect tried to flee and officers were able to apprehend him without incident and took him into custody. So that crime has been solved and hopefully we wont see other people victimized by this individual. Another arrest of note on yesterday, investigators from the San Francisco Police Department in conjunction with the oakland p. D. , the department of Homeland Security, a county and the sheriff and the unified Police Department of another area actually made an arrest on a two suspects, actually, who sexually exploited a number of students. These were internetbased crimes, and this [indiscernible] from the San Francisco Police Department with our internet crimes against children unit, also known as icac. In this investigation we determined that one of the subjects that created dozens of social media accounts across various platforms using false names and profiles. In some cases the subject pretended to be a minor engaged in chats with unsuspecting victims. Once contact was made, the victims were solicited for sexually explicit images and videos, and if the victim refused, the subject allegedly used means to extort victims, threats of physical harm, to either the victims or their families, and also to circulate photos obtained by other means at their school. By using software, the subject was able to determine the approximate location of the victims. The investigation revealed that eight minors ranging in ainge from 11 to 14 years old living in the area and utah were victims of this particular suspect. When search warrants were executed, devices and other materials were found that linked the subjects and his accomplice to these crimes. Due to the nature of the crimes and the area in which the crimes were committed, which was across state lines, the u. S. Attorneys office of the Northern District of california is lead on prosecuting this case. Again, the agencies who assisted were the San Francisco Police Department, the department of Homeland Security security, oakland Police Department and the unified Police Department of the greater salt lake area and utah. The next thing is just want to give an update on any incidents related to elections. I know there was a lot of anxiety, not only in our city, in our region, but across the country on potential unrest because of the election results. The good news is that we have not had anything in our city to date. There have been cities across the country that have had incidents, isolated incidents in several of the cities of unrest. Some violence and vandalism and the like, but we have not had any of that or experienced any of that in San Francisco. We did have one incident yesterday at a polling location that required sfpd response. In that case the subject showed up at two separate polling stations acting erratically. We were called. We actually responded at the second location, and that subject was located and actually arrested. He hasnt [indiscernible] locations and that caused some concern with many individuals. So we actually contacted him and arrested him. As far as demonstrations, there were there was one small demonstration today in front of a mission station. No incidents, no violence, not a large turnout, but it was uneventful and no problems there. At this time there are a few planned events for this weekend that we will be deployed for. We dont really know when the election will be officially called or a winner will be officially declared, so we will be deployed and staffed up until that happens, and then depending on what happens, when theres a winner declared, we will step up accordingly. So far so good. We are prepared for whatever comes our way as best we can be, and we are communicating with our local departments in the area, as well as our federal partners to make sure that that information is being communicated about whats happening elsewhere outside of San Francisco. So that is it for this portion of the report. If theres any questions from the commission . I see questions in the chat. Thank you. [indiscernible]. Next we have the activity. We have commander osullivan with the fdrv findings and recommendations, or deputy chief i cant see whos actually on. [please stand by]. Next slide please. Since the last presentation to the Police Commission, the in custody review board reviewed the following in custody death investigations. 15. 001, 16. 002, and 17001. Next slide please. In custody deaths, 15001. On april 3, 2015, bayview station officers responded to a call at 145 recording a trespasser. They contacted a male subject and placed him under arrest for an outstanding warrant. The subject was transported to bayview station and processed for booking. The subject was later transferred to the county hill number one to be subject stated, yeah, i do want to kill myself. The untake nurse was cleared by the Psychiatric Emergency Services at San Francisco again hospital. The subject became agitate and starting yelling. San francisco sheriffs deputies held down the subject and continued to resist. The subject was take on the the ground by the deputies and restrained by continued his resistance. The officers on scene requested medics to respond to sally port. The medics and officers on the scene held the resisting subject by holding him down. There was no reportedable use of force by the San Francisco Police Officer. When the medics arrived, they injected the subject with perced, a sedative. And one sfpd officer rode with the medics. While envut route, the subject stopped breathing and had no pulse. The medics began c. P. R. And there was a pulse. The subject was admitted to the intensive care unit. On april 6, the subject was pronounced deceased. At the conclusion of the investigation and the recommendation of the internal Affairs Investigation, we found that the officers acted in policy with regards to use 5. 01, the use of force, 6. 14 the psychological evaluation of adults, and 8. 12 incustody death policy. Next slide please. Incustody death 16. 002. On june 18, 2016, about 9 24 in the evening, tenderloin station officers were dispatched to 41 jones regarding a male subject with a nice attempting to force his way into the building. Upon arrival, officers conducted an investigation and subsequently arrested the subject and take on the tenderloin station for processing. That station was subject indicated to require Blood Pressure medication and therefore was not placed in a holding cell. About 1 26 in the morning on june 19, the subject was transported to the county jail number one. At the county jail the intake nurse refused to admit the subject due to the high Blood Pressure. He was transferred to San Francisco general to be medically cleared prior to booking. The subject was treated, provided a prescription for Blood Pressure medication and medically discharged. The officers later advised they did not know the medical staffed a ministered any medication to the hospital while he was at San Francisco general. While escorting the subject back to the patrol wagon, the officer was shaking and ambulatory but had some difficulty walking. The subject was transported back to county jail one about 4 5 an in the morning, upon his return to county jail one, the subject had difficulty walking and was sweating profusely and appeared confused and disoriented. The intake nurse medically refused the subject again and the worsened condition and the ambulance was requested. While waiting the ambulance, he was placed in a temporary holding cell. The subject stopped breathing and c. P. R. Was initiated. The ambulance transported the subject to San Francisco general where he was pronounced deceased at 6 19 in the morning. Based on the internal Affairs Investigation and the recommendations from the internal Affairs Investigation, it found that the officers acted in policy with regard to general order 5. 01, 6. 14, psychological evaluation of adults, 81. 12 incustody deaths. There were some policy violations that were found, but based on the investigation, those were found not to have contributed to the incustody death. Next slide please. Incustody death 17. 001. On march 11, 2017, mission station officers responded to just 2200 Market Street and restaurant. The call was regarding a male patron who was being aggressive and breaking windows and harming himself. The subject was being restrained by other patrons. The officers took over who was actively resisting and pleading from a cut to the wrist. He was still actively resisting in custody and he was kicking at the officers. The subject was placed in a position of recovery and moved to a seated position and he continued to resist the officers. The San Francisco Fire Department medics arrived on scene and administered a sedative to the subject and the medics were able to treat the lacerations. The subject was placed on a medical backboard and handcuffed and hobbles were removed. Soft restraints were applied to the subject and tired to the backboard to restrict the movement. The officer noticed the subject was tonight in responsive and recognized he had no pulse and was not breathing. The officers on scene immediately began to perform c. P. R. On the subject while he was take on the the ambulance until relieved by the medics. The subject was transported to San Francisco general and at the time the officers were advised the subject was in critical but stable condition. On march 24, 2017, the San Francisco general notified the San Francisco medical examiner that the subject deceased as of that day f the during the investigation by internal affairs found that the officers were in policy reviewed the use of force and 8. 12 the in. Custody deaths and 10. 11 with the body one camera that ewas worn. Active and criminal investigations that 180 o 5 and 20001 were recently heard at firearms discharge and these are the five remaining incustody deaths that have criminal or administrative investigations ongoing. And that is the end of the presentation. I have one question and i also see a question from my fellow commissioners. All these were found to be in policy, but was the cause of death determined for any of these . I do have for 17001, tiff medical examiners investigation determined that the subject died of complications of i cant say this word. Anoxic and it says encephalopathy due to methamphetamine exposure while under Law Enforcement constraint and obesity. The matter of death was ultimately deemed an accident. That was 17001. I dont have the other ones but i can get that information for you, commissioner. Commissioner elias . Thank you. I wanted to thank you for presenting on this. The question i had is with respect to the incustody death of 16002, you mentioned in the letter that the chief wrote dated september 1 which indicates with respect to the incident there was inpolicy but also an out of policy element to that incident which isnt reflected in the power point. I am still unclear to why because i was present during this fdrd and this one didnt sit well with me. But i am wondering why on the power point slide it is within policy and the chiefs letter says it is within policy and out of policy is first question. My oversight on that that the in policy is with respect to the officers actions that were investigated and reviewed as where the actions of the officers, did though contribute to the death of the subject. The out of policy findings were transportation search on two members. And during the investigation they found that those two policy violations did not contribute to the death of the subject. It was a search. It was a search policy. Okay. I will clarify future presentations include include the visual of the recommendations in policy and which ones are out of policy. I will put those in future presentations. Thank you. That would be helpful and if the mes findings like commissioner taylor indicated is also important because in this one particularly because there was an is search issue with respect to the contraband which i think also played a role in it, i think its all tied together. Right. I think that information is important, so thank you for that. And my second question is to the chief. With respect to your letter, i read your letter and in your letter it indicates that dcle suggests in the future the photographs of officers and subjects in the incidents be eliminated from the presentation in order to main tan confidentiality. However, these fdrb hearings are confidential, so what confidentiality is there to be concerned with . It is a closed session event, a closed session not hearing, but event, if you will, where all these individuals are present in the room. I am not sure what confidentiality issues he is speaking of. Can i chief, can i clarify that one . Go ahead. Please. Commissioner elias, it was not more of confidentiality, it was more of bias in that the fdrb should not see or should not be presented with a personal picture of a criminal history, so we wanted to remove that information from the Decision Making process of whether an officers actions were in or out of policy. It is a matter as a booking photo and removing that information that we felt that our dcle felt was not relevant to the death, a persons criminal history or the booking photo. The way the letter is written is it indicates you wanted the criminal history omitted to eliminate bias toward the subject, but i didnt realize that also the pictures because during the hearings if you are referring to when they flash the picture on the screen. Correct. Of the subject. And the officer. Right. And so are you saying both officer and subject now there will be no photos . No photos will be portrayed when the officer will be portrayed in that the fdrb wants to see what the officer was wearing at the time of the incident. But for the subject, the picture and the criminal history is to be removed on all future presentations to remove any form of bias. Okay. And going back deputy chief, i heard the recommendation that the actual investigator presented because i have been to a few of these and it is very difficult it is like a game of telephone where there are a lot of specific factual issues that people have questions and unfortunately, they arent answered because the individual who conducted the investigation is not present. And they are unable to abc the specific questions. As you know, these reviews are very fact specific. And the policy and out of policy determination is really independent on specific facts. I think that is a well made suggestion and i would really encourage them or the department to adopt it. Absolutely, commissioner. As we go through these hearings and these reviews, were always looking at ways to improve the processes and make sure that all the information is presented and the people who or the investigators who have conducted the investigation are there so they can speak firsthand to a great level of specificity that somebody else cannot. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. Commission, dejesus . So thank you. The coroner was one of the questions i was going to ask as well. I also want to clarify when you say 001 and 002, are we talking about from 2001 and 2002 . Are these that old . This is 15 is the year, commissioner. Thank you. That is it. And so let me ask you a question. In two of these it says that the medics came and gave some type of antianxiety type of drug and the people ended up dying. And that was interesting when you said that the coroner had methamphetamine in his system. I am just wondering if the drugs that they are giving them are contributing to the demise. That is, i guess, dr. Martin was with us in the room, and i dont remember specifically what he said, but there are studies out there and i guess it is the Research Study to further determine if it played a part in a persons death. I cant make that determination. Commissioner okay. And the coroners report, everyone just talked about why that is important and we can at least get some semblance or some idea of that. I also thaerd changes you discussed and that makes sense. Those are all the questions i have. Thanks. I have one followup question. I apologize. And that you were talking about not using photos which i think i agree not using booking photos, but the fdrb and theres a video that need to be shown and so we are only talking about booking photos for the subject, is that right . It is the photo but more importantly the criminal history. The criminal history should not be part or and it is not a factor of consideration. Got it. Okay. Commissioner . Thank you for the presentation. It is not a question but a follow up on commissioner dejesus that each of the subjects had been given perced and to find out how much from the Fire Department how much is given to each subject. Is it subjective . By height, by size, by weight . Its real interesting and thank you, commissioner dejesus, because that was at the forefront of my mind that we have folks in custody that are passing away and while the coroner may not say it is because of i dont see any other questions. So so dont let me stop you from that concludes that presentation. The next item is also the presentation of the commissioners and this is the july 1312020 quarter record with family code 6228 and the incident report release. If you have the document and 89 were related and with the the highest number and 86 within six to 10 days. And the vast majority were 65 for domestic violence. To page two, we will notice that we did have some delays in three of the cases. And one of the cases was due to our inability to get the proper identification from the requester so that took a little time. That still occurred within six to 10 days. The other two requests were reports or requests made on the wrong box checked and one was a Law Enforcement request and not the 6228 and another request did not include the case number to find the requests and the case number and read the report and later find out that it was a 6228 request the what we have done as the improvement to scan for the 6228 request when they come in, but now we will review all requests that they check the wrong box and missing information, we can that is from the with the turn around time is less than two days and the vast majority are made in english with two made in spanish. Thank you. I dont see any questions from my fellow commissioner. With that, tauch for your presentation. Next line item. 2b, dpa directors report. It will be limited to a brief description of dpa activities and announcement. Commission discussion will be limited to determining whether to calendar any of the issues raised for a future Commission Meeting. Presentation of the monthny statistical report september 2020. The regular staff and so far this year we are at 682 cases up this year. And this is up from the same time last year where we were at 631 cases. In terms of case thaven closed we have closed a number of cases. This year at 769 so far. This time last year we were at 541 so part of that number is reflective of the volume of cases from that is year and the increase in case this is year. We have currently 350 cases that are pending and open. This time last year we had 409 cases that were open. And in terms of cases sustained, we are at 37 cases this time last year we were 71. We have 33 cases whose investigations have gone beyond nine months. This time last year we had 311 cases that had gone beyond nine months. In terms of cases mediated, we have mediated 32 cases so far this year. This time last year we mediated 27 cases. This is a new section that has been added. We have currently in cases that are pending with the chief, 31 cases pending right now. And we also have 13 cases that are pending with a Police Commissioners themselves. We also have a case tonight that is in closed session. And my lawyers and team and star are here for that as well. And in terms of the outreach since the last Commission Meeting on the 27th, we hosted a virtual Mediation Division 101 for Community Meeting for community members. We also attended both the terrabell and the mission Community Meeting where we were asked to speak about dpa for the audiences that came to the meetings. And on the 29th we had our virtual mediation conference that was an allday conference for the folks that do mediation with our office and training. On the 30th of october, we had a Stakeholder Engagement meeting. That was with the youth commission. They asked us to come and make a presentation to them. And also on the 30th we dpa with the San Francisco youth defenders participated in a panel talking about knowing your rights and understanding the role of dpa with youth and children. Thats where we are so far. I think that the next line item is for the statistical report so im going to talk briefly about that as well. This is a separate line and a separate line item, but i wanted to articulate the information is for the september statistical report. In september, d. P. A. Received 511 cases this received 51 cases this year compared with 64 case in the same period last year. The september case total was 4 higher and from january to september t decrease is reflective of that month from january to september and received a total of 627 new cases compared with the 568 cases filled during the same period in 2019. And the september year to date case total represents an increase. That concludes my report. Also, we have a number of my staff here available to call in for the agency or need help, we have folks on the call that are available and the individual case for closed session this evening. Thank you, director. I appreciate the new background that you have for us tonight. And i dont have any this is the first time i have done this at home and it didnt work here. I had to call Sergeant Youngblood and it was all terrible. But it worked. Here i am. Next line item. Sergeant youngblood. Line item 2c, commission reports. Commission reports will be limited to a brief description of activities and announcements. Commission discussion will be limited to determining whether the calendar any of the issues raised for future Commission Meeting. Commission president s report, commissioners reports and commission announcements and scheduling o f items identified for consideration at a future Commission Meeting, action. Okay. Please call the next line items. Next line item is Public Comment on line item two. To make comment, call 41565 a0001 with access code 1464241219 and hit pound and pound again. For those logged in press star 3 and raise your hand to make Public Comment on line item 2. So far we have one caller. Good evening, caller. You have two minutes. Commissioners, my fame is francisco decosta. And i was paying attention to the report by the chief. And the longer presentation that looks like something as if you are in a perry mason type of court case. I think that shouldnt be done as a presentation because the viewers at home cant even read what is being presented. So its just boring. So to the commissioners and to the chief, nobody is going to Pay Attention to you all because in order to Pay Attention to you all, you have to know something about the deliberation. You have to know something about the needs assessment. None of which was given in this one hour that we spent just listening to you all babbling around. And downtown and see all sorts of crimes. You come home and gunshots. And we know that our youth now have more guns than they ever had before. What do we hear in this presentation . Nothing about the safety of the people who pay their taxes. So why do we have commissioners . What type of policy making, deliberations are you involved with that improve our quality of life in San Francisco . People are leaving San Francisco in droves. Not because of the jobs. Not only because of the pandemic, but because of the safety. Thank you. I would just remind the public that for every Commission Meeting there is an agenda posted and along with an agenda on the Commission Website, there are the supporting materials for every presentation that you see, every document and every presentation that is discussed will generally have supporting materials that are available to the public if the public is interested in seeing them. I want to make sure that everyone knows that. Thank you. Any other callers . Yes. Good evening, caller. You have two minutes. Good evening, commissioners. Chief scott and executive director henderson. U am public defender and would like to register my agreement to rule 19002 out of policy. We should speak plainly. The shooting was illegal not just out of policy. For the public, the shooting involves and offduty officer who pulled the gun out and shot at a civilian because he was afraid of the person who had driven past him was trying to shoot him. I like the public am eager to find out what will happen here. This incident occurred more than a year ago. Why had it taken to long to reach the conclusion . It is obvious that the officer was excessive. It is important to note that the officer did not save the man with a gun but held something shiny. How many black and brown men died when officers saw something shiny and feared for their live when the men werent armed . The larger point is why is the officer not identifyed . Under California Law the record relating to the incident involving the discharge of a firearm at a person as the fdrb report clearly is no longer public it is public and no longer confidential. There is no reason to deidentify the officer. And even if some statutory exception is applicable, the department should should articulate that as a matter of policy. It is important to inform the public to what is happening. Thank you. Thank you. Any other callers . We have one more caller. Good evening, caller. You have two minutes. Can you hear me . Yes. This is paulette brown, and i am calling as usual concerning my son who was murdered august 14, 2006 and just hearing the chief saying that there have been 42 more homicides and half of them havent been solved. They caught them, but have they been convicted . I am still thinking about my son with the unsolved had had. As a mother, again, its been 14 years. And even though i am not in front of your faces right now, i am looking at you on my zoom thing and it is just im just wondering what else can we do to solve these unsolved homicides . For mothers like myself, so that we can have some kind of closure. I dont have any. I want to keep bringing my sons memory to the Police Commission so that no one will ever forget that i am still fighting so hard for my son to get justice so that my family can kind of settle somewhere. But i am just hoping that and i did speak with sergeant, agent, special agent kobe millstrong, and i will bring that up in the other Public Comment because i only have two minutes. But just if you could give another shout out about my son, i appreciate it. Thank you. The material and the flyers have been provided to the commission and are posted in the Commission Website in the 30d 30day correspondence. It is 4155754444. Those who saw the Police Commission know that she is is before us week to week. Please call that line. Thank you. There is no more Public Comment. Okay. Next line item. Line item 3, discussion and possible action to adopt a resolution urging the board of supervisors to authorize the chief of police to do retroactively accept and expend a grant in the amount of 185,242 from the California Commission on peace officer standards and training, post, for the project period beginning on october 15, 2020 and ending june 30, 2021. Discussion and possible action. Presenting is going to be director patrick. Good evening, Vice President taylor, commissioner scott, director henderson. I am the chief Financial Officer for the San Francisco Police Department. There are two resolutions that we are requesting commissioners approve for tonight. The first one is from the California Commission on Police Officer standards and training. The grant will be used to help develop and certify a limited English Proficiency course. Under a discipline environment. There are approximately 22 of San Francisco residents who have limited English Proficiency. Statewide this percentage is approximately 19 . With the grant funds, this course is certified and the Training Course will be made available to other Law Enforcement agencies throughout the state. And with that, if there are any questions from the commission, i will do my best to answer. Are there questions from the fellow commissioners . Do you want to go on the next one . And we can take a vote on this one. Whatever is easiest. I know that you are sharing a chair. So to present them both and then we will vote on them individually so you dont have to keep switching. Sure. The next resolution is from the California Department of parks and recreation from the division of boating and waterways. The grant will help pay for a thermal imageing camera and will replace an inoperable thermal imageing camera on our marine vessel. The existing camera has raeched the end of the useful life and is currently inoperable. And so this grant will help pay for its replacement. The equipment would be used to help locate search and rescue victims that may be located in water and californias operational safety where there might be poor visibility. And with that, if there is any questions on this resolution, i will do my best to answer them. I dont see any questions on this resolution either. So maybe that makes sense for Sergeant Youngblood to come back and we will take a vote and Public Comment on each item. I would like to read the line item into the record. Of course. That is last one that was just presented was line item 4, which was discussion and possible action to adopt a resolution urging the board of supervisors to authorize the chief of police to retroactively accept and expend a grant in the amount of 101,859 from the state of California Department of park and recreation, division of boating and waterways, for the sfpd marine unit for the project period beginning october 1, 2020 and ending september 1, 2021. Discussion and possible action. So for line item 3, i need a motion. Sergeant youngblood, line item 3 . Motion is to accept the resolution. Do i have a second . Second. All right. On the motion to accept the grant, commissioner dejesus. Will we take Public Comment . You are correct. For members of the public that would would like to make Public Comment on line item 3, 4155550001, access code 1464241429. And hit pound and pound again. For those connected, press star 3 right now to comment on line item three. And there is no Public Comment. Okay. All right. The motion to accept the grant for 185,242 on post training. Commissioner dejesus. Yes. [roll call vote] that passes with five yess. Lets move to the next line item. Line item four, we will need a motion and second. Motion. So moved. Second. Okay. Public comment . Members of the public that would like to comment on line item 4, dial 4156550001. Access code 1464241219, pound, and pound again. For members that are logged on, press star 3 to raise your hand if you would like to make Public Comment. Do you have a question, commission sner we can take it after we vote, though. Okay. I see no Public Comment, commissioners. All right. Call the vote. [roll call vote] on the motion to accept the grant for 101,859. You have five yess. Motion passes. Next line item, please. All right. Commissioner. It is all good. I meant to do it when the c. F. O. Was there and might be for chief. Just because of my curiosity, who writes these grants for us . Is it i cant remember her name. Is it kathrin . Who writes the grants and proposals. That is cfo youngs shot and we have a grant person that handles grants. Sometimes it depends on the grant. For instance, the grant that was written primarily by director and you all remember that grant we talked about with director sutton with the crime strategies update. That was written by director sutton with the unit and so really depends on the grant. And if there is a particular subject matter and expertise that is needed to form that portion to get the grant at whatever level it needs to be for competitive consideration. Gotcha. Thanks. And commissioner, i think on one of these at least the l. E. P. Grant Training Division i believe played a big role in the writing of that actual grant. It just depends on the grant and what is needed. Okay. Thanks. All right. Next line item. Line item 5, discussion and possible action to adopt revised Department Order. Action. Who is our presenter for this line item . Its me, Vice President taylor. Good evening. Good evening, Vice President taylor, commissioner, chief scott, director henderson, members of the community. I am captain james david and i will be presenting on Department Order 6. 19 victim of Violent Crime notification. I will give you a brief overview of the general order, some of the changes we made, acknowledge the members of the working group and take any questions. The general order with the it nos at district stations. Updates and changes and updated name and address changes for the Victim Services division of the district attorneys office. Noting that the San Francisco we passed a copy of the Violent Crime notification to the department general order so that officers will associate the form with the general order. At this time i would like to thank the department of Police Accountability to recognize the working group for the valuable time assisting the San Francisco Police Department. And the working group consists of dr. Geena rodriguez, chief of Victims Services and maria renoso. And Victim Services and the lead advocate for the homicide team. And the supervisor for the victims Services Division and street Violence Response Team for the San Francisco Police Department. And tenderloin housing clinic, and then director stephanie felder, San Francisco department of health and crisis services. Just like to say one of the main goals of the working group was to make sure that victims of Violent Crime were aware of and getting referrals to the services and resources they need. This is a positive step toward that goal. I will ask for a motion. Is there a motion . I was trying to type in my name, but that is okay. I will make the motion. I really am happy for the work that you are doing that is so important and that the victims and get them all the help we need and do the Victim Services and help with the Police Reports and do whatever you need to do and thank you for you and the task force for doing this and i move that we adopt this. Thank you. Can we get Public Comment . For members of the public that would like to make Public Comment i think director henderson, is he tries to speak . Is he . I dont see anything. Im sorry to interrupt you, Sergeant Youngblood. You have to put your name in the chat. I dont see everyone on the screen at the same time. We dont have it all together with this app on the phone that i am doing. I am fine. It was a mistake. All right. Public comment. Call 4156550001. And access code 146424. For members already on line, press star 3. It looks like there is one caller. Hi, caller. You have two minutes. Two minutes. I think you need to be more welcoming of public feedback. I am a disabled senior and pounced on by several officers while quietly standing in the checkout line at safeway during senior hour. My crime . I was wearing a small backpack. I had shopped at this safeway for 30 years. The police dragged me out of the store by my feet on my back. The officers could not even deescalate a calm situation. The Police Report said that i had been escorted out of the store. No mention of the police use of force. And some might say that is a coverup of the fact that Excessive Force is in use. The report also didnt mention the actions of the most aggressive officer, simply saying that he was present. This was pointed out to the d. E. A. Cha concluded that this was proper conduct. And apparently there were no corrective actions whatsoever and that is the primary concern of mine. If there should be any discussion on this matter, i would ask that it remain anonymous. This all came about because the store manager had it in her brain that the mayor prohibited backpacks in stores. That led to Excessive Force by police. I probably have been considered a friend of the police up until this incident. Thanks. Thank you, caller. Thank you. Any more Public Comment . There is no more Public Comment. Next line item. Is general Public Comment. At this time the public is welcome to address the commission for up to two minutes that are not on the agenda but that are within the subject matter jurisdiction. Did we vote on we did not vote on the dgo. And the caller got off topic. Am i missing that . And we need to vote. There is a motion and a second. And that could have been Public Comment for the dgo and ended up it was not. So lets call the roll for the vote for 6. 19. On the motion to adopt 6. 19. Commissioner dejesus . Yes. Good catch on that one. Elias . Yes. Yes. There is a lot of feedback. Yes, i am. I cant even hear you. I am voting yes. Vice president taylor, how do you vote . Vice president taylor is a yes. We have 6 yes 5 yess. I want to thank the department and all the members for the hard work on the d. G. O. It is very important as commissioner dejesus mentioned. Now the next line item. General Public Comment. At this time the public is now welcome to address the commission for up to two minutes on items that do not appear on the agenda but are within the subject jurisdiction of the commission pef Neither Police nor d. P. A. Personnel nor commissioners are required to respond to questions by the public but may provide a brief response. Comments or opportunities to speak during Public Comment period are available by calling 41565 a0001 and access doed 1464241219. Press pound and pound again. Press star 3 if you wish to make a comment. This will advise the moderator that you wish to speak and add you to the queue. You may submit Public Comment by emailing the secretary of Police Commission. Or written comments may be sent Via Postal Service to the Public Safety building at 1245 third street San Francisco, california, 94158. Members that are logged on, press star 3 now to raise your hand. And we have three Public Comments. Okay. Good evening, caller. You have two minutes. Hello. I am a volunteer with wealth and disparity in the black community. I am regarding our founder Felicia Jones who sent a letter i think via emailed to you and was resent this past week requesting the commissioners to meet in person to discuss sfpd reform and to work on the issue for many years and to work in collaboration but is concerning that you have not heard back from you. And very much like to see that change immediately. Thank you. Thank you. Next caller. Good evening, caller. You have two minutes. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners, d. P. A. Henderson, chief scott. My name is Lashon Walker and i am a steward and resident of the bayview. I couldnt get myself unmuted fast enough during chief scotts report, so it is not directly related to the report but i do have a question. I would like to know if during future reports you could share some information about foot patrols, particularly for the bayview. There used to be some foot patrol in the bayview and some of those officers were promoted out and they dont then get replaced. I would like to know if theyre going to be replaced and also if there is any data on any visual deterrent that a foot patrol might provide with actual Crime Statistics year to date related to corridors particularly where you dont now have foot patrol. Looking at crime data when you have foot patrols and looking at crime data when you dont have them. When you have them and dont have them. I would like to see those numbers because were missing that now in the bayview. I would like to have to find out if that can be presented at a future agenda item so that i can attend and hear the response to the information request that i am making. Thank you. Thank you very much. Chief, is that something that you could be prepared to present on at the next meeting or should be scheduled for a later date . Those are excellent questions. We can do that for the next meeting. I have the answer to that now, but it is not on the agenda, so we can do it the next meeting. If i may, a question and followup. Just a point of order. [please stand by] that study is out there. Its actually online for anybody who wants to look at it, and i can talk about that in more detail next week. Commissioner elias yeah, that would be helpful, chief, because we all get notifications when theres shootings and homicides, and in certain neighborhoods, we are concerned about that. So i know its resonated with me. So if you could present more on that in the next week, that would be good because wed like to hear more, so thanks, chief. And i see a very cute baby, but thats also not on the agenda, so well move onto the next line item if there are no other callers. Clerk we have one more caller. Vice president taylor okay. Clerk okay. You have two minutes. Yes, this is mrs. Paulette browns. I spoke with an officer, and i asked them about recanting about what they said about my son being in a gang. They said theres nothing that they can do because theyre reappealing. I asked him, does he have any kids, and he said well, he has a 13yearold boy. And i said, well, hes almost the same age. He said well, we werent trying to defame your son, we were saying he was affiliated. I said, whats the difference . I would go and take those mothers to church, and so then i would be affiliated. So were n he said well, were not trying to defend your son because he didnt kill anybody. I spoke with him for a half an hour. He said there was nothing he can do, and i was, like, then why am i speaking to you . But for that half an hour but the point is what im asking the commission is to, you know, if im asking if you can respectfully write a letter to the you know, the Police Commission write a letter to the department of justice and the Federal District court to, you know, correct the record about my son and he even said it. He said it to me, that your son were not defaming your sons character, but you did. I have all the records, i have all the files. And also, its in the complaint. I want to send you from the office of council of chief responsibility, 1800 pennsylvania avenue in washington, d. C. Ive already asked youngblood, you know, to give me an email, and i think he sent me one, so im trying to see if i can get this to you guys so i can get help. Clerk thank you, miss brown. Okay. Vice president taylor any other callers thank you, miss brown. Any other callers . Clerk one more caller. Vice president taylor okay. Clerk good evening, caller, you have two minutes. Hi. I spoke under item 5. You know, that should be under item 6 in the agenda. I am not looking for an apology because i was dragged out of safeway wearing a backpack, but i would like some sort of explanation or are you just telling the officers, go ahead and do the same thing again . Thank you. Clerk we have no more Public Comment. Vice president taylor next line item. Clerk line item 7, Public Comment on all matters pertaining to item 9 we low, closed session, including Public Comment on item 8, vote whether to hold item 9 in closed session. Members of the public who would like to make Public Comment on item 7 call 4156550001, enter the access code, press pound, and pound again. Members of the public who have dialed in, press , 3 now to make Public Comment on item 7. And we have no Public Comment. Vice president taylor okay. Next line item. Clerk line item 8, vote on whether to take item 9 in closed session, San Francisco administrative code 67. 10, action. Vice president taylor okay. Do i have a motion . Commissioner brookter yeah, so moved. Vice president taylor is there a second . Commissioner elias second. Clerk all right. On the motion to go into closed session, commissione session, [roll call] we do have a quorum, right . Thats correct. We can go into closed session shes back. Clerk all right. And commissioner cohen was aye. You have five yeses, commissioner. Vice president taylor great. Can we go into closed session . Clerk a clerk yes, maam. Vice president taylor thank you. Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today for the Panel Discussion on the covid recovery. I am your moderator today, megan, the policy share for the San Francisco womens political committee. I would like to welcome our panelists carmen chu, joey jackson morgan, and veronica shepherd. Thank you for being here today. I would like to open up the discussion with a question. Please introduce yourself and tell our audience what you are currently working on the covid issues in your field. We can start with carmen. So good afternoon everybody, so glad to join all of you today for this great panel. I want to thank you megan for helping to host this and making sure this important conversation comes forward. I serve as San Francisco elected assessor. Like many of you, we had to quickly change to a remote work scenario with our office when we had the shelter place be put in place in march. We were able to do that relatively quickly and 98 of our operations is happening off site and not in person. Weve been working hard to make sure we try to continue to do our work, primarily because we know that the revenue impact of our work has been very, very large and disperse impact to the city, from the types of programs were able to support people with us specially during covid19. Were continuing to do that. I think on another note, i think i also serve as the Economic Recovery Task forces cochair, so very much excited to speak to you about the work of the task force coming up in our additional conversations and the last thing ill say in terms of introduction is that im a brand new mother of a 14yearold i mean 14monthold, not year old, but she is growing very quickly and i think more than anything i really am truly seeing and appreciating what it means to be part of a working family, especially during covid19 because there are so many different challenges associated with worklife balance among other things. I want to recognize that i consider myself in a very fortunate place because i have my health, i have a job, and i think that is so much more than a lot of people are facing at this moment. I think we always have to count our blessings in terms of things we do have and recognize that there are many people who need much more in terms of help than where we are. Im happy to be part of this conversation and i look forward to hearing from the co speakers today as well. Thank you. Thank you carmen. Lets go to joy next. Good morning everyone, my name is joy jackson morgan. Im the executive director. Im a unicorn in the city, a San Francisco native. During this time third street has really focused on our young people in addressing the needs that youth have been coming up with, primarily with housing. That has been a huge issue for our young people and food has also been an issue. Weve gone from having our food pantry to having food delivery for our youth and their families. Were currently serving about 50 youth and families per week. Were also trying to keep our young people engaged. This has been a hard time for them adjusting to Distance Learning and not having the certain outlets that theyre accustomed to. So we continued our Youth Development program. We have been keeping our young people engaged, and active, and connected to their peer groups. This is not the norm for any of us. We are use to be being able to go outside and going where we want and now were confined to zoom or many of the platforms we come to be recognized with. Its been difficult for young people, i think, because this is their time in development where theyre suppose to be social and not having these normal things has really taken a toll. So weve been trying to make sure that our Behavioral Health services is available to them, our clinic has been closed since march, and were in the process of trying to get our clinic reopened in the next few weeks so we can start delivering some of our medical services as well. So really trying to stabilize our young people the best way we can and help them through this difficult time, both economically, food, sheltering, heal health. Definitely, thank you joy. Last but not least, veronica. Good morning everyone. Good morning to my panelists. My name is veronica shepherd. Im with the San Francisco department of Public Health. My primary work is around Food Security and racial equity. I support primarily the African American faithbased coalition. Its a coalition of 21 plus churches across the city of San Francisco with primarily African American congregants. Covid19 through the population of people were put into a whirlwind. Shelterinplace hit and there were not a lot of city plans on how people would be sustained. The coalition i work with, because of its infrastructure, we developed a partnership and was able to provide meals immediately across the city. As of todays date, they have delivered over 110,000 meals across the city. Theyre feeding almost 1,000 households each week. Its been quite a challenge. For those of you listening that dont know, the African American community, joy kind of spoke to it. We have been suffering precovid and theres been huge disparity issues between racial inequities. So the shelterinplace and the coronavirus had just added another additional issues on top of what was already going on, on top of the heightened Racial Climate. Its like this stew of a lot of issues that people are facing. We have seniors who this isolation is impacting them mentally and emotionally. We have hunger, issues that hit immediately but were addressing that. We have children in households that cant go out as joy was talking about. I have families where there are ten people in a household and only one person is working. I mean there are so many issues that are spiraling all at the same time so part of my work and role is to support people, help them to stay safe, provide resources and information, and continue to just be that light as a beacon for people who were living complex lives precovid and continue to live complex lives in this pandemic. Thank you veronica. Thank you everyone for those good introductions. I also wanted to quickly note that anyone watching from home, you can feel free to leave a question in the chat box or if youre watching on facebook, leave a question there for our panelists and well get to those at the end. So i wanted to shift it over to carmen. If you can talk more about how was the Economic Recovery Task force created and what is the purpose of this task force . Sure, absolutely. So the i think maybe folks may have heard that the task force is a convening of the mayor, as well as the president of the board of supervisors normen yee. I think as we started to learn more about the pandemic, learn more about the disease and how it was spreading, i think the picture has become that much more complicated and i think you see that with the most recent resurgence with covid19 and the Health Indicators coming back to a negative when it comes to hospitalizations, as well as the number of people who are contracting it. So, it is going to be a big challenge in terms of how it is that we deal with it as a city. I think in general, San Francisco has been really trying to take a measured approach on how it is we have been thinking about economic recovery and making sure were grounding how it is that we are approaching both where were directing or services, house were making sure that were providing different support, based on information on the ground. So actual data, statistics, information that helps us understand whats happening from a health perspective. I think as veronica and joy mentioned also, i think there is a really strong recognition that covid19 really is, is even though the disease does not discriminate, what were seeing is some of the underlying inequities that exist are being exacerbated by the disease. We are seeing instances where people who have the least income security, the people who are at least able to take a break from their job, people who are not able to tell commute, people who dont have savings or have poor Chronic Health conditions who are the ones that are the most impacted by covid19. So we see this from the latinx community, where they are 15 of San Franciscos population, but they make up half of the people who are testing positive in terms of covid19. We seen a disproportionate amount of deaths being asian, pacific american, and the impacts to the African American community and were also seeing in the asian community, a rise in terms of xenophobia, a lot of people being blamed for the creation of covid19 and the spread of it, even when we all know that thats untrue. So i think we see some of these disparities. I think one of the partners we have Going Forward in our w challenge and recognizing women is the department. Im not sure if folks have seen but they put out a report that was telling which spoke to how covid19 is exacerbating inequities amongst women. So again, women tend to be concentrated in lower wage jobs and jobs that may not have as much ability to do telecommuting or some of these other options that people currently have. We are also typically people who will be primary caretakers for young children, and our seniors, and our children, and there is a disproportionate impact among women. Were concentrating on what kind of policy decisions can we be pursuing as a city to enable recovery and think of equity while were at it. If we will have scarce resources, we need two different programs to support our workers, families, and san franciscans as a whole, where should we put that understanding there is a disproportionate impact on how covid is miimpacting our city. S there this is such a significant challenge to us. A lot of the work in terms of spre spreading and food securities are some of the other things. We still have to think of intermediate term. Thats what the Economic Recovery Task force is trying to do, putting the on the ground experiences together, coming up with a coherent plan and strategy on how the city may want to approach reopening going into the future. Definitely, very impactful. I want to bring it to veronica and knowing that Health Disparities are tied to systemic racism and this is a Public Health issue that disproportionately effects people of color and black and brown bodies, what can our leaders do and those in power do to change this tide . I dont think we have enough time. [laughter] ill give it my best shot, okay. Its a loaded question. For our community and im specifically talking about African Americans, we as leaders in this city, particularly at the higher level has to be honest about the Structural Racism and violence thats been perpetuated by our people ever since slavery. We have to be honest on how it looks and how it shows up in each of our systems. We have enough data on the black experience to build cities about, but we dont seem to shift on how the racism and its structure is continuing to keep these barriers and these hurdles high so our communities cant thrive unless we change the Program Project mentality. Were not really pulling out the roots of the racism. Were just doing check boxes. Theyre always like a band aid. They never really resolve the problem because were not going deep enough and were not being honest enough to say were putting systems in place that perpetuate the inequity. Until we as leaders all come together at the highest level and have honest conversations that will be very uncomfortable, because t going to reveal how our own biases stand in the game, to be honest. We have to own up to the fact that a lot of the systems in place, were protecting them at the highest level. People who make up 5 of a population, but have the highest Health Disparities, the worse education outcomes, the highest rates of mass incarceration, i mean i can go on and on. Something is intentionally wrong there. Half of the Homeless Population is black and there isnt even that many of us. What structures continue to perpetuate this and how are we protecting it that it keeps going . We got to be honest, otherwise we are going to continue to Fund Programs that are not sustainable because theyre not designed to be. Theyre not going to dig out the deep root of the problem. The entire country has been functioning in systemic Structural Racism and violence against black people. Now we just got to own that. So it comes back to checking ourselves with our own bias i cant say biases, and you cant tell your community were here to help you and you need a heart transplant, but you give me a band aid. How does that help my community . Yet we continue to do this. So somehow until we as leaders at the highest level can sit down and be honest about what were actually doing to black people and particularly right now with the Racial Climate that were living in, its been unleashed and against us and yet were fighting to get basic needs, food, housing, struggling to get testing out here in our community and yet as karmen spoke, the need is huge. Were not being honest. I think weve been so conditioned to operate in our different slices of the pie, we dont see the whole picture. We dont see how the ingredients are combined to create the recipe we want to build. We need to have conversations that dismantle the racism and make sure that everything were doing is connected to some policy or some ordinance that dismantles the barriers against African American. Absolutely, thank you. Joyce speaking on that, i know that you spoke a little bit in your intro about how this effected your organization right now. How has covid affected your ability to provide Behavioral Services to youth . Both carmen and veronica, i dont know how i get to come after both of you. You spoke so well about this. I think Health Starts in community. It is a community response, a neighborhood response, right . When you start to take away some of the things that were accustomed to, to have this sort of response, on top of the social determinants of health we already had, it definitely puts us at a disadvantage. We need to acknowledge the roles and how that relates to the disbursement of resources and the response from the city. As veronica eluded to before, we are scrapping for resources, for testing. We had to do all telehealth for our Behavioral Health services. Thats not a community model, right . We depend on relationships. We depend on each other for our needs. We build a rapport with you and then that gets taken away. They trust us. Its like were a boutique clinic. It was designed and created by the community and youth to be the beacon for their needs. So i think when we talk about policy, i think we need to look at how there is racism in the Decision Making and that we need to look at whos at the table and who has the power at the table to make these decisions and to help Bring Community to the table so theyre at the forefront of the Decision Making, the solution and the progress. How do we hold the city accountable for try to address our needs without the community there . So when we look at these things moving forward, as veronica said and carmen said, we have to put our leadership and the Community Leadership to help with some of these policies and Decision Making Going Forward. Thats the only way were going to crawl ourselves out of this hole were in. Yep, definitely. I hear that and agree. Speaking about policy and good policy, but just often the foundation of good policy. I want to open this question up for all three of you. How have you seen this city or your organizations budget effected by this pandemic . Can i just start by saying i want to appreciate what veronica and joyce said. I truly think that when we talk about economic recovery, i agree with joy in terms of the Community Based approach. Its really important there are community leaders, network, and existing relationships that can only strengthen and either make that work or not work. I think that is really important to acknowledge. I think to veronicas point as well, i really appreciate the comment she said about how we need to be willing to confront those Difficult Conversations because i really feel whenever it comes to the conversation around race, its really, it is very hard to talk about. Its very hard to be vulnerable and talk about what you dont know or to be fearful of saying the wrong thing and then that makes the conversation around race hard. When we start to see the outcomes that we talked about, whether its economic outcomes, health outcomes, so on. Theyre tied to race. So how do you say that its not connected . So i do think that its important for us to begin taking those steps. Its hard to do, but im hopeful that were going to start to have more conversations and the more conversations we have and sustain conversations, not just for this month or next month, that we can actually see progress. I hope thats going to be the case. I know that its going to be the leadership of the city, but also in our community and how we all interact and what kind of personal responsibility we can all take with dismantling the system we have. In terms of budget, you know, budget is incredibly tough for the city right now. You know, i think what were seeing is a 1. 7 billion deficit because a lot of the revenue has been drying up, all these things tied to Economic Activity has pretty much stopped. So i think thats been a big challenge for us from our organizations point of view. Were trying to figure out the best way possible to continue our work because for folks who dont know, the Assessors Office is responsible for property taxes and our operation brings in about 3 billion of funding to the city year after year. That helps to fund our social services. Its the largest source of general fund revenue for the and Public School and education, which is also important. We want to make sure to continue those operations, but its not going to be easy because if were going to defeat this budget deficit, it looks like potentially cuts. I think all of us are looking for areas where we can cut to help make balance and wont impact people and services, but for an organization like mine where 80 of my expenses are people, thats hard to do. I think that youre going to see that to be really true, especially with so many of our nonprofit partners, where it was already hard to begin with in terms of being able to run the operation to recruit, and to keep talent and people in your organization, to pay them something that will help them survive in a high expense city and now that were in this situation, its even harder. So i just want to acknowledge that its true. Its true for the city and its even more true for a nonprofit partner. I will imagine that were going to have a really challenging time. With that being said, in my point of view, were committed to doing everything we can to continue to bring in the revenue that is fairly due to the city and we will see a lot of challenges to that. We are already seeing a lot of commercial properties and others saying covid had an impact. It certainly has an impact, but from a Property Value point of view. We dont think it has an impact for the fiscal year upcoming. So that is just in my mind understanding where were going to have challenges coming forward as a city. Its going to be tough. Thank you. Im going to jump in. For me the answer is twofold because i work for the Health Department and lot of the budgets were redistributed because of covid. Then i work for community and people on the ground, and their budgets were just pretty much destroyed by a lot of this work. So from the citys lens, from the Health Departments lens, the new guidelines, the Mental Health money has been drastically reduced, which impacts our commune huge because there wasnt enough resources for black people and their Mental Health needs before covid. With the reductions i saw from Gavin Newsoms office, its going to have even a harder hit for our community because as i stated earlier, all of this impacts our mental and Emotional Health and wellbeing. We have people who are seniors that are isolated and are just not doing well because of this intersection of us being around people has impacted us all. So from the community lens, its a huge struggle because youre trying you got funded to do certain programs and certain projects that are going to sub support people and yet people are sheltered in and cant come out. Our Community Also doesnt have access to Technology Like a lot of other communities. Those resources arent always available. As black people, many of us live multigenerational. Our programs are for the seniors or for the kids or for the working poor. We arent looking at Household Level responses. Were all impacted. If grandma is getting the grocery bag, all the eight people that live in that house are going to live out of that gross bag, which is probably going to be gone the same day they get it. So the programs have been impacted by the pandemic so the resources arent as great as they want them to be. It has changed the last few months, but its been a huge impact on trying to connect resources. As joy said earlier, we as Community People know each other and try to build upon what we know we all have, but were all still fighting for the same bread crumb. Its not like joys program got an abundance of stuff. Our wonderful baby y here, a great resource to our community yet theyre trying to engage our community, families, seniors, all the people they serve from an extended reach. The question about the budget has to do with the people on the ground compared to the Health Department who are trying to take resources and redistribute them in an equitable way, but the need is so great. Theyre trying to figure it out each new day. Things keep changing. We have federal guidelines that impacted our budget. There are layers upon layers of things that people have to think about daily. Thank you. All right, im going to answer this question wearing two hats. Im going to start with the first hat as being cochair. So this is my third year. Every year we put out these recommendations, trying to be as equitable and Community Focused as possible. As a cochair, i am worried about this plan shrinkage in the city. When i say that, when we think historically when these things come up, black and brown people are always at the tail end of this. This is who is going to get hit the hardest. It will come out of the Police Department or Fire Department, wherever it is, its in our neighborhood. Trying to make sure in every decision being made around this planned shrinkage that were taking an equitable lens or equitable approach. The director put out a Covid Response not work book, but i cant think of the word. She put out a great report about how we should approach our recovery as a city. I recommend people should read that. Also my other hat as a leader of a nonprofit, im terrified because by this point in the process, nonprofit leaders will know what were working with. This delay is adding another layer of stress. Youre trying to keep your staff calm and make sure you have money to pay for the things you planned for. Now were waiting for your city counterparts to know if this is going to happen. Youre trying to keep your population to conserve calm. Its a whole level of stress for nonprofit leaders because we dont know whats going to happen and all the things that we grown to trust and depend on are all at jeopardy. I just want to say that health is involved in all policies, whether its education, transportation, whatever, intentional or unintentional. So like we really need to focus on how all of these policies and event the way these budget cuts come down and what impact its going to have on communities of color. Yes, definitely. That is so true. Speaking on that, in todays debate, the Public Health recovery and the economic recovery are often times pinned against one another. So, how do each of you envision a community where these two could be integrated to create prosperity . Lets go to carmen. I was going to let someone else take the lead. In terms of tracking this, when you look at the reproduction rate of covid19, in march it was something above 3. That meant for anyone with covid19, they were basically spreading it to 3 other individuals. San francisco in the bay area took Decisive Action to do shelterinplace in midmarch. They were faster than many other places and it helped slow the spread pretty quickly. When you look at the trajectory of reproduction rate, it dropped dramatically after shelterinplace went into order. For a long time it was under 1. Thats a good thing. You want the number to be under 1. Around the beginning of june or so that started to inch up and now were likely above 1. Thats where we are in terms of the reinfection rate. We want to bring the number down or we will see spread in our communities. I tell you that because what happened that drove that number down was two things. We closed a lot of businesses, reck recreation was also shut down. The second thing, i know for myself, psychologically we were seeing what was happening across the country and around the world and new york. We thought we better take precaution because we dont want to see that happen here. We dont want to see lines of ambulances going into the hospital with us having to make decisions on who to treat and who not to treat. Many of us took a lot of precautions and then that flattened the curve when we reopened the economy in midmay or so, i think a few things happened. I think you know, number one more Economic Activity was happening, so more people were coming in contact with one another. I think a lot of people let their guard down. Weve been cooped up and people thought it wouldnt hurt if i just saw so and so. Overtime as you start to be social, you forget you shouldnt have give someone a hug. I think its hard is see what of the resurgence is related to Economic Activity and what is he rated to our social behaviors. I think the one thing ill say is that im still hopeful that we can open up more of the economy so we can get our budgets back online and our support back online and to help people too. There is a cost to shelterinplace. We heard a lot about the cost to business, the cost to losing jobs, which is not small. Those are big things when people lose their incomes. There is social and emotional challenges, Mental Health challenges. Veronica spoke about social isolation amongst our seniors. We are seeing more food insecurity. There is also the typical ability for us to be able to detect things like abuse. Were not seeing kids go back to school. Were not seeing more avenues for some of these things to be daylighted for example. So it is not without other costs associated with it. I just wanted to say that because part of reopening the economy and getting back to as normal as possible is because there are other impacts we have to see. I do think that we can continue to do it, but we really have to double down in terms of our own social behaviors. Thats hard to do because were use to being the social people we are and seeing your own family. I do think thats what needs to happen in terms of the city and other actions that need to occur to make this a not a here or there or win or lose situation. We have to take more personal responsibility. All of us do. We have to remember to buckle back down again right and not try to get back together and do as mump as we can to social distance and wear masks. Those are things we can take on ourselves to do. As a city we need to think harder about how do we support people during this time . So if we want people to not spread, it means we need to support people who get sick, to make sure they have a replacement income, and they are not going to lose their jobs when they do that. I think there are a lot of policies that need to happen that support Economic Activity so people can have good health behavi behaviors. I just want to say we all have work to do on the policy side to help people who get sick and making sure our Public Health has the resources they need to help with Mental Health, with contact tracing, and testing. The last thing i have to say is that we need to think more regional. I think we started off really well in terms of coming together as a region to slow and close things down. When we started to open back up, counties did it all different ways. So there was a lot of confusion on what is open here and what is open there. When things are open in another county, people from our county and rightly so were saying oh, ill meet you over there to have dinner or whatever it was. You know, it just shows you that spread isnt contained within our county, right . People go, they work in other counties. People come here to work. So i think our lack of having a regional approach when it comes to opening really hurt us. I hope we can get back on track with some of these things so we can come together and be more coherent and cohesive on how were moving together. I could talk for hours about this stuff. So for me megan and thanks carmen. That was wonderful. The question has a different turn for me. When i think of economic recovery or Public Health recovery, i have to ask for who . Our health was terrible before covid. Our Economic Life was very poor precovid. So, when were talking about the recovery of these things, if were talking about black people, we have to have a whole different conversation. The Median Income for white people was 101,000 and for black people it was 29,000. Our Health Disparities are the worse across the city for every group. Its a different discussion. Again, everything all the racism that black people and people of color just in general experience is connected to economics, period. So its not just about the pandemic but for my community, it heightened everything that was already in place and occurring. So when we talk about recovery for people who are already oppressed, already impacted by the social determinants of health, the conversation has to take a different nuance. We need honest conversations on what does recovery look like and for what population are we talking about . If youre already twothirds of the food chain and the issue for you is this pandemic, but you still have food, housing, your bills are still being paid, that recovery will have a different outcome for those at the bottom of the barrel. Right now what we see and i know carmen and joy have seen it, its the despair in everyone were seeing. How long will this go on . I have people that i know that dont have jobs and are so afraid because theyre going to end up losing the place theyre renting because they cant pay. I think of recovery for those who are marginalized already and its a different conversation. I agree with carmen. It has to have a regional approach so were not all doing our own thing based on the communities we live in. We do have to think about that. I learned last week because of my exposure to data in the Health Department. I currently live in the census track, in the bay view. Im a native here, born and raised here, that has the highest cases of covid. Oh god, im scared to leave my house even for a basic need. There are people that are Walking Around and theyre not thinking about Public Health recovery. Theyre not thinking about economic recovery. A lot of these people dont even wear masks and theyre not just the black people. It has a different layer added to it in our community. That recovery requires the voices from our community to be leading those conversations. What recovery looks like is not the same as in the bay view. Thank you. I very quickly. Go ahead. And i think that was a perfect segue into one of my points about the community aspect. I was thinking since young people are now one of the fast ers populations to be contracting covid, i have this crazy idea, why not hire them to be our contact tracers . They know who are around and who is going to be somewhere and all this other stuff. Have them help us track this for us. Its their population that is now entering into this. We didnt do a great job with our young people in messaging. They have all kinds of messages going on, does the mask really help, i thought we can go here, is this real, all these different things. So now getting them involved, getting them educated on whats really happening and helping them be a part of the solution is going to engage them, is going to help them in economic recovery. Its going to give them experience that hopefully later on you now have your new Public Health team. Even hiring young people to be Community Ambassadors or captains to help with the Data Collection in specific neighborhoods. I think about whats happening in sunny dale. Hire young people to help with that. Even in the shelterinplace hotels, how can young people be part of the stat . I think there are ways that we can include community and im using my youth lens because i run a Youth Organization but community in general. These are ways we can incorporate the community in a way that doesnt make them feel tokenized and you understand what youre going to do and youre going to sit here and this is on the checklist. This is having them feel a part of the solution and helping their community that is also uplifting them economically. Can i add to that too . We have a Seniors Group called network for elders out here. I know the president and she says theyre trying to communicate because so many of them live alone and they dont even have laptops to do that. They used to meet monthly before covid. I asked how many laptops do you need . She said eight. They dont have the money to get it but its a way to stay connected and to be able to engage and feel like they are also part of what they can do to shift the narrative. It could be small but its so critically needed. Yeah, i love what joy had to say about engaging the youth that way. The city has a huge need for contact tracers and well have a huge need for a while. I think thats an idea we should be exploring as a city and to veronicas point. The Digital Divide is terrible. Youre seeing thats playing out in terms of education. If you have parents or kids that dont have access to technology or the connection, or dont know how to use it, youre seeing theyre falling further behind. Thats a huge challenge. Yeah, so really quickly, i guess a follow up to this is what are some of the red tapes that can be addressed. Youre shaking your head veronica, theres too much red tape. Thats something to think about and maybe theres Community Building down the road. A question we have from an audience member, denise asks how has the covid crisis effected or complicated the housing prices . Hi denise, thanks for your question. We saw an uptick in young people trying to escape Family Violence just in a weeks time. Before the city was allowing them to use Emergency Hotel vouchers we said were going to use them and ask or forgiveness later. So we tried to get our young people somewhere where they could get safe. It started as a week, then growing into a months time and we thankfully were able to sustain them during this whole shelterinplace time. It ended up being 12 young people we had to do this for outside of trying to house i think during this time we were rapidly trying to house all the youths on our list. In addition to the emergency housing youth, we housed close to 20 young people during this time. It looks like rent is going down but there is still a huge need. There are a ton of young people still in the queue and we had to slow down because of resources. Its been strapped because all the money that had to go into hotels, food, just making sure that everyone has the electronic stuff like laptops, hotspot, all of that. It just put a huge strange on our resources strain on our resources and there are still a lot more people in the kuwaiting to be housed although rent is dropping. This is like we went into this crisis with homelessness being one of our huge issues at the city and weve done a better job of trying to address it, but its only going to like its a deep hole. We need if i can advocate for anything right now the two things would be housing, food, and Mental Health. I can say that as a homeless response system in general, everyone not just youth, everywhere faces this crisis during shelterinplace and even now. Definitely. Does anyone else want to answer that question briefly . I guess just quickly for me, its just thanks denise for asking that question. Its so complex. Our housing, our homelessness shot up. I mean we got hundred times more Homeless People here in the bay view than we had before because resources shifted. Things that use to be available in certain parts of the city werent anymore. We even have people that are in sheltered environments without food and going to the Homeless Services to eat. So its just very complex and i ditto everything that joy said. All these of these intersections have to be addressed because theyre all happening at the same time. Definitely. So i want to open it up to our Closing Remarks and last questions here as were coming to time. How has each of your personal experiences guided your strategy to recovery and what are some resources that you can provide to our audience and try to keep this under 2 minutes. I think well be good. Ill go very fast, which is you know my parents were immigrants here so my parents i grew up most of my life where my parents think racism because they couldnt speak english well and they worked in low income jobs. My mom was a seamstress and my dad worked in a kitchen. It always colored my perspective because when i think of policy and how we respond to economic recovery, i think of the people who cant make it to the table. I think of the people that cant come out and advocate because they have to work or i think of the people that cant or dont feel they can speak up. So, i think that is something that will always be with me. Its always keeping that perspective on who cant come here to say what they need to say and we need to be thinking about them too. I think in terms of this pandemic, its even more clear about how it is that we need to be protecting, especially our most vulnerable communities. Joy, if you want to go. Yeah, ill go. I dont think you come out of Hunters Point without being an activist. One of the most overused but appropriate words to describe our neighborhood is resilient. So i think weve learned how to, you know, make something out of nothing. I think again as i talked about earlier the village model of really making sure that we all were helping each other no matter what, even if we had something little. Let me help you get this. I think thats been sort of the beauty of all this, seeing how San Francisco has come together to make sure that we are at least trying to address our most marginalized. I seen people come out to help our seniors like veronica was talking about with the Faithbased Community and serving all those meals. That came from just conversations, very organic conversations. Seeing that and seeing how the networking has i have really been amazed at how everyone has come together in all different fronts. In terms of resources for the audience, i just really want people to get out here and advocate, right . Weve talked about all the things that need to happen. Get engaged. Look at the next budget meeting. Look at the next Police Commissioner meeting. Look at all these different meetings where we need folks to come out and advocate for the things were talking about. Were going to need your voices to make this happen. This is where the community is at the table. This is where we shift the power in the Decision Making. We need you all to show up and advocate for these things. Ill leave you with that. And im going to end with very little. The resources i bring is food. People know me as you need food, call veronica. I pretty much know where all the food is and how to get it to people. More than that, i bring grace. I bring dignity. I bring values and humanity to peoples lives who are suffering in multiple ways and spaces and places, whether they speak english or not. I think that hope and joy said, the resilience we have helps keep people helps people know that somebody cares and somebody really shows that they care about how were experiencing life each day. I dont care whether youre giving a person a napkin or referral. Do it with dignity. Do it with hope. Do it with grace and remind people that theyre not alone. To me thats the most important. If we dont stand for the values that we say we represent, it doesnt matter what we have to offer. You can treat people very badly for something they really need and theyll walk away from you because you disrespected them. So i think that is critical of how to engage people, specifically in this pandemic. Thank you. Thank you veronica, carmen, and joy. Your comments are much appreciated and i hope the three of you collaborate down the line. I just want to plug for summer in the city is their next event, august 6th. This is a big event for all women to celebrate and i know that carmen also has the w challenge coming up celebrating the 100 Year Anniversary of woman suffrage, both are tied to womens suffrage, keeping it in line with womens rights and of course what that means for women of color especially black women and brown women. Thank you again for everyone that is watching from your homes. A remind to make sure that you are socially distant, wear your mask, and stay informed. Thank you. This is the First Digital Family Wealth forum. It is put forward by elected officials since 2017. We have served over 1300 families so far. We are honored to support you through the pandemic. We will be join by Financial Planners and experts to answer your questions. I would like to go over a few housekeeping continues with you. We are offering spanish and chinese interpretations. Please select the language channel at the bottom of your screening. There is an icon and q a function at the bottom of the screen. If you have any questions, type it in and we will try to address it during the webinair. If we run out of time we will follow up afterwards. I will ask vivian to go ahead. Thank you, vivian. Mario, will you please explain in chinese. Thank you so much. Before we get started. I want to remind our panelist to please mute yourself and stop your video until it is your time to present. I feel like some of the guests say there is an echo. Please mute yourself until it is time for you to present for your session. I will ask our leader, carmen chu, to give opening remarks before presenting our questions and to quick start session one. Personal finance management. Thank you. Good morning everybody. I hope you are ready for a morning of Financial Literacy and good information. I want to say thank you to the folks who helped make this event happen. We are going to try our best to make sure this format is as helpful as possible. Be patient with us as we start to experiment with new technology and a good way to relay information during covid19. I want to thank everyone for joining us this morning at our first ever digital Family Wealth forum. We had first started this program in 2017. As we were out apabout in the community we kept hearing questions from across the city how to be plan for the future. It wasnt just about if i have a house, what should i do with it . What should i do for your own personal finances to achieve big goals. Education, buying a home or other things. We really wanted to put together good information to our San Francisco residents to benefit from hearing from many experts. I think especially right now as we are in covid19, a scenario we planned for may in person forum we wanted to make sure that we brought credible Financial Information straight to you. This is incredibly important especially during this time we have heard so many scams that might be happening. We have heard unreliable information that people are trying to understand, figure out for themselves. What we wanted to do was to bring a program together today to address some of the big concerns we are hearing about, especially with covid19. Today we are going to talk about a number of different things. One, personal finance. We want to make sure we bring our cpa and Financial Planning professionals to talk to you about what you need to know for personal Financial Management. What is in the cares act, how do we maximize tax benefits and financial considerations during this time . Second hour of the program is going to focus around resources for families. For homeowners, individuals, people who need assistance at this team. Shannon with homeowners sf will share information with you. We want to focus on the topic of Estate Planning and healthcare directives and what information and documents you need to pull together for the future. This is really important especially now with the Global Health pandemic. We are doing the best to stay home, stay safe and protect ourselves and loved ones. Up of us will know if we contract covid19 and what that consequence might be. It is a good reminder it is a good time to plan for the future. We have served over 1300 families. I know that we had actually hundreds of people register for this event today. We hope we are able to provide a good program for you so you have the first step forward of being able to plan for the future. Before i introduce our panelist and get to the questions, i want to thank my team at the Assessors Office who worked hard to transition to online. Vivian, arian and al are here and available to help not only with technical but also the questions that might come forward later from folks participating. Thank you all for joining us, and i will jump right into introducing our first workshop participant. We are going to be talking about personal Financial Management in our first session. I am so excited to be able to have francis and heather join us. I will read you theirbios. It is an impressive history and great passion. I want you to know about them. Frances is a San Francisco based cpa. Part of the finance team at ria family office. Worked for accounting terms for much of his life in private equity and venture capital. In spare time he enjoys volunteering and helps with the Financial Planning day and helps with tax aid to make sure he is giving back to the community on weekends and helping folks who might not have access to services the way other people would. Outside of work you will see that he loves to do a lot of reading. He is learning to play the ukulele. I dont know that he will grace us with those skills today. We hope to learn more from the financial side of his mind. We also have heather a certified Financial Planner and involved agent at Uc Berkeley Program director for Financial Planning and accounting. She teaches Retirement Planning and employment benefits. She is Vice President at hargrave advisers doing the Financial Planning and has a private practice as tax preparers. Her writings have appeared in Harvard Business Communications Letters and elsewhere. We have two great distinguished guests to join us. Welcome, heather and francis. Thank you very much for the warm production, carmen. Thank you. Hi, heather, thanks for joining us. First question. We have a question about congress act. Under covid19 there is a lot of activity happening in terms of programs available to individuals. One of the questions we received was around the cares act coronavirus aid relief and Economic Security act. People want to know what economic repercussions are associated with it. Any programs or things they should know about relating to this. I think heather will take the lead on that question. The cares act, like most acts is quite complicated with a lot of pieces to it. The ones most important for you are people whose income in 2019 was less than 99,000 have probably already gotten a stimulus check of 1,200 in the mail. If you didnt get that and your income is not very hi, check on it. You can go to irs. Gov to see why you havent gotten it. There are loans for Small Businesses and other important things. If you have a flexible spending plan or Health Savings account. Those are both ways to save tax free money for medical expenses. Two changes. You can buy overthecounter medications with those. The last five or six years you were not able to. Now you can buy aspirin and things you need at the drugstore and you can use those to buy feminine hygiene products. That was never true before. If realize now that your Health Insurance or ssa or plans may not have the amount you want or type that you want, your employer is allowed to let you change midyear to put more or less money in the flexible spending plan and change your Health Insurance if the employer offers more than one plan. You can withdraw or borrow from the 401k without penalty. You have to pay tax but there is no extra penalty if you are not 59. 5 yet. Those are the key points that affect individuals. Can you tell us about the differences on the topic around 401k and i ras. This is often a point of question that people will typically raise. Yes, in general 401k or work place plan is a great plan. The most common type is 401k. Same is for 403b, 457, simple ira, sep or deferred compensation plan. Those are workplace plans. If you dont have that at work you may have ira, traditional or roth. Big differences. Workplace man you can withhold up to 19,500 of salary in tax deferred. If you have over 50 you can withhold another 6,500 for 26,000 altogether. If you have an ira, you can put up to 6,000 per year and 7,000 over 50. Do the workplace ma plan to save more. Can you expand on this. There is a difference when we talk about whether something is pretax or aftertax contributions. Can you clarify . If you put money in the 401k or traditional i ra, it is pretax money. You put money in and dont get taxed now. That saves income tax in the current year that you put the money in. That is sheltered. When you take the money out later when you are retired, you pay income tax on it then. That is good because you havent paid tax for years, you are able to save money and are probably in a lower tax bracket when you retire. That is tax deferred. Putting pretax money in and tax when you take it out. There are accounts where you dont save now but a lot in the long run. The roth ira if you put it in this year you will not save this year. It is after tax money. As that money grows over the years if you have got it invested it will earn income and dividends, Capital Gains growth, when you take that out you pay zero tax. Both plans are good. If your 401k offer an option to put some pretax and some roth. I usually do both. Both plans are really good. Is there an income criteria for roth ira . It is on the screen. If your adjusted gross income is more than 139,000 and you are single or 206 and you are married filing jointly you cannot contribute directly to roth ira. Important if you are married filing separately you cant contribute to any ira. Take that seriously you probably shouldnt file separately. Most people file single or married filing jointly. There are lower income limits for traditional ir a. If up high income and would like to contribute to roth ira. Call th the bank and say backdor roth. They will help you. That is a code term to get money in roth ira with a high income. If you talk to a finance professional they can help you do that. Speaking about retirement. I think under covid19 right now a lot of folks are stepped for cash flow. If we are talking about disruption in jobs because the employment has gone away, people are temporarily or permanently laid off or people with a shelterinplace order and businesses not opening there is a need to make it through. People have been trying to figure out do i take out loans, should i be pooling money back from stocks and investment, taking money out from retirement funds, those kinds of things. Should i stop contributions when i have more immediate needs right now . Can you talk about what people should be considering or thinking about in that way. It is easier with a lot of money. You can shelter from risk with a lot of money. If you had all you needed right now to retire and live on for the rest of your life, you dont need to invest. You can keep it under the mattress with no risk. Most of us are not in that situation. We need to invest money to grow in the long run. The problem is we dont know exactly how the timing works out. Probably now you need more cash than usual. Not everybody but many people especially if you lost a job. You need more money available in your Checking Account to use it easily. I would say try to have a little bit bigger cash nest egg right now than normal. Dont give up on investing completely. Should we not contribute to 401k for a while . Try not to stop contributing. This is human nature to do the opposites of what is good for us when it comes to money. The stock market falls and we dont want to be involved. We are going to stop contributing and saving. When it is falling that means prices are low. Ideally you want to buy when prices are low. Like buying things on sale. We have the opposite reaction when things are high. The stock market is doing great so we buy at the top rate. The best way to manage is if you can spare any cash from daily Household Budget absolutely keep contributing to 401k, keep saving that money and this period of time when stocks are low you will be buying cheap. You will have more potential for gain in the long run. Try not to stop contributing. Try not to borrow or cash out your 401k if you dont have to. If you lost your job with no money for food the relief in the cares act allows you to take out money without penalty. You will lose the benefit of the long time savings. Related to that question. Someone had asked should i hold back my Retirement Plan when the market is crashing . What do i do with my stock and Bond Investments if i am planning to retire . It is all about timing. If you have got a long time until retirement, you want to be in stocks mostly. Over the long one they do well. People usually start shifting their portfolio to something more conservative as they approach retirement. As you get older, people put less money to stocks and move more to bonds and cash, which are safer. Not likely to crash but dont grow much over the long run. That is a reasonable plan gradually shift from stocks to bonds and cash. Dont do it suddenly. If you try to guess the perfect day, you will guess wrong. Do it gradually. Dont give up all stocks. You need growth. Bonds and cash are not going to grow. Next question is related to Social Security income. This is a question i want both heather and francis to weigh on. Is Social Security income taxable . Are there ways to qualify for the federal stimulus credits . I will jump in with taxable then to francis. Your Social Security might be taxable but never all of it. If you have a relatively if Social Security is your only income, it is not taxable. If you are getting Social Security and you have Investment Income or still working so you have other sources of income, then it probably is partially taxable. If your income is over 32,000 a year, you are married or 25 thousands if you are single. Half of the Social Security income is taxable. If your income is over 44,000 a year 85 is taxable. That does not mean you are paying 85 tax. It means whatever your normal tax rate 12, 24 that will be applied to 85 of your Social Security. When you said 32000 does that include Social Security income . That is complicated. It includes half of the Social Security. There is an equation. Add half of the Social Security to other income and add back the modified adjusted gross income. This is a rough guide. These are relatively low salary numbers for california in 2020. That is because these were set in 1983 and 1993. It deliberately is not indexed for inflation more and more people pay income tax on their Social Security each year. Francis. I think heather has done a fantastic job. I can jump in on how to lower your agi or household taxable income. I think one of the things i want be to clear up is that all of the discussion about the Economic Impact payment the 1,200 that attendees read about. That is based on your 2018 or 2019 tax information, whether you had information earlier or not. Now we are past july 15th deadline, information, i believe like as Congress Works on some other package they are working on, it may be based on the 2019 information. The information here how to lower Household Income is going to be based on how you can lower your Household Income for 2020 and forward. Heather covered a good portion of these things. It is going to sound like i am going to sound like a half broken record. You can never hear this stuff enough. The traditional 401k. What is that . Did i lose you . You are fine. I was saying you can never hear this information enough. I listed on the different accounts like your biggest at the top going down. Use traditional 401k has an annual limit as of 19,500 depending on your age you may qualify for catch up contributions. She mentioned workplace Retirement Plans. What if you are selfemployed are these available to you . The answer is yes. There is a range of plans. If you want be the higher 401k limit, especially if you are a solo entrepreneur or Small Business plan in the sense it is you and spouse working together in a business. Consider setting up a solo 401k for higher limits. This is the traditional ira. Individual retirement account. You set it up not so much with an employer separately. This is something that everybody is not aware of. If you are married only one spouse earns an income you can consider setting up and contributing to an ira for the nonearning spouse. You have read about it, you have come about the term spousal i ra. It is this concept setting up an ira for the nonearning spouse. The next one is the Health Savings account. Different limits depending on the plan you signed up for and your age. There may be catchup contributions available. I listed the figures on the side. I am not going to read them. Last, same thing heather mentioned consider the flexible spending account. Something to think about. If you have signed up for Health Savings account. Behind full of expenses to run through an ssa, the flexible spending act, if you use it with the Health Savings account, the ssa is a limited flexible spending account. If you did not have an hsa, you can use the ssa for run of the mill copayment costs, drug costs, health, vision and dental. You can run those through. If you use an hsa and ssa together. Ssa can only be used for vision and dental. Francis, i did see a question that came in from one of the folks participating who just wanted to know what can you spend in an ssa versus hsa. Can you say again what can you spend out of hsa and ssa and if you have both what does that mean one more time. Typically the two in terms what you can spend it on, congress has expanded the types of expenses you can spend it on. You cant tell you right now the list. The typical is a matter of expenses to see your doctor, some type of physical therapy. I am quoting off the top of my head here, drug costs, these are things you typically would run through the h sa and ssa. You would only be limited to dental and vision expenses. You can still do that with hsa as well. When you have them in tandem, the limitations apply for ssa in this case. The list of things that you can count as medical expenses for the hsa and fsa is long. Doctors and medical and dental and overthecounter drugs are part of it. If you have questions about specific things, publication 5021 an irs publication that you can google off the web. That lists every item. If you are wondering my doctor said i should install a swimming pool, those gray areas, 502 is the final answer. One fun fact about this i just checked for a client. She is buying longterm Care Insurance and could she use a plan to pay the Insurance Premium on her longterm premium on the longterm care . You can payout of hs a, not fsa. Pay the longterm Care Insurance and some cases Health Insurance and do that tax free, which is great. Anything else you want to add before i go on . I think in terms of united effort that people can lower Household Income. In terms of limits and accessibility these are the ones that most people want to look at. Thank you for that information. Heather, there is a question that folks asked participants asked. Does it matter if i transfer property before my required minimum distribution age and are there taxes on inheritance . Second part first because it is easier. Taxes on inheritance, likely not. California no longer has a state inheritance tax. A few states do. Federally there is an estate tax that doesnt affect you until you have more than 11. 5 million or if you are married more than 23 million. For most of us, no problem at all. If you do have more than 23 million call an estate attorney. There are many good ones. One will speak later. They will shelter your income. You dont need to worry about inheritance taxes. The other part was about transferring assets before would you read that again. Does it matter if i transfer property before or after my minimum distribution age . It depends on what you mean by transfer property. Your required minimum distribution begin at 72. For many years that was 70. 5. The secure act a few months before the cares act changed that. It begins at 72. Can you explain what the minimum distribution age is first . That means if you have saved money in an traditional i ra or 401k the government doesnt want it from this forever. At 72 you have to take some money out each year there is a formula based on your life expectancy. When you turn 72 you have to take money out each year. That means you move from one account to another. Key thing is it becomes taxable at that point. If you have a very high income when you are over 72, you want to spread that out as slowly as possible so you are not paying a lot of tax every year. When you turn 59. 5 you are allowed to take money out without penalty. When yout you turn 72, you haveo take money out. Between that you are flexible. You can take money out and make it taxable or leave it where it is. That is a good time to think about how much tax do i want to pay this year so it doesnt become a big burden later all at once. Does it matter if i transfer property before or after the minimum distribution age . It is not clear what the question is trying to get at. It may be whether they should transfer Real Estate Property before or after the minimum age. It doesnt have an impact necessarily. The minimum distribution age is when you are required by the federal government to take money out of the retirement accounts. It is unrelated to when it is appropriate to transfer a piece of property. It is unrelated. The only thing required minimum distributions start triggering taxi effects. If you are doing something to trigger taxes, talk to an adviser and look at the picture to see if you are creating a big tax burden in a particular year. Otherwise no connection. One question people have put in here. What are the best options to finance my Childs College Education . Francis, can you take that one . I enjoy thinking about. It covered so much of what we talked about. So much of the things you do for yourself in future years when you plan for your retirement can benefit your childs eligible for Financial Aid as well. The way that i went through this. The amount of effort that you go out of your way to do. Regardless of what is in front of you, be looking at scholarships and grants for your child. One thing that people are thinking about is Community College for the general e education portion requirements of the four year degree. They have transfer agreements with four year schools. One example is university of california. I think it is one of those things where i know for a lot of High Schoolers in junior and senior year they are looking at all of these things and asks parents, parents are going across the country where do i want my kid to go . There is an option that it can definitely bring down the cost when you think about two years worth of university and housing and living costs for your child. That is a big chunk. One thing to do is if you pay down debt as well as lower Household Income. Contribute to 401k and that helps with eligibility. Certain things are not considered in financial said. The primary equity, unsecured credit card debt. Say, for example when you fill out fasfa how much do you have today. 10,000 in cash and 10,000 in credit card debt. If you fill out the fasfa you have 10,000 in cash they will not be concerned that you have 10,000 in credit card debt. They will see 10,000 and that is going to affect the aid formula in a way where you are going to seem like you can contribute more to your childs cost than you could realistically. The best thing to do is net it out. If you took the 10,000 in cash and paid off the debt you made yourself 10,000 poorer as it related to the Financial Aid formula. The last one and i think this is something most people have come across in terms of effort and going out of your way to put an effort this is 529 plan. One of the things that people dont realize. Hey, i want to do this trip or i have this medical expense coming up. You can do that with 529. I recommend this to my friends. I am sort of at the age where friends are getting married. Set up a 529 and send me the link. I will put in what i can. I basically have sort of contributed to your kid 18 to 20 years down the road if you invest the money properly. I mentioned in the first bullet point instead of toys ask to contribute to the 529 account. Most sponsors, i had a friend who set it up, not a recommendation, she set it up with fidelity. She had a link and used to email to friends. Contribute to my kids 529 plan. The contribution limit is up to the annual gift exclusion every year. 2020 that is 50,00 15,000. If you have a generous grandma or grandpa, it can be their time to shine. There is a term called front loading. You can contribute up to five years in one year. It is more complex than just doing the 15,000 per year and asking too much of people right now. It is an option available, also. The last and probably most important is invest money in the 529. If your child is 5 years old right now. Some type of age where they are not at college level, you dont want the funds you have gone out and collected from friends and family to be in cash. It is not as much help five or 10 years later when your kid is going to college and you were earning 0. 5 interest on the cash when you could have got a better rate of return. To recap, those were great ideas. Tangible things parents can do to get ready for kids. One, reduce income by contributing to retirement and natural ways to bring down the income level so you qualify for Financial Aid. Two, pay down debt because under the fasfa formula they dont consider your debt. If you pay it down, it benefits you and reflects th the right wy so they consider what you owe. Set up accounts that are savings account that you can invest in that grow with your kid until they need to use that funding. Can you just expand quickly on are there drawbacks to these plans . I have heard some parents have asked the question shall i just invest in the stock market as opposed to opening up a 529 . It sounds like they can only use it for education. What if we dont use it or the situations change . Can you talk about the pros and cons what people should think about . I think people like to be concerned not knowing how much they will need. I think it is safe to say given the cost of Higher Education it is such a small sub set that are not utilizing the money in the 529 plan. The benefit of 529 versus regular brokerage account, the gains that you use for Higher Education cost, they are not treated as income. Strictly in that sense you are putting money in you dont get a deduction for. The gains are used for education expenses. You dont get taxed on. Now one way to definitely mitigate the risk. What if my child doesnt want to go to child . What if my child qualified for scholarships and grants and we didnt need