Transcripts For SFGTV SFMTA Board Of Directors 20240711

Clerk madam chair, you have a quorum. Wonderful. Clerk item 3, announcement of prohibition of sound producing devices during the meeting. Its clear were using sound producing devicing duries duri meeting, so we wont announce this. Item 4, approval of minutes of the november 3, 2020 meeting. Directors, is there anyone who wishes to make any comment . Okay. Seeing none, are there any members of the public who wish to make Public Comment this item on the agenda . You have zero questions remaining. Okay. With that, ill turn it back over to the directors. Directors, do i have a motion . Motion to approve. Second. Okay. Secretary silva, would you please call the roll. [roll call]. Clerk madam chair, you have five votes to approve the minutes. You are on item five, communications. Due to the covid19 health emergency, this meeting is being held virtually, and all members of the staff and the public are attending via teleconference. This will ensure the safety of the sfmta board of directors, the sfmta, and the members of the public. For all comments received in advance of the meeting, we received and appreciate thesement coulds. Please note, if you these comments. Please note, if you left the comments today, we may not have received them. We encourage you to write to the board at mtaboard sfmta. Com or call us at 4155546670. While Technology Allows us to hold these meetings virtually, please know we are doing our very best and ask for your patience and understanding. If we lose connection during a meeting, we will pause the meeting until the connection is reestablished. Lastly, i want to thank all the people who have made who have worked hard to make this meeting happen. There are many people involved on the line, many more that have been involv have more than have been involved in an inperson meeting, and i want to welcome our new secretary, secretary silva. Clerk thank you. If you are watching via sfgovtv, and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. For members of the public who wish to make Public Comment on the agenda, the number is 8888096628. The access code is 1966624. If youre Live Streaming the meet avia sfgovtv, please mute the sound. This is reduce any reremembereration so the board can hear you. At times, the chair will ask that the lines be opened for comment. The auto prompt will say that callers are entering questionandanswer time, but there is a Public Comment time. You will be queued up in had the order in which you pretty one and zero. There will be an automated voice that will tell you its your turn to speak. I will start your two minutes when you begin talking, and i will say 30 seconds when you have 30 seconds remaining, and when your time is up, i will say next caller, please. At that point, the moderator will put your microphone back on mute. We are presently on item six, introduction of new or Unfinished Business by Board Members. Board members, are there any items that you would like to have addressed . Director lai . In honor of director tumlins presentation, id like staff to give us an update to the board of supervisors request to provide us an update within 60 days of their resolution last week with regards to codifying and the implementation for proactively reducing the speed limits, but perhaps jeff might be covering this later, so ill just maybe leave this open. Thank you. Thank you. Director heminger . Thank you, madam chair. I had two. The first, weve received quite a lot of email traffic, and its been in the press, as well, about the status of the great highway portion of our slow street network, and as you all know, that network came into being in the emergency orders that were all living order, and presumably that emergency is not going to be completed any time soon, unfortunately, which raises the question, like the great highway, what significant changes are contemplated for one of those segments in the network . Is that something that the board should be involved in, i think given the significance of the changes that at least are being discussed publicly to the great highway, i would recommend we are, and so maybe i could just ask for some clarification on that point, either now or in the directors report or in an item that would be presented to the board so we have an understanding of what the procedure will be to deal with this network as it exists and consider changes to it or extensions to it when we reach the end of the emergency. So sorry about that was a little long winded, but thats the first item. The second was to check on the status of a previously requested item. I think many meetings ago, i had asked for an update on our parking responsibility. I dont think, at least in my necessity, that we have dealt with much at all, but i would like to know when we can get to that item. Thank you, director heminger. Unfortunately, as you know, these items have to be agendized to officially discuss them, so youll have to get them in the agenda ahead of time. Any directors have questions or comments okay. Thank you. With that, well close that item. We have we can open it up to Public Comment to see if theres anybody who has a comment on director tumlins or director lais questions. Moderator, is there anyone on the line . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Okay. With that, we will close Public Comment and move onto item number eight. Clerk actually, item number seven. Oh, sorry. Ju jumped right over jeffs report. Sorry about that. Director tumlin . Greetings. So at our last board of directors meeting, one of the things that we talked about was how eagerly we were awaiting the results of the november election. Some of the results were excited, but arguably, the results for the future of the sfmta remains in the balance, which is the balance of the senate. All of that is contingent in the senate race in georgia, which is whether well have to be able to well be able to maintain our services or whether well have to cutback significantly. One of the things that weve learned this week is that the news continues to worsen for the San Francisco general fund. Most of the citys sources of revenue are tracking at or below the worse Case Scenario projections, so we were told we need to accommodate another 34 million in reductions in the sfmta budget. The voters successfully passed the measure rr, the caltrain one cent sales tax in all three counties. That will start to bring in new revenue to caltrain, to the tune of about 100 million per year starting in the fall of 2021. We in San Francisco contribute significantly to caltrain, including were currently programmed to contribute 8 million in operating support from the sfmta plus an additional 7. 5 million paid by the sfcta. Were now in discussions with caltrain about to what agree caltrans new revenue can supplant our current and future reductions. Citypassed prop i, which is an increase in the real estate transfer tax. That will increase general Fund Revenues by about 11 million in fiscal year 2021. That is good news. The city also passed prop l, the executive pay related business tax. It generates a significant amount of money starting in july of 2022. That money goes to the general fund, and the sfmta slice of that would be about 9 . The big tax measure, however, failed to pass, and that is prop 15, the split roll reconfiguration of prop 13. And again, emphasizes that even back in january, in our peak economic times, most of our Revenue Sources were in decline relative to expenses and certainly relevant to cost of living. As you know, the general funds tax base is largely property tax related, and property taxes increase at less than the pace of inflation, while City Government expenses increase at the cost of laboring because our expenses are driven by the fact that our work is driven by labor, and we need to pay our workforce a living wage even as the cost of living here in the San Francisco bay area continues to skyrocket. So as i said, well be digging into the implications of all of this news, most of it very bad, at our december 1 board workshop, including strategies on how to address the everwidening shortfall and ways to minimize the possible layoffs to the largest extent possible. We are preparing to issue fair enforcement citations again starting december 1. It is critical that we move forward with collecting muni fares since it is the Revenue Source that we have the most control over and most directly relates to our Service Delivery needs. But i also want to reiterate, as is detailed in our blog back in september and in previous board reports, that we have completely changed our approach to fair enforcement to focus primarily on compliance, on educating our customers about our services, about delivering Discount Program cards to our customers who need it, distributing masks, and at promoting civil behavior on our vehicles. In addition, our Fare Enforcement officers were deployed as Disaster Service workers early this year and, as a part of that received significant training, suicide prevention, mobile crisis response, human trafficking, mobile service, and deescalation training. Theyve also gotten new uniforms in order to look more like the civilian Service Operators that they are and less like police enforcement. This is all very important to ensuring, again, that our efforts at enforcement are really about our customers getting our customers to pay their fair share and avoid Massive Service cuts that will come unless we start collecting fares again. Youve also of course heard that weve gotten more detail on central subway. The central subway work for substantial completion will be delayed into spring of this coming year because of problems mostly associated with covid. Work has slowed down, social distancing, there was a cluster of positive cases, including changes that have affected just about everywhere in the United States at this time. Service will then startup approximately a year later, in the spring of 2022. These delays, of course, impact budget, but were still at about a 15 cost overrun overall. Next topic is twin peaks boulevard. As you also know, the San Francisco Police Department locked the gates to twin peaks early in shelter in place in order to reduce crowding at the top of the hill. Since the closure of the roadway, twin peaks park, a 67 acre park in the middle of San Francisco, has attracted far more users than likely ever before, attracting about at least 800 people every weekday and well over 1,000 on the weekend days, just on the portola side. That said, closing off the gates posed significant concerns. The only way to get up to the top of twin peaks would be to heft yourself up on your own steam, and so for a lot of san franciscans, thats not possible. So in order to restore the Lookout Point to all san franciscans while maintaining this spectacular 67 acre park in the middle of the city, we conducted a significant amount of Public Outreach for a couple of weeks, looking for guidance from san franciscans about how best to make the park work for everyone. We got a tremendous amount of feedback, over 7500 responses as of november 9, and the responses looked at several different alternatives as well as the reason why people would choose those alternatives, and the consensus pretty much across all demographic groups and geographies was a preference to keep the north gate open up to the parking lot while keeping the southern gate, the portola gate closed, in order to maximize the amount of parking thats available safely for people on foot and bicycles and other modes while allowing people to drive up to the lot to the shortest point, which is known as Christmas Tree lot. So we are going to be talking to the frisk Police Department, the p. U. C. , the reservoir up there, San Francisco travel, and the tour bus industry, about whether like, how to make this work, and so we will be coming back to you in december or january for a public hearing with our recommendations. Finally, i do want to note that there has been a lot of conversation happening about great highway, another street that was closed early in the pandemic and left closed, and perhaps the street that has resulted in attracting by far the greatest number of people to it, we have more people using great highway on foot and skate board and bike and wheelchairs than we had people using it in cars before covid. That said, the streets closure has resulted in a high level of complaints from residents of the outer sunset complaining about poor unsafe motorists behavior, speeding, ignoring stop signs on various streets in the outer sunset. So weve been working closely with supervisor mar and the District Four Office in order to address those concerns, implement traffic calming and some turn restrictions, make sure that folks know that there is plenty of capacity available on sunset boulevard, and well be working with the department of public works over the next four weeks to install a variety of traffic calming devices in the neighborhood in order to try to mitigate those problems, and again, well be coming back to this board as well as collaborating with other agencies in order to come to some recommendations about what the post covid configuration should be for great highway after weve made some attempts at getting the unintended negativeness cou negative consequences, and that is what i have for my directors report. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Directors, i know you have questions because we have a lot of topics that were dealing with. Obviously, theres a lot of bad news there in terms of the funding there. Directors, do we have specific questions for director tumlin at this time . No . Okay. With that, well move to Public Comment, opening it up to the public who may have questions or rather comments to director tumlins report. Madam clerk, is the line bridged . Operator you have one question remaining. First caller, please. Hi. Thanks for the time. My name is chris arvin, and im a San Francisco resident and transit rider. I want to comment specifically on the fare vision enforcement portion of the report. I want to say that we should not be resuming any type of Fare Enforcement during the pandemic. I dont think we should be using this time to handing out 100 or more fines when we have record unemployment and people might be needing to get to places when theyre getting back on their feet. The other thing is that will involve more interaction between people in close proximity in an indoor space like a bus, and i think thats just an increased risk during a time when we have covid, and we dont need to be doing that. Thats entirely my comment. Thank you. Thank you. Moderator, are there additional callers on the line . Operator you have one question remaining. Next speaker, please. Hi, yes, chair and directors, my name is kate richardson, and im the chair and director of legal inc. Since our founding in 2015, we have trained more than 1800 staff as San Franciscos leading front lines organizations. We have more than [inaudible] and weve seen the issues that are most problem at particular for lowincome housing and unhoused residents in our community. Wh now is not the time to cite people again. There are 50,000 san franciscans that live under the poverty line or under 1,000 a month, and for many, muni is their own option to get to necessary medical appointments, service appointments, or job interviews. Many people ride muni because they cant afford anything else. This criminalization is poverty is unacceptable, especially as we enter the winter of a pandemic. The sfmta has done so much work to create racial and social equity by [inaudible] below were a see commitmented to term city committed to justice and racial and economic justice. Thank you so much. Thank you, and i thank you for your comments. Well take those under advisement. Moderator, are there any additional commenters on the line . Operator you have one question remaining. Next speaker, please. Hi, i want to address the great highway issue, mainly in the context of supervisor mars letter on november 10. Yeah, my name is john elliott. Clerk thank you. Im a resident of the outer richmond, and i love the great highway, and for anyone who is really dorky and uses the straza app, i am the local resident of the great highway, which means ive spent a lot of time down there. Supervisor mars comment mentions opening the great highway back up to traffic specifically mentions the sfmta, and he says none of his efforts to engage the sfmta and this has proven successful, so i just want to draw to your attention the importance of addressing this because that space, as director tumlin said, it has become a transformative public space for the city during this time, and not just during an emergency. Its something that we need to think about permanently, and the problem is not the creation of the space, the problem is irresponsible and reckless people driving cars. That needs to be addressed, that is the problem, and thats all i have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moderator, are there any additional callers on the line . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Thank you, with that, well close Public Comments, and ill move back to directors. Director heminger. Thank you, madam chair, jeff, you mentioned another delay on the central subway, and as you know, its not the first one. Every time we set a deadline and miss it, we take another hit on our credibility. As with that, i wanted to ask you, how did we put this latest packet commission together, and are we as optimistic about the rest of the challenges still remaining . You mentioned covid quarantines, and we presumably may not have been through our last one of those on this project, so have we factored enough lithings like that in s we can meet . Thats a good question. Project scheduling is a Risk Assessment game, and i think in many cases, we have guessed wrong, and the vanness project is a prime example. On the vanness project, the engineers thought that the project utilities would be where they were actually mapped. They were not where they were mapped, and there was massive unexpected delays as the crews dug around in the dirt to figure out where it was. Weve had numerous understanding of what is nine meters underneath the surface . We assumed one type of dirt we were digging in. We were wrong. So for this round of prognostication about schedule, we are facing all sorts of risks before we would bring this project home. We keep being walloped by unexpected conditions like a quarantine or when a contractor cannot get the materials that are needed for their oneweek slot, when theyre expected to insert something, and no one else can get to work until that one subcontractor is able to get the supplies that they need. So i know it is not in my interest to overpromise and underdeliver. It is very much in my interest to tell the truth. That said, i also dont want to be extremely pessimistic and finish six weeks early orsix months early, so i so thats thats not really quite an answer, but thats the truth about how we schedule. Its a Risk Assessment game. Well, and i understand that if youre too loose with the schedule, if youre too pessimistic, then youre really not giving not getting to crack the wub whip with the contractor because hes saying, ive got three months. Right, and costs rise if you drag out too long. I think one thing that might be helpful for the board in the future because were talking about substantial completion next spring, and then, another spring until we can actually get in the train and ride it. And what happens in that period is probably a mystery to all of the people, but all the system testing and the experience that weve seen in the bay area, i know the b. A. R. T. Extension to san jose, where system testing ended up being the hardest thing we did. So i think it would be good for us to get a briefing and some insight on that when we get closer to that point because that will be the sole focus of our effort for the better part of the year. I agree, and one of the things that ive been trying to schedule is a tour of the central subway for yourself. You go into the ventilation system, to understand how Fire Suppression works, to understand how the switches work, and how minor defects can cause major cascading problems that then take a significant amount of time to fix. Many of those problems could still be under warranty but could still cause significant delay. If the city ever comes back to a covid level that would allow us to bring you down into the tunnel, i think it would be quite instructive to understand how all of the forces that need to come into perfect alignment in order to be able to deliver the project and run it. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. And i will say that director tumlin and i did a tour of the central subway about a year ago now [inaudible] so i understand from what we have knowledge of and whats real is very, very different. I guess the question, how are we comparing to other cities with similar projects with these sort of challenges around supply chain and covid . Are we managing it the same . Are we managing it better . From what we can tell, the impacts on our project are significantly less than other projects that were seeing around the city. And while the delays and cost overruns on central subway are significant and in some ways completely unacceptable, theyre also much less than average for megaprojects in the United States. Were currently running overbudget by 15 . That said, its a very expensive project, and a 15 cost overrun on a billiondollar project is a lot of money. One of the things that we were talking about at the board of supervisors earlier today is how do we institutionalize the Lessons Learned . So i keep hoping that the immediate crises will settle down enough for us to, for example, bring in people with deep experience in very successful complex large project delivery to do a complete audit of our capitol projects and construction edition and provide Technical Assistance and help for us to make sure that in every single one of the ways in which delay and added risk are factors into our procedures, that we have a way of fixing that, and that starts with that starts with the way we, you know, write r. F. P. S, our entire procurement and contracting processes are not designed to minimize risk, theyre designed to minimize up front cost rather than minimize risk or deliver best value project. Similarly, we have plenty of opportunities for having stronger project Management Procedures as well as procedures for involving, for example, our maintenance crews early on in project design and project construction delivery, so that maintenance thinking is built into the Capital Project itself so we dont have challenges then receiving the project once its done. So were we started that process particularly with our subway task force, and im really, really proud of the interdisciplinary effort thats being done on the twin peaks portion. We want to take that and effectively add that to all of our Capital Project, planning, construction, and receiving. Great. So im sure wed love to hear some early feedback about how that is going in december and some sort of discernible action items related to what youve learned. Director eaken. Thank you, chair borden, and thank you, director tumlin for the updates, especially on great highway, and i want to thank you and staff for working to address the behaviors you said were hearing about. And im glad it sounds like were not jumping to the conclusion that unsafe behaviors on certain streets leads to a conclusion to reopen great highway to vehicle traffic because i would envision if we did that, wed receive reports of unsafe driving behavior on great highway. I know a friend who was injured in a horrible accident with a very aggressive driver on the great highway not too long ago. I just wanted to acknowledge the effort that staff was taken, i think thats a really good direction to go, and i look forward to seeing that resolution of that work in december. Thank you. Thank you. Director lai . Yes, hi, thank you. Following up on director hemingers comments about the central subway construction, i want to make again encourage the staff to, you know, in light of the delays, to continue to look at ways where we can minimize the onstree n encroachment so that during this extended delay, we can, as much as possible, reopen part of the rightofway for businesses and activity to occur. And i know that staff has worked hard in trying to maximize and optimize that, but lets make extra effort to see if theres anything else we can do to minimize that impact to the community. And then, the other thing i wanted to ask is in the next budget update, which i think is probably going to be presented in the next hearing yes. If staff could be prepared to speak to how fares will have an impact on our budget, whether we under the scenario that if we were to consider extending the moratorium on not enforcing fees versus enforcing fares, excuse me, what that would look like, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Yes, that will absolutely be included. Not enforcing fares would result in Significant Service cuts beyond what we would have to already cut, and we can detail that out on december 1. Thank you. I have a question related to that. How are we enforcing that on the parking side . I feel like we get a lot of complaints, and maybe this is a little offtopic, but a lot of people feel like we arent enforcing parking violations, and i feel like maybe at the next meeting, you can talk about that enforcement and ramp that up just like what were doing on the transit side because people are getting annoyed with people overparking in neighborhoods and other things thats a consequence of the leniency that weve shown, that would be great. So seeing no other comments from directors, lets move onto our next item. Clerk item eight, Citizens Advisory Council report. And i understand that neal is here, and hell give us his report. Thats correct. Thank you, chair borden. Hello. Sorry. Slightly just unprepared here. Just pulling it up. So good afternoon, directors. Hope youre all doing well on this rainy tuesday afternoon. Earlier this month, the c. A. C. Heard from the black and African American afinishity gr about hiring employees and disciplinary actions. We also received a presentation on the Racial Equity action plan, which is on todays agenda for your meeting today. So the c. A. C. Passed the following motion as a result of our discussion. The sfmta c. A. C. Encouraged the sfmta board to direct staff to resolve clear issues in hiring and inequity and discipline. [inaudible] the latinx afinity group, and it will require everyone to Work Together and support one another, and seeing this mutual support from the afinity groups banding together is really something that ought to be encouraged, and its an encouraging trend. So on another subject, i look forward to engaging with the agency in the outreach and serving to historically underserved neighborhoods, including the neighborhood that i live in, the ingleside. It will be surely a Good Opportunity for the agency to gather some valuable feedback about how folks are getting around the whole city and what it is that historically underserved neighborhoods need right now in terms of transportation. And i appreciated hearing, during the last item, from the two Public Commenters who spoke out against resuming fare collection. I share those views, but i absolutely recognize the varying factors at play here, so i will be requesting a presentation on fare collection so that the i can hopefully present the view of the entire c. A. C. On that important matter. So that concludes my report today. Unless theres any questions or comments, i will wish you a good rest of your meeting. Thank you for that, mr. Ballard. Directors, are there any comments for mr. Ballard . Seeing none, i will move into Public Comment. Moderator, are there commenters on the line whod like to speak on the Citizens Advisory Council report . Operator you have three questions remaining. Wonderful. Our first speaker, please. Hi. Im calling as a resident of soma directly impacted by the Fourth Street subway. I live on Fourth Street, and im i wanted to address some of the traffic impacts that have been going on here, and while we havent we dont have the luck a luck of a supervisor advocating for us, like gordon mar and the great highway, the street traffic impacts right between brannan and bryant and those streets have been known by the sfmta since the project started, and we havent seen any progress or any work to address those. The biggest issues right now are zoe street having increased traffic and being too narrow for what it is. Its designated as three lanes, two lanes of traffic, which are two way, one lane of parking, and it is only 21feet wide. This often results on cars and trucks going up on residential sidewalks to avoid other cars. Another issue is coming out right at fourth and bryant clerk excuse me. Your item is an item before the board which is a citizens advisory report, and it sounds like you have general Public Comment. Oh, im sorry. The director had talked about the sfmta, the Fourth Street project, so thats what i had tagged in for. I see that. I mean, well let you complete your comments, but just so you know, that was item number seven, and were on item number eight, but well let you finish your comments. My bad. Thats when i pressed the button, so i apologize for that. Yeah. Yeah, the other big issue is right when the exit tunnel, i believe its fourth and bryant, we constantly get illegal left turns from the righthand lane crossing over the tracks and in through the left lane, which living here living in the building on Fourth Street, you know, its kind of scary sometimes getting hit by cars suddenly shooting in front of you. It would be great if that it would be great to get enforcement there, so thank you. Thank you. Moderator, are there any additional callers on the line . Operator you have three questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Next speaker . Hello . I hear somebody on the phone. Im not sure if youre there. Maybe we can move onto the next speaker, caller . I dont know how the queue works. Operator you have two questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Hi. Can you hear me . Yes. Okay, great. Yeah, i actually want to address equity issues, particularly the towing of vehicles and the clerk im sorry for the interruption. May i get your name, please . Oh, im sorry. I am sloane kelly from the coalition on homelessness, yeah. So these equity issues are really important . I know theres and i ride the bus a lot, so i see people getting on and not paying, and them looking very fearful that somebodys going to figure this out because they just dont have the money to be able to pay, and, yeah, they need to get to their doctors appointments or get to work. So im im hoping that youll consider ending the the fare for people that are really poverty stricken. And also regarding towing of vehicles, i have gone out and spoken to many people who are living in their vehicles or who need their vehicle to be able to drive to work every day, sometimes for many miles, and if those vehicles are towed, they have such little money that they typically cannot get their vehicle back. So if theyre living in it, then theyre on the street. If they need it for work, they may lose their job or, you know, have to figure out another job which would prevent them from being on time. Okay. So thank you. Thank you. Im finished, mmhmm. Thank you very much. Is there another next caller . Operator you have one question remaining. Next speaker, please. Can you hear me now . Yes, we can, mr. Pilpell. I am. Im right here, and im not on the bus, but never mind. Just on one point that neal raced at the end. Raised at the end, there is a presentation on Fare Enforcement as a c. A. C. Subcommittee, so perhaps they will make observations or a recommendation that will then go to a full c. A. C. , and you may have that infobefore you ie future. So the comments that i heard earlier today about Fare Enforcement and equity and all of that, perhaps the c. A. C. Can weighin on all of that. Thanks very much. Thank you, mr. Pilpell. Moderator, are there any additional callers on the line . Operator you have one question remaining. Next speaker, please. Hi. Its steven miller. Just quickly, on Fare Enforcement, wanted to say that, one, as a [inaudible] bring it back, and two, i pulled the data through public records request, and the lines that actually have the most tickets for riders are the actually higher income express lines, such as the 30 express, the 38 geary, 38r, so its not necessarily that people are being disproportionately targeted. I do support the addition of new fare initiatives, though, such as waiving p. I. P. Tickets for lifeline people who sign up for lifeline or for any of the muni programs. And if we wanted to extend free muni for homeless and youth, that would be or all homeless and youth, that would be good, but that was eliminated in the last budget. That would have been one of the ways to address this, but unfortunately, thats not going to happen. Thank you. Is that all your comments . Yeah, thats all on this item. Okay. Thank you. Moderator, are there any additional commenters on the line . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Okay. So with that, we will will close Public Comment and move onto our next item. Clerk that puts us on item number nine, Public Comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on matters within the boards jurisdiction but not on todays agenda. If the moderator could please open the line for general Public Comment. Yeah, and thats a reminder that its anything thats relevant to this board but not having a hearing on it today. Operator you have five questions remaining. Wonderful. First speaker, please. Hello, can you hear me . Yes, we can. Hi. So i meant to speak on agenda nine, but i still want to give Public Comment, so hello, chair and directors. My name is [inaudible] and im with the Community Housing partnership, and the reason that the sfmta is issuing surveys and citations really is deeply troubling me. As more and more san franciscans are falling into poverty due to the pandemic and the recession, this is really the worst time to cite people again. Many people ride muni without paying a fare simply because they cannot afford it, and for most of those people, muni is the only way they can get to where they need to go, to medical appointments, appointments with social service providers, and to get to work or school. So the sfmta has done so much important work with [inaudible] citations during the shelter in place period, and im really grateful for these bold steps. And im here to say today, on behalf of the Community Housing partnership residents, to ask you to build on these actions and to do the following four things. Firstly, please extent the moratorium on fare citations until the pandemic has ended. Now is not the time to reinstate these tickets and to criminalize people for being poor and who are simply struggling. Second, make the access path available to san franciscans in poverty who live in Supportive Housing. These folks are just getting back on their feet, so these passes will ensure that theyre movi staying shelters and moving forward in their lives [inaudible] and finally, we hope that sfmta makes muni free for people who live below the poverty line and on less than 1,000 a month. If we are a city committed to transit justice as well as racial and economic justice, we will make this commitment to our most vulnerable residents. Thank you. I have no further comments. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 12 questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Hello. Hello. My name is richard rothman, and im calling about fulton street again. On october 20, a 75yearold lady crossing fulton street in the crosswalk was hit by a car, and i dont know why the director didnt report that. She had to go to the hospital. I dont think it was too serious, but still, why is is m. T. A. Going to do anything about it . And a couple of years ago, another 75yearold lady was hit near the Senior Center and, as such, sfmta did nothing about it, and cars just speed along fulton street, and that idea of slowing down on geary, where the seniors live to from 30 to 25 miles per hour, well, i live right near the Senior Center on fulton street where they put that lower speed limit, and i can tell you that cars do not speed down. You need to set a speed limit of 25 miles an hour or 20 miles an hour. Just do it, and let the state sue the city or let the city sue the state. And also, i want to talk about stop signs. I live near 38 and balboa, which is a dangerous intersection in a commercial district, and i dont know why staff wont put a stop sign in. They put stop signs in on 28 and balboa, and all along ocean avenue where theres no traffic, yet where theres traffic and a dangerous intersection, i its so dangerous, i wont even drive going north on 38. I have to go on cabrillo, which now is a slow street to get up to geary. Maybe somebody can explain why theyre not taking any action. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 14 questions remaining. Hello. My name is mark gruberg. Im a San Francisco taxi driver, drive for green cab. I hold a proposition k medallion, and im a board member of the San Francisco taxi workers alliance, and i want to comment on a new rule, which is due to go into effect on december 1, which will ban k medallions from picking up at s. F. O. , and this is in addition to a ban that went into effect the year before, banning t medallions and restricting k medallions. Right now, the only ones that will be able to pick up at s. F. O. Are p medallions, the ones that purchased their medalians. All other medallions will be prohibited from picking up at s. F. O. First, i want to point out that this is not a legal action. The San Francisco transportation code is very specific. It says the director of transportation can restrict pick ups as s. F. O. For the purpose of alleviating congestion. Congestion is not a problem at s. F. O. The actual reason given for this in the memo that the board received is that the ban is for the purpose of supporting the purchased medallion holders, and thats not the the transportation code, and its only going to make things worse. Those cabs will spend more time at the airport. Other drivers will stop driving. Itll be worse service in the city, and really, we have a broken medallion system, and thats what needs to be fixed. So [inaudible] not the answer. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Gruberg. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 16 questions remaining. Hello. Hayden miller, calling you guys again about how unsafe the buses are right now. I received the report or the letter asking the San Francisco Health Department to lower the distancing to 3 feet, and in there, it sites that trimet in oregon are operating at 3 feet, they only have 19 people, opposed to the 26 people that you proposed to have once the distancing goes into effect. I dont know if it already has been. I mean, in practice, it has been, but i dont know what the actual rules are right now because its so unclear. Trimet is also providing masks and sanitizer to all their patrons, so thats also something muni is not doing. In terms of ambassadors and proof of payment, theyre still on their phones. I sent you some videos and pictures of ambassadors parked in red zones, on their phones. One was yelling at a lady to open the window the other day when it was raining when they were not enforcing the fares, and theyre not enforcing the of cour masks. Theyre just yelling at us when its raining. The way that muni is enforcing safety is by making less space. Theres not enough service. Every meeting, i hear oh, were working on bringing more trolley lines back, were working on more l. R. T. , but in practice, no Additional Service is getting out there, and its ridiculous. Theres so many signs out there, thank you for getting on the electronic screens that say bus full, but now, every bus says bus full, driving around with that sign. Were leaving people at the curb, the essential workers, and its really disturbing. We need a service increase as soon as possible. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 14 questions remaining. Next speaker. Hello, chair and directors. My name is wesley saber, and i am the policy manager for glide. At glide, we have worked for decades to break cycles of poverty and marginalization for lowincome san franciscans, and as such, addressing issues of inequity is crucial for glides community. Now sfmta has taken some bold steps during the covid19 pandemi think to address racial inequity, and your leadership is to be commended. This includes placing a moratorium on Public Safety tomes, but wed like to see more. However, if this body is truly working towards doing its part to cement real equity in San Francisco, already a number of things that must be addressed. With the news that the sfmta resume issuing fare citations by the end of the year, this has raised significant concerns from our clients and staff at glide. We know people [inaudible] not by punishment, with more and more san franciscans experiencing the economic conkwebss of the pandemic acon of the pandemic and theyre arriving to access critical programs such as our free meals and health care. We cannot allow transit barriers or associated punitive consequences to be a deterrent for our most vulnerable San Franciscos to meet their basic san franciscans to meet their basic needs. We cannot criminalize people for their poverty. So in this, id like you to take further action please. Extend the moratorium in place until the shelter is lifted. If someone signs up for an access pass or muni lifeline pass, clearly avoid any fare tickets thank you. Im sorry, but everyone gets the same amount of time, so i must cut you off. Appreciate it. Thank you. But i hope you have submitted that letter, and i think we will definitely be talking about this soon. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Next speaker . Good afternoon. I wanted to call in today to voice my support for waiving the downtown moratorium on construction. As many people were you can at thatting about, were in the middle of an economic crisis, and Building Back will take time once the pandemic end. We should allow the construction allowing in the downtown corridor. I urge the sfmta to consider waiving this moratorium. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 12 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hi. My name is eric arguello, and im the Community Engagement manager with glide, and we want to address the 27 bryant thats used by many seniors, lowincome residents, lowincome workers, and people with glide. This is a lowincome transportation, and far moneweo restore the 27 and to make it a high priority. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Arguello. Next speakertious please. Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Hi, this is joe madical. Im with teamsters local 665. Im here today, speaking on behalf of our principal officer, tony dilorio, whos unable to end at that. Id like to reiterate what was sent in a letter by mr. Diloria to mr. Tumlin regarding the extension of the shared scooter program. We are asking that the expansion of the program be postponed until the completion of the november 30 hearing that was scheduled by supervisor safai, and also until a review of the program is fully explored by members of the board of supervisors. Thats all i have. Thank you for your time, and thank you very much for your consideration of our position. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Next speaker . Yes. This is David Elliott louis with the tenderloin peoples congress. Im a long time tenderloin resident, and ive been severely impacted by the loss of both the muni 27 and muni 31 bus lines. Those are the only two lines that go through the tenderloin, and weve lost them both. Its a severe impact. The 27 is especially critical to getting up the hill to st. Francis hospital at hyde and california. Weve lot the ability to get there, from shopping at trader joes to access to Hardware Stores up there. Its an unfair loss, and i think it seems to be a problem of neighborhood inequity. Muni did resotore the 45, whic serves Pacific Heights and nob hill. Ive heard discusses about how you excuses about how you dont have the buses or the drivers because you dont have lines running, but you still manage to restore 45. Why not 27 . This seems really unfair to the tenderloin residents. Everyone is severely impacted. Theres nobody supporting this continuing loss of service, so i hope youll look at that, as well as i hope youll restore the subway as soon as possible. I dont understand why you restarted it in august and then stopped the subway again because of relays, relays that were working just fine the prior year. I wonder if weve been told the entire story about the subway. I look forward to hearing more about that. David elliott louis, tenderloin peoples congress. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Louis. Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Yes, good afternoon. This is barry toronto. I first want to welcome Christine Silva to the job. She has some very big shoes to fill, and im hoping that roberta will give her the support she needs so she can do a fast learning curve, to welcome. I also want to give a shoutout again to philip for creating the cap stand, and i want to thank him again because its where we can get a lot of our business. The next thing, about prop k that mark gruberg was talking about. I looked at the statistics, and the statistics do not indicate this was a smart move. The statistics do not show that therell be an increase in income. The drivers that were driving ks will just switch to ps, and then, youll have more ps, and the wait will be long. The statistics will not bear that out. Short fares are at least a third of the fares leaving the airport, and two, the t. N. C. S have increased tremendously from july to september. It increased 28,000 drop offs and pick ups at the airport, from 197,000 to 1 from 97,000 to 125,000 [inaudible] so i want to let you know that this is a very, very stupid move because the goal youre trying to do is not going to happen. The waits are already gone for the ps pcab any way when i switched to a pcab, so i beg you, reexamine the numbers and look at this again before you put this into effect, please. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 13 questions remaining. Hello, chair and directors. My names curtis wu, and were with [inaudible] and we are a nonprofit that helps individuals apply to the housing lottery. A lot of people when we heard about the news that fare revision may resume, a lot of people were worried. To receive a 125 fare evasion citation is a humiliating experience. Were grateful for bold steps, but we are here today to ask you to build on these actions and do important things. One, extend the moratorium on fare evasion citations until the shelter in place has ended. Now is not the time to reinstate these tickets when so many people are struggling. Two, make the access pass available to folks who are homeless and in Supportive Housing. The access pass will help ensure that they stay housed and moving forward in their lives by making it easier for them to get to where they need to go. If someone signs up for an access pass or muni, clear any fare evasion ticket that they receive, and third, we hope that the sfmta makes muni for all people who live below the poverty line or less than 1,000 a month. If we are as a city committed to racial and equitable justice, we will make this affordable for all residents. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 12 questions remaining. Next speaker. Hi. My name is robin cutner. Hi. Hi. Id like to thank director tumlin for making a report on sfmta policies. During his tenure, he has repeatedly assured [inaudible] and block crosswalks, be they marked or unmarked. California vehicle code contains clear language about the illegality of these actions. There are thousands of reports you can find in 311s records telling me information. If approximate a p. C. O. Comes out and decides that a pedestrian can squeeze by a cars trunk thats sticking out across the sidewalk, the p. C. O. Will not issue a citation. Meanwhile, my significant other cannot crutch his way pass the car, so he crutches out into the street and prays that he will not be hit by a car until he gets on the sidewalk. This discretion on parking violations creates hostile pedestrian environments and is incredibly ablist. Meanwhile, m. T. A. Budgets continue to be flushed. I implore your agency to enforce sidewalk parking violations. It will be a gold mine that you cannot believe. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have 11 questions remaining. Next speaker . Hi. My name is javier, and im a district nine resident, and id like to comment on the idea and that the sfmtas floating around resuming fare citations for transit, and i think that thats completely unacceptable. Just because, like the transportation in San Francisco is becoming less and less for lowincome and homeless folks, but that doesnt make it less important. They have to get to the doctor, they have to get their kids to school, they have to use other social services, and the fees and the fares keep going up, and the punishment for evading the fares keeping going up and might be coming back, but were not thinking creatively on how to make transit more accessible. We need to stop treating our citys residents as disgruntled customers because were not. Were your constituents, and we deserve a liveable Transit System even if were not rich. San francisco needs to own up to the fact that currently its Transit System is a death trap for lowincome residents. We need to stop the criminalization of our lowincome riders, and like its been said already and i would like to echo the folks that have already been on this call, that we need to extend the moratorium on on fair evasion tickets, we need to make the access pass accessible for folks in supportsive housing Supportive Housing when they sign up and to eventually make muni accessible for all and especially for those below the poverty line. So thank you very much, and have a good afternoon. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Operator you have ten questions remaining. Hello . My name is [inaudible] im with the San Francisco taxi workers alliance, and were an organization that represents drivers and taxi drivers in San Francisco, p me dollidalli holders, k medallion holders, and nonmedallion holders. Im here to talk about the p medallion holders at the airport, but i want to ask you about whats your plan to help the medallion holders. This is not going to help them. As of now, most medallion holders have an outstanding loan at the credit union, and the credit union is demanding payments for this loan. The armt, you know, if the airport, you know, if there are 40 cabs at the airport with no demand, it is a long, long wait. How do you think youre going to help 400 purchase medallion holders with this inadequate plan, which is so insufficient and is a slap in the face to these people who bought their medallion in good faith. This is a terrible time for muni, and a terrible time for transportation and the city budget, but you owe it to them to come up with a plan thats going to relieve them of their debt which is strangling them. When they lose their home, they lose the 12,000, 15,000, 25,000 they put down. Some of them have their houses tied to this, and i think you have an ethical duty to return the money you made off this program. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Operator you have nine questions remaining. My name is herbert winer, and i wish to convey some concern about the lack of outreach on the part of muni management. There are calls to save mouny and the extended merced muni and the extended merced line, which im a rider of, and there are requests to meet them, and they this had clined to do and they had declined to do so. You cannot refuse to meet with one group over another. I think mr. Tumlin has a responsibility despite the heavy duty he has with the pandemic to meet with concerned groups. So these are my concerns, plus, the closed captioning is not working on the sfgovtv channel. Thank you. Thank. Next caller, please. You have eight questions remaining. Yes, i am marge gerry. I am a resident. Two things. Bring back the 27. Agree with the other two callers, absolutely. By the way, how about the folsom and the number 47, all buses that are heading out from downtown going to 15th are not running. I have to walk the entire time. The number 8 goes on the free wait at sixth street or fifth street. They are getting their transportation, but all of us who need the 27, the folsom, 47, we are not getting anything. Lastly, this might not be your category. The subway problem. The portal that is on Fourth Street between harrison and bryan is full of graffiti. I have been complaining about this for a while. You might say just call central subway. That is not working. We live in a neighborhood here. We have to walk around and look at that disgusting portal of the graffiti now getting worse and worse. Nobody is cleaning it or taking care of it. No one is taking care of any of it. You put the portal down for the central subway underground and you have this graffiti accumulating and no one is taking care of it. 27 bring it back. Bring the folsom, the 47. Make sure you access people that go out of town going away from downtown and would you please get busy or cleaning the pore p. Give those bus drivers a raise. They are doing an incredible job. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. You have seven questions remaining. Next speaker. Hi, i am mohammed. I want to bring up some concerning information about scooters. I have heard that permit issued is being transferred without a hearing or anything. They have demonstrated they do not follow the rules. It is bad policy for the m. T. A. To reward bad behavior like this. I just have to ask that the m. T. A. Board of directors look into the transfer and bring it to the publics attention. You have six questions remaining. How is it going . I am calling in regards to the great walkway. I urge the m. T. A. To get this right according to supervisor mars office. They are taking heat and families and friends use the great highway on a regular basis. Just tired of the back and forth between public agencies during the Public Health crisis. This should be a slamdunk, but it turned into a quagmire. Lets get this right. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have five questions remaining. Good afternoon. I am cynthia. I am with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. It is an organization that supports renters in city and through the clinic we serve thousands every year half of which are extremely low income. More and more of San Francisco is falling into this as a result of covid19 and the economic recession. Now is not the time to site people again. We are very concerned to hear that s. F. M. T. A. May resume issuing citations by the end of the year. For the 50,000 who live below the poverty line or under 1,000 per month, muni is the way to get around here. I am very proud of the city for that. When i say like get around i mean medical appointment, social service, job interviews. The 50 a month is unaffordable for these folks. Not being able to pay the fair shouldnt be criminalized. People have to get to appointments, and to get to this is just humiliating. I am here today to ask the chair and directors to do four things. First, extend the moratorium on the fare citations until this is ended. Second make the access path available to those in poverty who live in Supportive Housing especially for those just getting back on their feet after experiencing homelessness. Third, if someone signs up for an access pass, clear and void any fare evasion tickets from the past. Last, we hope sf will make it free for those below the poverty line. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have five questions remaining. Good afternoon. This is senior disability action. I am here to comment on the 27 line. Back in september 25th m. T. A. Approached us and did a presentation about a revised 27 line to hopefully be implemented soon. This was a proposal the same as proposed before the pandemic. This was proposal for a cost saving way to bring back the line. That was september 25th. Since then we are getting a number of complaints from members and also support individuals of the necessary work, senior and disability action. Basically wondering when the 27 comes in. If the m. T. A. Is really into transit equity, it is time to bring that in. Just too many people with disabilities and seniors are not getting the transportation. Yes, they can go to access card, but that costs 2. 50. Right now during this pandemic event, they cant afford that. If you believe in transit equity, bring back the 27. Then we can work on what exact exactly. That new plan doesnt quite meet all of the categories of first one. We can work with you to make that more affordable and accessible for everybody. One more thing. Waive enforcement. I dont think this is the time to do Fare Enforcement during this time. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. Good afternoon, directors. I am with the San Francisco transit riders. I want to support comments for returning the 27 and 31 to service. I understand muni is facing severe constraints and has to make difficult decisions. 27 and 31 are key routes that serve low income riders and seniors and disabled. Frees free up resources. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. Thank you. For the record i am she and her. As i talk about muni today. First of all, we have to keep it on the front burner especially this relatively recently started program clipper start. One way to make fares more affordable is to get clipper cards through clipper start to pay half fare on the single trips. The programming is there. It is no good unless it gets used. It is a safe registered way to pay the fare. We got to get away from scratchoff tickets. People lose them and you keep the money. It is not a fairway. Every product should have away for redress if compromised. As far as the subway, we have to work on getting it open because in new york city they can fix the subway and run the subway at the same time. Until recently they ran it 24 7. Only closing it now for covid related cleaning between 1 00 a. M. And 5 00 a. M. We have to learn from larger systems, especially systems legendary such as new york city subway and Grand Central terminal where they take things to the next level because a world class city such as San Francisco deserves world class transportation that is safe affordable and timely. Thank you. Thank you. First, great range of Public Comments today. This is why Public Comment is so important. Please hear it all. Is that everything. Cta. Nice try. Very good. I made comments earlier at the fscta board. I hope staff heard me. Last friday the Golden Gate Bridge district made a tough decision to begin layoffs there. That can happen here, too. Bearing that in mind. Beep sides finances and the subway we need real Public Engagement on the future of transit in the city. There are a range of views on that. We should start having meaningful online town halls on that. Speaking of town halls or virtual open houses, i participated in the two in the last two weeks on better market street. Unfortunately, i found many of the comments regarding the current proposed redesign to be overly angry, combative and entitled. That bugged me. I hope people try to engage better on policy issues here without resorting to those approaches. The agenda language on page 2 of todays m. T. A. Board agenda in the middle still refers to roberta boomer. That text should be updated. Just to conclude on two points. I support the efforts to restore service on the 27 bryant and muni routes not operating now. I wonder out loud what impacts a real title six analysis would show on the muni routes that are not operating as to disproportionate impact. I will leave it at that. Thanks. Next speaker, please. You have three questions remaining. Hello, i am kim diamonds, at thenant of the tenderloin. I work with ihs as a mentor for the disabled. Not being in work is causing hardship. I am disabled. The 27 took me not only to the Office One Day each week, to the only branch of the bank that is available to me and shopping places. The fact there is no 27 i know for a fact there are people stuck inside getting sicker and sicker because they are not having the transportation they need to get to the doctors appointment. I gave up physical therapy appointments because of cost, distance, unavailability of the transit from the tenderloin. It is no secret the inequality of the people being treated in the tenderloin for many reasons that i do not have time to go over. Anyway. I am the person who lives this. I am not calling to try to tell you what to do. I simply want to address you on your level of compassion and on the level of humanity that we do count here. We deserve as much equity as the people on the other side of town who have vehicles to get themselves around even if it is not recommendedded. We have nothing. We have people whose health is deteriorating. Thank you for your time. Thank you for calling. Next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Next speaker. Hello. Can you hear me . Yes. Great. I am laura. Senior citizen with a disability. I rely on the 27 bus every day. Many Senior Citizens and people with disabilities rely on the 27 to go to the saint frantis hospital, to get groceries. I also live on a hill. I feel that the tenderloin has the second highest density of seniors and people with disabilities in San Francisco. Also, people that dont have cars and cant afford a car or taxi rely on the bus solely. It is a real disadvantage to not have the bus. I am pretty serious right now pretty furious because i rely on the bus and so does so many people who are residents in the tenderloin. I demand and all of my fellow residents demand equitable distribution of buses in the tenderloin. Bring back the 27 now. I implore you to do this. Thank you. You have one question remaining. I am with the Lawyers Committee for civil right of the San Francisco bay area. We represent clients low income or experiencing homelessness. Many are plagued by fines and fees like fare evasions that may be enforced by the s. F. M. T. A. I am here for Public Comment. 25 of the san franciscans filed for unemployment, 50,000 work below the poverty line, under 1,000 per month is not the time to site a 125 citations for fare evasion when most people cannot even pay the fare in the first place. For those living on 1,000 per month muni is the only option to get to the medical and social service pointments or job interviews. These residents are unable to afford a lifeline pass at 49 per month. I think we also have to take a look at the effectiveness of the fare Evasion Program itself. What i have been hearing is the revenue is needed to reduce service cuts, but more than half of the estimated 50,000 tickets each year go unpaid. In fiscal year 201718 they cited almost 50,000 for fines only 22,000 of those tickets were paid, netting muni 2. 58 million for the fare Evasion Program that costs 6 million per year. I say that there is so much innovation in San Francisco. So many more effective ways to improve quality of service of s. F. M. T. A. And provide equitable transit for San Francisco residents. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have zero questions remaining. Thank you. With that we will close our general Public Comment and move to our consent calendar. Thank you, directors. Before i announce the items i would like to repeat the phone number for members of the public to comment. 888 8086929. Access code 9961164. Please if you wish to address the period on an item, when it is called please press 10 and ask for the phone line to be opened to be added to the queue. Madam chair, the concept calendar items are routine and voted on by a single vote unless a member of the board or public wishes to consider the items separately. Because we are any a Virtual Meeting i will read all at once. If a member of the public wishes to address the matters please identify fine which item they are speaking to. Item 10. 1. Requesting the controller against the Funds Available or will be available in payment to the claims. That they mention now. 25,000. Chang for 30,000. Rodriguez for 7,200,500. Item 10. 2. Making Environmental Review findings approving traffic modifications. Item 10. 3. Authorizing the directors to execute contract 202048 with jacobs engineers. 202049 with stv. 202050 with wsp to supervise special Consulting Services to support transit staff in procurement, rehabilitation and maintenance of transit vehicles for a total not to exceed 5 million for each contract and maximum term of five years with options to extend. 10. 4. Approving contract number 202014. As needed Intelligent Transportation systems and Technology Engineering services not to exceed 4 million and contract 202015fta Small Business enterprise set aside Transportation Systems and related Technology Engineering not to 1 million. Each contract with the corporation for a term of five years with options to extend the contract. 10. 5. Approving contract 2020eleven the corporation. 202012. 202013 for as needed Engineering Services for amount not to exceed 1. 5 million for each contract and three years with options to extend the contracts. Item 10. 6. Establishing a meeting schedule for 2021 for the sfnta board of directors and the policy and governance committee. That concludes the items on the concept calendar. Great. I know that we are in covid and the way we are doing this. We will take comments on all items under Public Comment for this item. I see director heminger has a question on 10. 1. Put that out there in case it has to do with anything the public might be interested in. Thank you. Probably not. It is a question really to the city attorney. I do have a question on one of these settlements. I know we have another settlement set up for closed session later. I wonder if we can bump this down to there and do them together . Are you saying sever a particular item . Yes, item b as in boy. City attorney would you respond. I am sorry. I was having trouble with my microphone. Deputy city attorney. We need to notice closed session items on the calendar for closed session. If you would like to hear one of the consent calendar items, the appropriate process would be to ask that it be calendared on closed session for your decembe. That being the case, i dont think it is important enough. I can pursue the matter otherwise. I will withdraw the question. Thank you. Out of curiosity is there a time sensitivity on that matter that if director heminger changed his mind it would matter . Usually there is not a time sensitivity. I am not sure which item. Letter p under 10. 1. Sometimes he would letter b. It is a window of time. Yes, it would be fine to do that on december 1st if there is interest. It sounds like you are okay. If any other directors have a different feeling, please weigh in. Otherwise we will move to Public Comment on the consent calender. Moderator please open the lines for Public Comment on condition sept calendar. For those watching the concept calendar is all items preceded by 10 point 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sixty the agenda. The 10pointpone 6 will beacon tested. You have three questions remaining. First caller. Can you hear me now . Yes, we can. I do have comments on 10. 6. I have comments on 10. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I will do it in two minutes. For 10. 2. I wanted to say thank you and i appreciate and like the additional explanation. There is an additional line there explaining each proposed traffic modification. That is a real small but process improvement and i like that. On 10. 3, 4, 5. The as needed contracts. For 10. 3, the tables of contents arent working. They say bookmark not defined. On pages 10, 85, 159 of the staff report. It is not the worst crisis in the world. In the future it would be nice if those were checked 10. 4 and 5 contracts are very readable. In all of the proposed contracts i see names of past m. T. A. Employees on the consultant teams. I think there should be a policy on this as to whether someone can leave the m. T. A. At a certain salary level under whatever circumstances then come back at a much higher fully burdened rate as consultant. It seems problematic. This is all expensive outside help. If this work is needed we should bring that work in house. That is best for the public in the long run. Finally, on 10. 3, 4, 5. Some individuals on several teams have different fully burdened rates depending on the prime. It would be nice if someone could reconcile that. On 10. 6, i would amend the proposed resolution just to attach the proposed meeting schedule so it becomes an attachment to the resolution and is not lost in the sands of time. Those are my comments. Thank you. Next caller. You have two questions remaining. Hi, i am marry mcguire, cabdriver. I wanted to address the new policy that doesnt allow the prop k cabs at the airport. I got cut off on the Public Comment. Can i talk about this now . Absolutely. We have a couple callers. Go ahead. So the justification for this by saying more privileges are needed to get to the purchase medallions to stop foreclosures. It is time to pays facts. There is not enough business at the airport to salvage this mess. If you believe that is going to change any time soon, you are in denial. I dont know whether the m. T. A. Or city cares about the individuals involved or only concerned with the credit union lawsuit. This covid disaster is not going away and not going to be back to what it used to be for a long time. The solution to offer Financial Aid to one group at expense of another, that is not a solution. That is a recipe for total disaster for the industry. Cabdrivers deserve equal privileges. One colleague got a call from the taxi company they said pick up the medallion. They are no driver. The pool is shrinking with loss of the access to the airport. How many situations like this are taking place . What are your plans for these meddamonssure medallions surrounded to the m. T. A. Why isnt this Information Available . Lets see transparency. Lives are ruined and this attempt at correcting that is only ruining more lives and the entire taxi industry of San Francisco. Thank you for letting me speak. Next speaker, please. You have one question remai remaining. Hello. Steven miller. On 10. 2. I want to echo the comments. It is helpful to have the description. I want to say for item a on that i thought that daylighting and pedestrian visibility improvements that small one intersection could be approved through the traffic engineer. If not it should be. Ridiculous to come before the board when people are dying on the streets. Then on 10. 6. I wanted to say that we should put these dates on the buses. It is great so people who might not have Internet Access can see when the board meetings are. Hopefully they will be back in person next year and they can come attend in person. It also makes the meetings more visible. That would be something i would support. If thank you. Next speaker. If you are not speaking, do your best to mute yourself because often times people do things they dont realize we can hear them. If you are not talking please mute yourself if you are on the call line. Any additional callers . You have zero questions remaining. With that we will close Public Comment. Directors any additional comments or questions from staff related to items on the concept calendar, i look forward to a motion. We have members of staff available to answer questions. So moved. Second. Secretary can you please call the roll. Chair borden. Aye. Director brinkman. Aye. Vice cherrygan. Aye. Director heminger. Aye. Absent i will note for this record she has stepped away. The consent calendar approved 50. That places you on item 11 of the regular calendar. Presentation and discussion regarding th the s. F. M. T. A. Racl action plan. This is something we have been asking for. It is one of the number one issues we talked about in this board is working on the culture of the agency and on the Racial Equity issues here. We wore last year when the mayor got the ombudsman here we were keen to implement. We will hear about the status of the implementation of the report when we were hiring jeff it was top priority. Someone very much committed to real action on those issues. Not Just Lip Service but action brought to the front. We have a long history of a lot of things to work through. I am excited to see this coming forth. Welcome our deputy chief of staff to present the plan and i look forward to hearing from the various groups, particularly black africanamerican affinity group. I will turn it over to the team. The Transportation Industry has a very long history in destroying black wealth. Throughout the 20th century transportation projects highway and transit projects got extra points for removing blight. It was defined as black ownership. Similarly, the s. F. M. T. A. Has a very long and well documented history of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination for and guest our own work force. They problems continue todays. When i first arrived, the Muni Reliability Working Group had completed its work and offered a scathing assessment and clear road map for moving forward dealing with the muni reliability. The s. F. M. T. A. Had completed the work just less than a year before i arrived along with a scathing assessment and long list of recommendations of work we need to do as agency to begin to dismantle Structural Racism. We have made some accomplishments but a huge amount of work remains to be done. This work is more important now than ever. Both because it is right and necessary but also because of the economic devastation of covid, it requires that we tap into the creativity and entrepreneurism, talent and lived experience of every Single Member of our staff. We have a huge amount of work to do and Everyone Needs to feel respected in that work. Today we have two interrelated and important discussion items. 11, the Racial Equity action plan. 12 is an update on the progress that we have made and work remaining to be done on implementing recommendations of delores blandings report. The action plan represents an intense effort that has been done over many months by staff of the agency representing most of our divisions in a broad array of diversity across gender, class, age, role, status and variety of other characteristics. It is a fe acetaminophenit is wy chief of staff and his team. The Racial Equity plan starts with a frank and open assessment of the past and current failures, which are many. Iit incorporates feedback from people throughout the agency including the racial affinity groups which you will hear from this afternoon. We have also in this work emphasized the action word in the title. The plan not only tries to examine all of our underlying problems but very specifically details the action stepsness in order to deal with the underlying structural problems that result in the problems that we see every day in this agency. It identifies action, responsibilities. Who is responsible for implementing the actions and resources needed to get this work done. It is a lot of work, particularly now when we are struggling with so many topics. I want to emphasize that this plan emphasize this plan is on my top five list of things i need to implement in my term as director. This work is more important now than ever as we are dealing with the prospect of imminent layoffs, dealing with a Health Crisis and economic crisis and other social crisis. We have to get this work done. All of the other crisis exacerbate the underlying structural inequities. I am pleased to introduce my deputy chief of staff who has taken on the leadership together with his team member who will give you a presentation on the draft plan. Thank you. Thank you, chair borden. I am going to share my screen. Directors can go offcamera. Sharon is back. I want to note that. Can you please give me verbal affirmation we can see my screen. We can. Second that it is now full screen. It is full screen. Outstanding. Good afternoon, chair borden, directors, warm welcome to all Community Members in the city and across the country listening in at this moment. I hope today is treating you well. Thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this important topic for the agency. As you have mentioned, i am the acting chief of staff for s. F. M. T. A. This is our annual littics manager extraordinary. We will speak about our Racial Equity action plan. The first phase on the policies in the agency to make sure we ensure the wellbeing of the work force and particularly the staff of color. This is november 17th. We will get started. To talk about what we are covering today. First it is important to align what we mean when we say Racial Equity and then we will introduce the context to form the approach to this work as the agency. Then we will talk about how the plan came to be as well as share what precisely it entails and what is in it. Lastly we will talk about the all star cast who put their wholehearts into this work from the beginning. We want to start on the same page about what we mean when we say Racial Equity. In my mind it encompasses three core concepts. Everyone has what they need to succeed across the racial spectrum. [please stand by] harm based on race compounds and other forms of identity as well. For example, we know that black women are likely to experience outcome in our society than women at large and black elders are more likely to experience outcomes than seniors at large. With respect to Racial Equity, people most harmed by inequity must be meaningful involved in decisions that impact them. We can never plans for marginalized people without people at the table. That includes existing practic practices. This applies just as much to our workforce as it does to the community that we serve everyday with our services at the m. T. A. Absolutely nothing that we do at m. T. A. Happens in a vacuum. You see over the last several months, we had a nationwide reckoning over our countrys racist past and presence. We know these racist outcomes wake on m. T. A. Staff of color everyday. We know that our workforce are heavily racialized. San francisco is chockfull of communities of color. Many of these essential workers are black and brown including much of our own workforce. We know that the city of San Francisco renewed commitment in the past few years. I want to pass this to [indiscernible]. This is grace calling for those who meeting me the first time. I do use she, her pronouns. My team crunches the data and develop the majority of the dashboard you see on the sfmta. Com website. Including more recent covid19 and transportation recovery plan. Im here in my capacity one of the Racial Equity Action Plan Team members. Im going to walk us through more information with the Racial Equity framework before getting into the actual content of the plan. Adding to what he just shared, part of our commitment to staff is the actual Racial Equity action plan itself. Our commitment is in alignment with the citys Racial Equity ordinance. That passed back in august 2019. This ordinance establish the citys office of Racial Equity and mandates all city departments create a Rational Equity action plan. As you can see on the slide, there are two phases to this work. We are countrily in phas countrn phase one where we are focusing on Racial Equity by examining internal practices and systems. Were looking at ways to prioritize the wellbeing of our workforce, pay play particular attention to black and indigenous staff of color. Early next year in 2021, we should start see development of phase two of our Racial Equity action plan which has external focus. We will need to address how the agency will be prioritizing equity through our service in the communities that serve. Guidance is still pending in thm the city office of Racial Equity. We need to ensure that both phase one with the internal focus and phase two with the external focus are aligned. We need to understand they are closely interconnected. The wellbeing and composition of our workforce is connected to our Service Delivery. Continuing with the requirements of phase one, i already mentioned the plan is due december 31st and covers the next three years. First phase must clear goals, actions and indicators that aligned with the citys office of Racial Equity framework the final requirement is that the plan must reviewed and updated every three years to ensure were reflecting the most current needs of our workforce. I will summarize our phase one process. Lot of staff input has been provided to us over several years. The story and experiences shared from colleagues really laid out the Racial Equity action plan took place. We have several avenues to receive direct feedback where the pinpoints have been. Project Management Team act a facilitator to channel steps in action in collaboration with Human Resources. Here is a timeline of our phase one outreach process. Noting that we started in july when the citywide Racial Equity framework was released across the city. Framework provided a clear path forward with blueprint what is expected from all city departments. We can be looking at our own agency, planning department, library, whatever department. All our plans follow the same blueprint. We completed an initial draft in september. Began our outreach last month and sharing the draft with the office of Racial Equity. This leads us to where we are now seeking feedback from you the board. We plan to incorporate the fee feedback. As mentioned earlier, staff feedback has laid the foundation for this document. It is a live document and ensure commitments are resonating with staff. It will be when you get into phase two of the plan as well. Now i want to get into the actual content of the Racial Equity action plan phase one. We have commitment across seven focus areas listed. These areas mirrors the framework outlined by the city office of Racial Equity. Were looking at patterns of inequity, discipline and separation, diverse leadership, organization and culture of inclusion and belonging and finally our boards and commission. You can see that theres nothing at the table that were looking to make change such as everything from our Human Resources procedures all the way to the Organizational Culture in general. [train noise] each of the seven focus areas, we will start with this question. We know that management is much wider than our workforce. Were looking what we have been referring as the m. T. A. s upside down pyramid of whiteness. At large, we have a Diverse Workforce but you can see from the upside down pyramid as we move up the pyramid it gets whiter and whiter. 14 of the workforce is white and supervisor classification jumps up to 29 . Continuing up to the 9170 classification and references includes all our managers and deputy and directors. 47 of this group is white. When you get up to the top, half of Senior Management is white. That a major area of growth is creating higher process that result in diverse representation in addition to diverse overall report. Were examining hiring practices, we want to acknowledge those practices have close impact on rate of promotion across demographics. Main area of concern is how we handle discipline. Were seeing inequitable disciplinary outcomes. The majority of our documents corrective action fall within the Transit Division and with our transit operators. In the last fiscal year, 93 of documented corrective action were applied to our operators. This is a Racial Equity issue when you consider that the majority of operators are black and brown. Its imperative that we approach discipline with a compassionate approach for that reason. When we see clear Racial Disparities in particular black women. Black women represented 20 of transit discipline. In it same physica fiscal year s no corrective action to white women. One of the factors in the inequitable outcomes we have roles that are not often subject to discipline. We have regulatory and policy commitment related to safety and on time performance that does not apply to other areas of the agency. There are too few alternatives to discipline. The way our discipline process are currently anyways. Finally the main issue is inconsistency in the application of discipline. As an example, where a nonblack employee may receive a verbal warning versus a black employee getting a suspension for the same and similar infraction. We have real documents and examples of this. We can look at this from the angle of different division. If one of my colleagues happen to take exception that might be said or having a bad day and decide to curse me out, theres repercussion for that person will not be the same for it operator who committed the same offense. Many staff feel unsatisfied unheard. Buwhat you see is the rating 208 employee survey. The workforce reporting less Job Satisfaction and Work Environment and manager. Managers rated their Job Satisfaction as 4 out of yo 5. Managers rated their level of comfort and sharing opinion as 3. 9 out of 5, all other staff rated their comfort 3. 3 out of 5. When eisolate front line workers, the numbers are even lower. These difference experience is a Racial Equity issue. The final point that we like to highlight is that staff must continue to grow our Racial Equity knowledge. This is a significant area of opportunity for us. We have been conversations about race in the agency. We need to build racial literacy, stamina and awareness. I heard from white colleagues, like wow, i did not know that. Thank you for sharing. This is all great. It requires more resources and Continuous Learning opportunities to build upon that momentum and sustain ourselves in this work for the long haul. We know that learning, adjusting and executing change does take time. In talking about these opportunities to learn and share, we must ensure that access for all employees across our facilities accommodates all Work Schedules is happening as well. Thank you so much, grace. The current condition that the grace talked about, they are heart breaking. Our charge in this Racial Equity work is not just to have hearts broken. Were going to share couple of examples. Even though this effort in this work is called Racial Equity action plan. What they are firm compliment to our staff, our present and future staff about how to make our workforce whole moving forward. The first thing i want to highlight, we will be creating classifications for job plans. Its really important to note that equitable hiring outcomes, we need equitable input into those processes. We need more diverse applicant pools. We want to make sure ensuring all qualifications we list are to the maximum extent possible. Well be working to document our promotional processes. We want to make sure were recruiting and clear personal ladders within the agency. This is in combination with other measures like supporting our professional development and augmenting those processes. Well be working to establish a new agencywide discipline policy identify more passionate outcome to discipline. Its imperative we ensure consistency and compassion in our approach, application and review of discipline and ultimately work to eliminate race as a predictor. Well also working to develop and maintain a Racial Equity curriculum and resources. We want to make sure from top to bottom, we continue to building Racial Equity capacity within the agency down to the person. Making sure that every single sfmta employee recognizes how they can advance Racial Equity within our workforce. Thats just a very small sampling. There are many more commitments. Thour staff worked hard to be ambitious and realistic. Making sure that our commitments are timebound and they are prioritized and fiscally constraint given our budgets now now. This Racial Equity action plan is alive. We will make sure that lessons that learn and experiences will be implement the plan. Next i wanted to chat little bit about the proposed sfmta board commitment to our Racial Equity action plan. Our board approves our budget. You also have policy you also set policy for the agency. The city depend on your work and judgment. Its critically important that you leading a Racial Equity lens. To help support that, i will talk about some of the commitments. The first of the proposed commitments, staff will publish racial and gender Demographic Data for mtab. Secondly, there will be a Racial Equity training for members from our office of Racial Equity during on boarding and every other subsequent year from there to make sure were intentional about sfmta board Racial Equity knowledge and support of your work. We ask officer to design a Racial Equity resource to support the engagement with staff and ongoing decisionmaking. We recognize that you all hold so much on a daily basis. Theres lots of content and considerations that you have to navigate, whether they are fiscal, strategic, political or related to the community. We want to be intentional about supporting you with key reminders and consideration with respect to Racial Equity to support your decisionmaking and work ongoing. Next, staff recommending group engagement. Today is an example of that. Lastly, staff recommends that the board adopt Racial Equity policy for sfmta, including requirement for Equity Analysis documentation for the calendar items that come before you. To make sure when it comes to Racial Equity, were lending the same yes dense a credence as wer policy areas. Making sure items that come before you are documenting the Racial Equity that we expect from their staff for every piece of work that we do at the agency. On the Racial Equity Action Plan Team. I do love this team. For months upon months, he led this effort with love. The team at large is really giving their heart and soul to this work. All of them have additional full time role. Because of the nature of m. T. A. s work and nature of the covid crises, often time have to come in the evening and weekend. Im asking them this has been extremely exhausting work but also be proud we know that racism is even more exhausting. To our Human Resources department, our action lead, thank you for having open mind and bringing Incredible Energy to the work. The last thank you is to all the staff who for years upon years upon years have given feedback about what it means to make our workforce bold and what that will require. With that, in i want to thank yu m. T. A. Board, our staff with us, Community Members, my own family and friends watching. Thank you so much for taking the time and space to talk about important work. We love to engage you in conversation on anything we shared. Chair borden thank you so much to you and the whole team. We are so lucky to have you all to do this work. It is not easy work. It is very emotionally draining it can be at times and very difficult. I know we have a number of speakers, well have our Infinity Group next. I want to pause here. Its such a well done report and very thorough to see if any other Board Members have question or comments to share at this point. After we do that, well move into our Infinity Group presentation and then have time for questions and comments. Vice chair eaken thank you for the presentations and all the hard work. The first question, could you describe a little bit more about that resource under the category of board commitment. You talked about resource to support our decisionmaking. Could you share som what youre thinking about and what that would lock like . I were going to place lot of trust in our Racial Equity officer. It really looks like making sure that you all are key reminders and considerations with respect to Racial Equity. Think being lot of the policy that happen within our work with other key departments of agency and key areas. Thinking about homelessness and policing with undocumented folks within the city. All the different considerations that you all need to hold and recognizing that when it comes to Racial Equity, you all can benefit from some key concepts and key reminders about what you should be thinking about and questions you should be asking when it comes to equity and the item before you regardless of the policy area and the subject matter area. Vice chair eaken thank you. One or two other questions. When you present the data about sort of certain members of the staff, disciplinary action and other staff, i guess wonder as we think about how Structural Racism at the sfmta that it would be a great in addition to having a board go through training, which i absolutely support. I think thats an excellent recommendation. I wanted to double check in on are we recommending that managers going through a regular Racial Equity training . Seems like what you presented whether conscious or unconscious, some of these maybe manifested. I want to make sure thats addressed as well. Is there some kind of Affirmation Statement that all m. T. A. Staff will eventually be asked to sign on to . As a board, were happy to engage with the topic and go through all kinds of training and roll up our sleeves. Also wondering if we want to make a statement, we as Board Members sign on to and everybody on the staff say this is where we want to go, i affirm my commitment in this direction for the agency. Those are outstanding questions. With respect to the question about training for managers, one thing you may have noticed, thats interwoven with respect to whether its making sure managers are taking those trainings. We also have the recognition thats going to take resources, it a take time and its not going to happy overnight. Concise answer there is yes. To the second question about Affirmation Statement from every single m. T. A. Staff member with respect to the expectations and commitment to Racial Equity. In a documented way, its an option. We often verbalize that expectation and we want every employee to feel supportive and valued. Director tumlin i will add. Theres a strong relationship between many of the problems, related to eeo. The fact that we have cases that are sent to e. E. O. Is sign of management failure of sfmta to deal with the underlining issues. Training is going to be one of the topics that i prioritize because it gets to some of the underlining structural problems that are not only resulting in discrimination against workforce but also then consuming, immense amount of time and Financial Resources dealing with the problem after the fact. This document is structured around prioritizing the underlining problems in order to reduce the secondary impacts. Director brinkman one question. One of the things we were hearing lot about was the inalthouginability or unwillingf managers to deal with the issue before it went to e. E. O. When an issue has gone to e. E. O. The lack of feedback to the employee about what was going on in the process. Could you just tell us a little bit about how were going to continue to fix that problem or start to fix that problem . Director tumlin that question might be best addressed in the next agenda item. Chair borden any other directors have questions or comments before we move into our next presentation . Great, i like to ask for kathy, from the black Community Group to present a report. Chair borden directors i remind you to go off camera when she puts up her screen so the focus can be put on her screen. Can you see my screen . Chair borden , yes, we can. Ive been with sfmta for 15 years. Im title 6 complaint and training manager and Regulatory Affairs im here representing the black and africanamerican Infinity Group. We formed in 2019 with sfmta as members of the black and africanamerican Infinity Group. Were joined with black employee alliance. We formed to make changes how black and africanamerican employees recruited, hired, promoted and treated in the workplace. We received like a lot of testimony back and feedback regarding the disciplinary action that was done by race and gender. That data was provided to us by sfmtas h. R. That prompts us to form baag. Our mission is we want to create an environment that is equitable and inclusive for black and africanamerican employees at sfmta. We want to support the personal and professional development of employees through various channels. We want to support the black employee alliances mission and objective. On this screen shot, this was in february. This was our first annual black History Month celebration, 2020. Whereas we had a lot of guest speakers even the mayor, she spoke there also. It was a great celebration and it was the first time that anyone at the sfmta had a celebration like this to honor we did special honor. It was to special honor our black employees at that time. Our main concern is with regard to the Racial Equity action plan, we as black employees do not want to be diminished when creating that Racial Equity action plan. You can see by the chart, there are a lot of disciplinary actions that happened primarily against black employees. Statistic wise, i can get into it. There is 27. 9 of employee population at sfmta is africanamerican and black but we make up 50 of the disciplinary charges and offenses. Which is 370 out of 735 offense. More alarming is that out of the 167 displai disciplinary actiond to female employees, 147 of those disciplinary actions were issued to black female. There are only seven issued to asian male, 13 issue to himself female and zero issued to white females. We had written warnings, 94 written warnings where issued against female, 83 were issued against black females thats 88 . Six were issued to asian, five were issued to hispanic and zero to white female employees. With regard to the suspension and the fiscal year of 2019 20192020, out of 61 suspensions issued, to females across the agency, 55, which is 90 were against black female. One suspension was issued against asian female employee, six issued against hispanic employee, there were zero suspensions against white employee. Africanamerican men make up 21 of sfmta total male population. Most of them working in transit only. They represent 40 of all the disciplinary action across the agency. There were zero charges issued against white females in 2019 and 2020. 179 total white females make up 12 of all females at sfmta. 679 total white males make up 15 of all men but only make up 7 of all disciplinary action collectively. Thats 40 out of 568 actions. You see the majority of the actions are always going against the black and africanamerican community. We call to action over the last year, our black and africanamerican Infinity Group met with the department of transportation. We met with jeff tumlin and we met with director of Human Resources to address issues of persistent and antiblack racism at sfmta. A year later, there has been little to no resolution other than the Racial Equity action plan. Which is still in the draft stage. We ask and we have asked before and we are asking the board, we asked that you issue a moratorium on all disciplinary action that will reduce racism in the agency disciplinary outcome. We ask that you identify and locate a Restorative Justice process that be will implemented to replace disciplinary process thats in place. Require all division directors, supervisors and managers to undergo implicit bias and antiblack bias training. We ask that the director of Human Resources implement racial bias competency into the Performance Plan of all sfmta supervisors and managers. We ask that to plan and dedicate Adequate Funding and Staff Resources to create a fully functional Racial Equity team. Rather than the one Racial Equity officer position. Racial equity officer, he or she needs to be fully staffed. We also ask that a plan be provided in that a deadline be implemented on all the recommendations for the deloris blanding report. We are working together with infinity grupps, were working with the latinx Infinity Group and asian Infinity Group and white people working against racism. We Work Together to achieve equity on our behalf. If theres any questions for any one, you can reach out to the black and africanamerican Infinity Group at baag2019 baag2019 gmail. Com. We received lot of support. Black and africanamerican Infinity Group, we feel that we havent been deeply divided. You cant divide if you were never included. Racial equity should not just be for a moment. It needs to be a lived priority everyday. Weve had seat at the table but were waiting to eat. The citywide Racial Equity action plan is out there and the office of Racial Equity needs to be taken seriously and not buried. It needs to be unearth and implemented. Were going into 2021 and we have yet to make any of these priority. At what point do we stop meeting when there are only problems. When do we meet to assist to solving the issue. We had donte king in that role. He yielded many positive results, how long could one thing he can go on doing this work without burning out. Dontes exit has left a gaping hole in an already wounded department. We like to see changes. No one can deny that donte king brought tremendous amount of talent, educational studies, wealth of knowledge and countless other gifts beyond measure. Just imagine what he could have done had he received the proper support and staffing. Lot people in baag wonders how much dontes king was wanted and respected. People always saying, we cant live in the past. Racism isnt like it was before but the truth is, thats the past never ended if its manifested in the sophisticated institutional racism and antiblackness we see today. That needs to change. Just because the current Workplace Culture was inherited by our new leadership does not mean that theres not an obligation to fix it. I thank you everyone for listening on behalf of baag. Chair borden thank you for your presentation. Just a quick question to the Racial Equity action plan. Do you feel that whats in it addresses any of the issues that you have raised or are there gaping holes . I just feel and baag feels that it took a long time to become a priority. It need to be seen as a priority. It seems like it has not been seens a priority. Seeing the statistics are not changed in a year. Actually theyve gotten worse. We are very hopeful that with this new Racial Equity action plan thats going to be rolling out, we want to be part of it. We want to followup on it and stay abreast apprised of everything thats happening with it. Its not buried. Lot of things have been happening over the years. We cannot continue on the path that we been on. Namely because its hurting and harming lot of people. We want to be part of the solution. Thats why weve allied up with other Infinity Groups. We all want the same thing. We want equity. The black and africanamericans and latinx, we have we havent had equitable treatment for years. Were watching closely and definitively, baag cannot we cant tell at this point. Theres an issue now with trusting the process and were just being honest. I speak on behalf of baag when i say that. We like to see more action versus just words on paper. Chair borden thats fair. Director tumlin, perhaps you can tell me, have we thought about how we would have as were approaching this report, action plan infinities be the ones to hole us accountable. We on a quarterly basis are checking in and they are giving the grade saying yes were meeting the target and no were not. How we thought about the process. How do we see that action plan being implemented and the accountability it . Director tumlin starting point is legitimatized the Infinity Groups. The Infinity Groups have formed in spite of management attention and i want to make sure that they are actually given the space and that we as management are meeting regularly with the infinities group. I met more regularly earlier on in my tenure. I fully admit, its been months since i gone to a baag meeting. I dont want to always use covid as the excuse, particularly when i keep stating that the equity work is my highest priority. I think part of what i need to do is to actually make sure that those meetings are on my calendar so that they dont get pushed away in the scrum of the daytoday work. That we review regular progress. One of the things that im so proud of the team at is the plan is structured as a work plan. You can go into every section and see the actual steps that need to be taken. Each of those steps is measurable. Each of the assigned to a specific team. Each has acknowledgement or resources needed. That is structured to frankly allow our Infinity Groups as well as people like director shakir to hold me accountable as well as people throughout the agency who are responsible for individual line items. I am not the manager who like to over promise and under deliver. Like to have realistic assessment of the actions we need to prioritize and develop a work plan. Chair borden i think, personally, i will open it up, if we can set up a status, structure, not just that youre going to the groups but to fact there are metrics and goals in this work plan that if we can have whether they are a c. A. C. For the work plan. Representatives from the Infinity Groups weigh in on a quarterly basis, see the numbers as they are. Too late at the end of the year, we didnt do well and we missed our metrics. If we have a regular checkin, we can see things are going off the rails that we can deal with. If we can talk about how we can structure it, elevate the groups when i worked at ibm we had Diversity Group and they were company sanctioned. We had little bit of money to support them. My point is that, if its really critical that the company was behind efforts in support of organizations that allow those employees to be engaged. Part of it was having executive leadership. There were executives at the corporate level who fed into the ceo that representing those groups and they were the executive leaders that help make sure down the chain. If we can figure out to create a structure like that so that people can be more closely engaged that will be helpful. Accountability was a huge focus. One of the primary questions that we got from staff as we were doing our roundtrees, are we going to do this and what do the Accountability Measures look like. We want to build in quarterly reporting to both the board and have that in parallel with updates to our staff as well. Were also planning to have some sort of tracking platform that allows staff from anywhere in the agency to see action xyz, this is where its at and this is whats upcoming. Make sure everyone can access that. To ma point what it means to be outcomaccountable is the accountability to the plan. Folks are busy and not everyone have the time and space to be tracking action on a daily basis. Chair borden i really want to make sure that we institutionalize a leader from each the Infinity Groups is involved whether its just a checkin committee or the official committee or whatever it is. I really want them to be engaged fully on that. I dont want this to be a reporting reacting circumstance. I agree. Chair borden director eaken, you had a question . Anybody else have a question . Vice chair eaken thank you so much for the presentation today. Im glad were having this conversation. Given that the discipline you started talking about discipline and how unequal application of discipline is one of the top issues of top concern. I wanted to dig in to this idea, this concept of discipline. I want to understand do we believe, do we have evidence to sought that discipline leads to better performance . It seems the idea of discipline is maybe a little bit outdated. I dont believe discipline my staff when theyre not doing well, i have a conversation with them and we talk about how they can improve their performance. I want to ask that question. It seems like may be it involves the idea of discipline and to Performance Management and Performance Improvement. I think that is overly punitive. I think the disciplinary at sfmta, it is supposed to be progressive discipline but it is for black and africanamerican, its aggressive disciplinary action thats happening. I think a hard look needs to be taken at managers and supervisors. What are we doing before it gets to have to discipline the employee . Are we taking a look at the actual managers and supervisors . Whats actually happening there. How are we equipping our employees with the best tools so they can succeed . Right now, as it stands, it appears based on statistics, the Performance Improvement plans are weaponized against black and africanamerican employees. There were more black and africanamerican employees on Performance Improvement plans and they are being weaponize, essentially blacks we have one person in our black and africanamerican Infinity Group, when she first started working with sfmta, shes been there over 25 years, she had to postpone her adoption of a child because she was on Performance Plan after Performance Improvement plan. That impacts not only the individual, but it impacts life. Its very emotional. Thats just one example. Performance Improvement Plan should be not weaponized. Hard look needs to be taken at the managers and supervisors. I think there needs to be more training how were equipping our employees. Everything doesnt have to be terminate the employee. Youre impacting families. Youre impacting families of people that they rely on that one income to take care of multiple people and their family. I think that it needs to start from the top and we need to find out why did it get there and what with can we do to help employees. It shouldnt about disciplining and terminating, how can we help people that we care about the agency so much. In San Francisco is progressive and diverse, we need to keep that diversity at the agency and at the rate were going, were losing more people. Weve seen mass exit of lot of africanamerican employees. Some of them leaving because they were terminated and some people are just leaving because they feel like theres no incident. It never stops. Chair borden i thought that the union weighed in a lot on these issues and took part. My father was a teamster. One of the thing he loved that rules are black and white about how things were worked. When he had lot of discrimination things happen against him, he was able on use the union rules and seniority to work in his favor. I wonder if the union is helpful in this conversation as well . The union is available. Again, if you have the Decision Makers and they dont look like you, they base their decisions on repeat the and past practices, you dont stand a chance with or without representation. Sometimes you can have a person commit an offense, the same their white coworker and asian coworker and black person is disciplined at higher manner. Even the disciplinary is not meeted out the same way with or without Union Leadership. The statistics show that. Weve seen that. It these no start it needs to start from it top. Its obvious based on the statistic, its not been meeted out in the same manner when it comes to black and africanamerican employees. Chair borden i will be eager to see the breakdown of the managers giving the decision plin an discipline and how ty are giving it. If ask staff to pull that data too. I think thats important data to look at. Theres number of reasons why it look the way it does. At least we can start to identify i dont know how often certain managers are disciplining people versus other managers. There might be patterns there for us to look at as well. Some people are more prone to write people up or be angry whatever it is. It will be great to look at those patterns if 80 of the since minimum minimum discips from four people, you wonder if they have a bad bunch of people. If we can look at the data a little more closely i recognize theres discipline in the Transit Division and people are concerned about things endanger people lives. When youre not endangering someones life, it will be great to better understand what that discipline looks like and whether or not they need to be handled at the level which they are. Director tumlin youll hear more about this our hr director kimberly acrema ackerman in thet agenda item. To understand exactly where the discipline is occurring both by division and subdivision. Whats the demographics of the individual division and those people who are being disciplined about. What are the demographics of the people issuing the discipline. Very importantly, where are we seeing differential levels of discipline for the same infraction by race. Thats something were concerned about. We have some but not all of that data and we can share of that in the next presentation are happy to share all of our data. We want to make certain that we are fearless and looking at all the data but also doing the deep dive into that data, necessary cross tabulations that we can pick apart the underlining problems to we can prioritize where we will invest our resources in order to solve differential impacts. Chair borden great. I know director lai, you have question . Director lai ill wait, thank you. Chair borden thank you. What were going to do, were going to go through the other groups, open up to Public Comment. There might be additional questions or comments after that point. Thank you so much for your presentation. We also have anna from it latinx Infinity Group or tracy. Im sorry if i said your name wrong. Good afternoon Board Members and director tumlin. Im here to speak on beof the latinx Infinity Group. Our Group Mission is to appropriate understanding of the unique issues facing latinx employees within sfmta and provide support and mentoring opportunity to our members. We are here to speak in support of the Racial Equity action plan but like to note several areas of concerns within the plan. Phase one of the plan is a good start and provides direction and prioritizing Racial Equity within our workplace. However, for the plan to be successful, the work of the plan must be well resourced. This means setting aside dedicated funding for various fulltime Staff Members to help implement the plan. One of the greatest concerns that we have is hiring of one Racial Equity and inclusion officer to implement this plan. Which is not enough. How can we expect one person to make changes. Recruitment and hiring outcome of the sfmta have not been equitable for some time. Black latinx and indigenous workers need better representation across the agency to correct systemic exclusion and align with the communities that we serve as a city. As we move up the seniority ladder, our demographics become whiter. We also like to make sure latinx employees are promoted to Senior Management position or represented in professional and management position within the agency and not over represented in maintenance and service classification. We have a Diverse Workforce overall, latinx employees in planning, engineering, managements and leadership positions do not reflect the same diversity. We have concerns about the accountability section of the plan. Specifically the lack of clarity around how feed paback will wor. Furthermore, we would like to see key indicators and metrics for successful implementation of the Racial Equity action plan shared at the beginning of each quarter with various Infinity Groups within the agency. Thank director borden for your comments. Sfmta executive team and our m. T. A. Board of directors on the implementation of the plan including proactive plan to report on key indicators and metrics as well as the opportunities to address challenges within the plan as they arrive. We know this is a draft. We might have to pivot. We want to make sure that Infinity Groups are part of that conversation in office of engagement. We are supportive of the plan and ensure right processes in place to ensure effective implement takes. Director tumlin, you mentioned you havent been able to meet with all at the groups. We to look forward to you attending your first latinx meeting. We will be very happy to have you there. Chair borden thank you so much. Board members, did you have any questions . Vice chair eaken i want to pick up on your comment around idea of more staff. Understand, i hear that loud and clear, we have heard a lot about the Budget Constraints and reality. I think its in los angeles they have an office of sustainability with a very small staff. The various departments are also ask to designate lead for their department. I want wonder if were in position where we dont have funding for other staff to build out that gap. Can you look at interim strategy of designated like a Racial Equity lead for each of the division at least touch point for the different areas of the agency who could meet with with the Racial Equity lead with some frequency and put some portion of brain space towards this topic. Its not a perfect solution. I wonder if it would help take a step providing more capacity for that person . I think thats a great point. We started like that what happened because the pandemic, lot of the Staff Members that were involved in the Racial Equity action plan, lot of us have done quite fine because of the pandemic. During this time, its been really hard, even under the model what youre describing, to add this work because were trying to do essential government work. Pandemic aside, that can be a great model. Pandemic with the do of the challenges, it adds another challenge to implement effectively. If i may chime in. Board members, you understand the situation that were facing. Director tumlin were working quickly as possible to shrink the agency. We have to shred as many workers as attrition to avoid layoffs. What that means reducing our services. Were having to cut back on every single thing that the agency does. We need to cut back further in order to allow existing staff to be able to do this necessary Racial Equity work. Im grateful to the project Management Team, the Racial Equity action plan, many of whom have been working far beyond their usual 40 hour weeks to accommodate this plan. That is not sustainable. In order to do this work, weve got to reallocate staff time and reduce the amount of services we deliver to the public. That is decision that we need to make in an era of constrained resources. Particularly given m. Complaints that you heard from the public and well continue to hear about increase the services that we provide to the public and reducing the cost of the services to our customers, we are operating in an era of constrained and rapidly shrinking resources. Im committed to continuing to do this work. It does come at a price. Chair borden are there any other questions . Thank you so much for your presentation. We look forward to hearing from you more frequently on our action plan. Thank you all for supporting each other. Its a really critical work. Thank you. Next up we have tracy good afternoon everybody. My name is tracy nagucci. The work we do is a group as not in isolation. Its coordinated with colleague of color and Infinity Groups. Were here to support request from our colleagues and baag and the latinx Infinity Group. We like to acknowledge all the tremendous work that our colleagues put in this plan. We like to recognize the current climate and context for this plan. As mayor pointed out, city data shows persistent inequities with respect to wages and promotional opportunities. Most notably black employees with lower paying positions its only as good as execution, it is not the end of the work we need to do towards Racial Equity at sfmta. It became clear that not everyone was on the same page about the state of our agency or the need to improve outcomes. Many of those who wrote this plan were low level staff who approached the work close whichs outside their normal work. They have not always met universal support. This shows the need much more normal station around antiracism, how to recognize racism when you see it and what to do when its pointed out to you especially if youre white. We recognize this is constrained project. We urge the board to hold the agency fully accountable for the implementation and progress were counting on to make this plan a success. We support this plan. We look forward to real change at sfmta to improve the outcomes we see. Some of the truths weve heard of the inequities at sfmta make us uncomfortable as white people. We urge all of the white people in the highest positions of power listening here today, t to sit with that discomfort and instead of pushing it away. When our colleagues who are black and indigenous or people of color tell us they are experiencing racism, believe them. When outcomes are statistics show us that racism here at sfmta recognize that and dont try to argue it away. James ball wi baldwin, nothig can be changed until it is away. White supremacy largely manifest itself in tiny judgments we make. They stack up. Our approach to interviews and approach to promotions, things we let slide from other white colleagues, thing we dont back up black and brown colleagues on. We would like likely argue their experience or diminish. We need to be able to see White Supremacy in our decisions and actions as white people or we will never change the system that we created and maintained. Resist the urge to defend the status quo. It wont be comfortable. Thank you. Chair borden thank you so much. Thank you for being such a great ally. Board members you have any questions . Thank you so much. Were going to have Public Comment. There might be questions. I want to ask grace, who presented the Racial Equity plan if she wanted to add anything to the Infinity Group. Generally, i agree with everyone that spoken from the other groups. We stand in solidarity. Definitely support the plan. Im looking forward to seeing accountability and making sure the plan goes into execution. Ill leave it at that. Chair borden great. Are there any pressing questions . If not i will open to Public Comment. Moderator, open the line for Public Comment. First speaker please. Good afternoon. Im a Transportation Planning manager who has been at sfmta for other five years. Im part of the white people working against racism group. I want you to know that racism is a alive and well at sfmta. You might miss it as a white person and you can see it everywhere from the lack of diversity of leadership and Management Team to the shocking disparities in discipline. Im here to ask you to listen to black and brown colleagues. The agency is facing a tough budgetary situation. Please challenge us to do more with the resources that we have and prioritize Racial Equity work. Challenge us to fully staff office of Racial Equity and inclusion. What i hear my black and brown colleagues saying, what sfmta doing now is not enough. I see the data showing the same thing. Please expect more of us, please listen to what they are asking you today. Thank you. Chair borden thank you very much. Next caller. My name is devon anderson. Im the employee with sfmta 9160 transportation operation specialist. Im calling to im also a part of the baag group as well. Im calling to relay my support of the Racial Equity action plan. It is important and long time coming. We need the board, the director of transportation and rest of the team to invest their support and dedicate funding so that the plan can be realized. Thats all i have to say. Thank you. Chair borden next speaker please. As an m. T. A. Rider, i think its great that you guys are making this effort. I want to touch on something regarding equity being extremely important. I think the idea of calling discipline may not be the best. Pulling back from that may get us to a point where we have issue like with police union where its nearly impossible to discipline folks. The core issue is now the hopefuls are applied. This falls on your managers, if you have a manager with high level of direct reports, any company that indicates a poor manager. Is should not pips should not be a common thing. One thing i didnt hear constitutes is ensuring that the union is diverse among leadership and who it represents. Just as you can have managers who discipline unequally, they can be enabled by a union that defends its members. I would encourage sfmta when youre looking at an overall Racial Justice plan, not only look internally look at the composition of the Union Leadership that you are partnering with. If the union itself is heavily white, you can run into the same sort of subconscious conscious issueissues that you trying to eliminate from yourself. Chair borden next speaker please. Hello. I wanted to say on this item, i think lot of the issues start with the disconnect between management and front line employees. I seen it happen at bus terminals will inspectors will sit in their truck and not say anything to an operator, two weeks later theyre in the office. Theyre getting written up for being not having correct sign and they got it from it inspector. Instead of getting out the truck, they sat in the truck wrote a report without communicating. Its key of communicating to people and instead of management hiding in their offices and truck and not ever connecting with employees. I think its really important to get the board, get managers, riding the buses and connecting with front line employees, seeing what its like. As much as you can thank the employees, if you dont really know what it is that they are dealing with, you cant make informed decisions on anything. Thats my comment. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. Im a member of the black and africanamerican Infinity Group. Im also part of the communications division. I want to support all the Infinity Groups that i want to uplift the comments made from councilmember earlier. Especially looking to equity as part of a subcommittee. I want to get your support and other Board Members to ensure that we have open communications from the executive team as well as all the Infinity Groups. Thank you so much. Chair borden next speaker please. My name is charles. I use pronouns, he, him. Im 24year employee at sfmta and member of sfmtas white people working against racism. These comments are my own. I support the statement and presentation of the sfmta black and africanamerican Infinity Group. If black sfmta employees were the only ones impacted by Structural Racism at this agency, it would require that we address and eliminate antiblackness at this agency. It goes further. Individuals who perpetuate antiblack policies are also harming themselves and are harming our public. Antiblackness is preventing this agency from putting out its best work by forcing us to direct the energy that could be spent serving the public into dealing with the effect of antiblack actions. I believe the time spent on eliminating antiblackness and other racism from the agency will be more than covered by improved productivity from staff who can focus fully on their work. I urge the sfmta board and sfmta director to support this change both by policy and by deed. Especially Restorative Justice process. I support the statement and presentation of the sfmta black and Infinity Group. Thank you. Chair borden thank you for calling in. Next speaker please. Let me first begin by thanking the Infinity Groups for their hard work and also i long have mentioned to others that support is integral in this process. Jeff tumlin has been somewhat, i would say, truthfully supportive. As i stress to him from the beginning, communication is key in the organization over 6000 and transparency. Most i want to thank donte king for his work. Wearing five hats, one person, i was surprised they didnt have a nervous breakdown. We have to have adequate staffing. He did not. I ask more than three times mr. Tumlin and ms. Kimberly ackerman when that position will be filled. Lot of progress was made with donte king. He touched on subjects that normally and now still make people uncomfortable even though he provided extremely high quality education information and helped us come together as a team as coworkers to without rancor, understand and become educated as how racism works, how systemic and builtin it is in the sfmta. I totally support the Infinity Groups with their work. I support the plan but theres much more work and accountability to believe that. Thank you. Chair borden thank you so much for calling in. Next speaker please. Hello sfmta board of directors. My name is jesse moore. Implementation of the Racial Equity action plan and regarding implementation of the deloris blanding report. You will hear presentations Current Conditions can are better than they are. Its too hard or too expensive. I watched best colleagues leave sfmta. Theres outrage. After having been at the agency and seeing the crises around john haley and seeing lack of action to address the harm that john haley inflicted. I watch my colleges breakdown and cry at work. Now another crises is occurring at e. E. O. This is the backdrop trying to put our best foot forward and service to the public. I thank you. Chair borden thank you for your comments and sharing your experiences. Next speaker please. Good afternoon chair borden, Board Members. My name is dustin white. Im also an sfmta employee, i work as a transportation planner. Im also a member of the white people working against racism group. Im here today to lend my voice and support for black and brown colleagues and ask you urgently prioritize every tool at your disposal to address the ongoing racial inequities. As we continue to cope with the pandemic, difficult tradeoffs must be made. As we consider these tradeoffs, i believe we will do a great disservice, look to our employees and public if we fail to adequately resource the Racial Equity action plan. Prioritize continued actions to dismantle Structural Racism within our agency. Im very grateful for the dedicated staff who have gone above and beyond far normal job duties to develop the Racial Equity action plan. To gather feedback from across the agency. It is unrealistic to expect this plan to be successful if we rely on existing staff to implement, update and track progress. As a starting point, i believe this work requires the hiring of Racial Equity and inclusion officer along with a team of supporting staff. I look forward to your leadership to ensure that we do not continue to fall short of our agencys values of racial outcomes. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon. Directors, im tracy lens. Im the acting chiefly equity strategic within the sfmta Emergency Response team. Im also member of the asian Infinity Group. I speak personally for myself. Im in support of the six action items with the black and africanamerican Infinity Group as shown in the data conveyed by sfmta staff and my lived experiences and the experiences of my black and brown colleagues, theres much work to do to address racism. There must be concrete action and there must be true decisionmaking power for the office of Racial Equity and inclusion. This is the nature of all equity work within our agency as well as within our daytoday job as staff of color. We deserve to have our work to be respected, heard and acknowledged and have narrative believed and prioritized. Even worse, talking about change without meaningful action is equivalent gas lighting everyone who helped develop that framework. We have lot of to do but installs the right organizational structures and taking the right action, we can greatly advance sfmtas antiracism work today. Thank you. [please stand by] i urge the board and the executive team to acknowledge and address this in advance of onboarding a race Equity Inclusion officer so we do not cause the same harms to any other employees of color working at Racial Equity. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Clerk next speaker. Caller hi, yes, good afternoon. My name is mareiany maguire with the sfmta, and with white people working against racism groups. I want to commend the truly heroic work that is taking place over the course of this year to initiate meaningful change and in the midst of a pandemic, no less. Many of my colleagues have put tireless effort to address the racial problems at sfmta and set up on a Critical Path with much work to do ahead, work that requires investments, support, commitment, encourage and peace. I would like to associate myself with the many comments by and in support of my black and brown colleagues. And ask that you urgently prioritize the policies and practices for dismantling institutionalized racial inequity within the agency. We have seen and heard the data and some of the lived experiences. These are not new, which is why we need to tackle these issues with vigor. And in the last eight months, the agency has proven that it can overcome obstacles and drive hard changes with innovative approaches. We can dismantle racism at sfmta if we want to. With that in mind, i encourage that the draft i want to mention that the draft and Racial Equity plan is a thoughtful piece of work. I encourage the board to support adopting this robust plan in full and ask for the agency to do the hard i thinks, not just the easy ones. The Racial Equity officer, the r. E. A. Officer is responsible for supporting the implementation of the plan and as you have heard, to be successful the position really needs to be supported with staff. So as we look ahead to our future budgetary needs, please prioritize this staffing, whether by existing staff and then eventually hiring fulltime positions. Chair and board, i am so glad that you asked the Community Groups to be part of the structure. And director eaken, thank you for thinking about discipline. And kathys comments are spot on about this, we need to move away from a primarily punitive concept. Lets ensure that changes will be real and systemic and institutional this time as a model for the city. Clerk thank you so much for calling in. Next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Clerk next speaker. Caller hello, i am assistant engineer at sfmta and i wanted to just call as a member of black and africanamerican affinity groups in solidarity with kathy and the presentation that she did today. And i am happy to see the implementation of the Racial Equity implementation plan. Thank you. Clerk thank you so much for calling. Next speaker, please. You have one question remaining. Clerk next speaker . Caller hi, this is kristin michael. Im a principal planner for the development and transportation Integration Team of sfmta. I want to highlight the importance of hiring support staff for the Racial Equity inclusion officer. Dante was a transformational leader for sfmta and created a safe space for people of all backgrounds to face the racism around us, to examine our own bias and to take action to make the agency a better place. However, one person alone is not responsible to change an entire agency. It needs a staff that can translate that into policies and as you have heard from the analysis of disciplinary actions presented today, colleagues of color continue to be harmed by existing system. As you heard from grace, and the sfmta staff are doing this work their nights and weekends in addition to the normal workload. And we know that when agencies value is found in its budget. I urge you to recognize this is a key moment are moment for the sfmta to build trust with colleagues of color that have been harmed. A new Racial Equity office with at least two staff has a safe space for support and protection and represents personnel dedicated to building antiracism within sfmtas culture. It also gives the ability to empelement the action plan that so much good work has gone through. The staff at all levels are committed to antiracism. We need our leadership to challenge that into permanent change. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Are there any other final callers on the line for this item . You have one question remaining. Clerk next speaker, please. Caller hi, good afternoon, chair borden and Board Members. I am Travis Richards and a transportation planner in the Transit Division of the m. T. A. I am calling in today because of someone who receives unearned privilege because of my whiteness. I wanted to echo the words of my black and brown colleagues today who have spoken about e. A. O. And d. H. R. Processes and also the disproportionate burden that black people at the sfmta are experiencing when it comes to disciplinary actions. As an agency, we are always striving for transformative multimodel solution whens it comes to the planning of our transportation projects. For example, when it comes to advancing vision zero, we work across the departments to make our streets safer. As you know for years we have been even been attempting to change state law to empower us to use a new tool of automated Speed Enforcement to save lives. As part of our response to covid19, many m. T. A. Staff are part of the multidisciplinary teams that are innovating programs like slowed streets and shared spaces to keep us all healthy to face a challenge that none of us have ever encountered before. I urge you all as Board Members to listen to what my black and brokebrown colleagues have shard today and look for transformative solution whens it comes to addressing the harm of our black colleagues they are face will it matters that their health and their wellbeing and their lives matter more. Thank you for your time. Clerk thank you. Moderator, any additional callers on the line . You have zero questions remaining. Chair borden thank you, we close Public Comment. Thank you for calling in, and for sharing your thoughts. We are listening, we are interested, and we will be working on this. So i just want you to know that we want to thank you for your dedication in making the agency better and we hope that you will have faith to work with us. Work on the Racial Equity action plan. And with various groups to make sure that the m. T. A. That we want to be does become the organization that everybody wants to work for and everyone feels that is inclusive and opening and welcoming environment. So i want to thank you all for that. Move on to director comments. I see director lai was nice to hold her comment from before, but now well start with you. Commissioner lai great, thank you, chair board. And i also want to just echo thanking the staff for putting this very detailed and robust action plan together. And for all of the commenters that we need your participation and partnership in this very important work. And i feel that i probably missed part of the development of where we, you know, how we got to this point. It sounds like there was some request and work that was asked of asked of m. T. A. Even before july when the citywide policy came into effect. And i look forward to i think retroactively learning more about that, how we got to this point. But i think that im going to start by asking, you know, part of the the dynamic that i think that i am starting to appreciate is as a lot of people have already pointed out, that we certainly have a resource challenge here and, jeff, you very much already so touched on that point. But i think that most of the action plan resource asks are really related to level one and two staff time. Which i think that if im remembering it correctly from reviewing the plan, its really using existing staff time. So i guess that i have a question for jeff or whoever else is managing this. What does that look like if we were to carry out this plan in its current form, current draft form. Do we have any vague ideas of what it would mean in terms of what we would have to sacrifice . I dont know if thats even a fair question to ask at this point because its still a draft. And, secondly, multiple speakers mentioned the need the urgent need to fully staff the Racial Equity office, not just hiring an officer. What does that mean . I dont think that i saw in the materials what a fully staffed situation looks like . So ill try to tackle all of those those questions. So, first of all, the report that was referenced is the delores blanding report who was an ombudsperson appointed by the mayor of sfmta who delivered a report just under two years ago. And h. R. Director Kimberly Ackerman will give a report in the next item on what has been accomplished and the work that remains to be done, the work that remains to be done, folded into the Racial Equity action plan. As far as how well accomplish this work, back in january when we were first working very, very quickly to try to make permanent the race and equity action im sorry the Racial Equity action officer and create a staff around that person, that work obviously got interrupted by covid. And now were in a very different financial situation. So as one of the speakers suggested, one of the things that we have gotten extraordinarily good at during covid is forming Multidivisional Task forces to get stuff done in the agency. Covid forced us to be a lot more efficient and a lot more collaborative. I believe that that is also the right approach for dealing with our Racial Equity problems. Dealing with Racial Equity problems requires Touching Every division in the agency and its going to require the engagement of a broad diversity of our workforce. So, obviously, we are continuing to move forward with hiring our Racial Equity officer. We are interviews have been rescheduled several times and i believe that they are finally on my calendar later this week to start. So the our Racial Equity lead will be responsible for convening and it will be my task as well as the Division Lead task to figure out what are the crossdivisional teams that are necessary in order to implement the work. And what work burden needs to be taken off those peoples shoulders in order to be able to actually do the work. And what that means is that we will be able to deliver less service to the public. All of these considerations need to be balanced against each other. Much of our equity work for dealing with the deep equity needs of san franciscans is all about our Service Delivery. And we know that budget is going to force us to scale back our delivery of service and dealing with our internal Racial Equity work will also require us to scale back our services. So what i am suggesting, however, is that our Racial Equity action work internal to the agency is absolutely essential for us to be skillful at delivering our external work. So were going to need to sacrifice a little bit of our service in order to be able to clean up our own house in an era when we are having to shrink the number of people at the agency as quickly as we possibly can. Commissioner lai okay, so it sounds like its too early to put it in terms of quantifiable staff hours. But i hear you. That makes sense to us. I think that the necessary to right the ship. I think that one of the very insightful things that staffs presentation included was this difference of experience between managers and nonmanagers. I didnt see anything in the action plan and i was hoping that this might come up in the next items presentation but perhaps we can briefly address it. Is there currently, like, a 360 review from staff to managers . For the senior for the executive team, there is. So our executive team has something that is actually new that i imposed this year. It is all of us got a 360 review, including myself. And that 360 review includeddor executive peers, and also our direct reports and in some cases some other people in the organization. That 360 review did not, however, necessarily include line staff. So we are in the process of well, if you go in and you look at the Racial Equity plan, the majority of the work tasks occur in Human Resources. Human resources was down to about a 50 staffing level when Kimberly Ackerman joined the agency. The still significantly understaffed. And so that is actually also one of the areas where one of the few areas in the organization where we will be increasing staff, is in h. R. Because having a strong h. R. Division is essential whether were growing or shrinking as an agency and it is essential for all of the equity work that we need to get done. Commissioner lai thank you for that context. That is helpful for me to kind of frame the understanding. I think that part of my concern is that i actually, based on past comments and in discussion, it seems to me that its really, really important for to us make sure that we integrate this work at all levels of what we do, and all levels of management, not just with h. R. And so although i am absolutely in support of the plan and i do think that we should move forward with it, i hope that we will have additional opportunities to make sure that we are having representative and i think impactful action not just with h. R. , you know, because historically h. R. Has not helped solve all of these Racial Equity issues. So i just want to make sure that we are tapping into all divisions to participate in this. And that we are thoughtful and thinking about how, you know, the line workers, the group that you mentioned, you know, their issues are definitely being observed and addressed and regularly reported. I think that the comments that have been made about, you know, even what has been stated in the plan supporting regular recording is really important. We certainly shouldnt be waiting until the end of the year and then realizing that were not meeting our objectives. I definitely also support the recommendations for the m. T. A. Boards commitments, those all make sense to me. I think that one more thing that i just wanted to highlight is that, you know, even the way that we are doings this current hearing and for the public to engage although very important is problematic. And inequitable in itself, because only those with flexible jobs can really call in. And they cant call in at 4 48 in the afternoon. So i want to make sure that as we continue to do this that we are making sure that we are being fair with our outreach and being very, very mindful that the data is proving to us that the majority of the actions is really taken against our Transit Division who, again, i dont know if theyre being reached the same way as our professional classification staff. So i just wanted to make sure that we keep that in mind. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. And the issue of all of our frontline crews who work specific shifts and not only in the Racial Equity action work but also its more challenging for them to participate in training. So that obstacle is specifically identified in the plan as something that we need to dreatsz. This is not unique to sfmta. So its another thing that we will be doing is looking at how other organizations have solved these problems. Chair borden thank you, director lai. Any other comments before we move on to director eaken . Director eaken . Vicechair eaken so, yes, just to build on director lais great question. I want to think about building out even a lauded team to support the Racial Equity officer. Clearly, you know, its additional staff and staff cost money but, i guess that the request is in the context of december 1st well have a budget, director tumlin, a workshop conversation i dont know. I think that it would be worth having the conversation if we wanted to price out, like, two additional staff or something to support this person, to give them a fighting chance of success. It doesnt seem that it would break the bank to have two additional staff. So if you could run the numbers and bring that to us and something that we could all discuss. And were all saying the right things and yet, you know, it would be a very, very tough position to just have one staff and not have a team. So i would like to have that conversation, whether we think that is worth a decision to just resource this office to start with with a couple more staff. I am certainly happy to have that conversation. It is also a conversation that we can have and make a decision on that later. So, for example, we have an interesting array of candidates that well be interviewing. Each whom would like to take a different approach to applying our work in the agency. And so one possibility might be to if if you are certain about the assessment of risk in creating new positions now, we can create them, and then not actually fill them until we have more confidence about our financial viability as well as direction from the new Racial Equity action leader about those priorities. I have a question related to that staffing, actually. The role that dante king vacated, is that now an open role plus the new role that were hiring for. So is that only a new role . We created a permanent position and in addition were finalizing the process of creating a separate ombudsperson role, recognizing that as many speakers pointed out, dante king ttook on one more responsibility than any one human could possibly take on. That is one thing that we should actually clarify. Is that the current budget and our hiring process includes two individuals. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Director eaken, any further comments . Thank you, madam chair. Just two quick followups. And i realize that i believe that the second phase of this work is dealing with external issues and this one was internal. But i believe, and someone can correct me if im wrong, that the data that we got from the black Employee Group on the disparity in disciplining, doesnt some of that come from complaints from the public as well . And not just internal disputes of one kind or another . Yes, so well be dealing with the details on discipline in the next presentation, including a detailed breakdown of where the discipline is occurring by group, by demographics, and then also by pods. Including understanding some of those discipline causes are more subjective than others. So, for example, customer complaints have a lot more opportunity for bias than, say, a safety violation like running a red light. Right, look, i just think that the scope of this work is appropriately, not only inside of the agency, but outside. And we have a responsibility to try to provide our employees an environment where theyre not subject to racially motivated accusations or the like. So thats good to hear, that well be getting to that. And, quickly, i do want to second what i have heard from i think many of my colleagues already about not being pennywise and pound foolish with implementation of these new strategies. I think that the worst thing that we could do is to get peoples hopes up and then not deliver. And i certainly agree with the strategy of lets avoid layoffs to the extent possible, but if we were just, for example, avoiding the layoff of three people when three people here three new people would mean the difference between success or failure, i think thats a tradeoff that wed want to talk about. So i look forward to the Budget Discussion as well and i hope that we can tease this question out separately and to examine and consider those tradeoffs. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Any additional questions . Or comments from Board Members. If not, i think that at this point theres no action to be taken at this time on this item. So well move on to our next item. But, again, i want to thank all of the affinity groups for all of your hard work and helping to push the agent on the Racial Equity plan. I want to thank all of the staff and the team and everyone involved in the Racial Equity plan. We have a lot of work to move the ball forward. So we all look to you to help to keep us informed and we will be paying a much more vigilant role in Going Forward to ensure that these issues are at the forefront of our work. Clerk that puts us on number 12, and discussion and possible action with the sfmta quarterly report, including the blanding report. Chair borden we have Kimberly Ackerman, our h. R. Director and virginia harmond, with contract and procedure, and the e. A. O. Officer. Miss ackerman . Hi, good evening. Thank you so much i appreciate it chair borden and directors. I appreciate the ability to update you on the blanding report updates. And im going to also talk about what we have accomplished and things that we have to accomplish moving forward. And as director tumlin mentioned, there are the things that we havent accomplished and we are actually leaving those in with the Racial Equity action plan. Well talk a bit more in detail about that. please stand by i want to thank virginia harmon for her collaboration and support and bringing framework of Racial Equity action plan. Im going to share my screen so we can move into this. Well jump into it. He did great job setting up the report and how it came to be. We took the blanding report, the recommendations and we put it together and defined key main focus areas. One, is area of hr in the organization. Third area is h. R. Staffing h. R. Training and the responsibilities within h. R. The fourth area was training support in the Workplace Culture. We talked about that today and were going to talk little bit more detail and answer some questions that has been asked. In the fifth area is discipline and corrective action. I will take each one of the objectives and broken them down these five focus areas. As we go through them, youll see if theres a check mark beside it. It means we have addressed it. It doesnt mean that its just addressed and done. Its means its addressed and ongoing. If you see a circle, it means its an action item pending, maybe theres some framework that begun to be developed. Theres lot more work that we need to accomplish. Well jump into h. R. Visibility. She said that in her observation that h. R. Was not responsive to information requests, there seem to be issues regarding emails and there needs to be better improved Customer Service and improved visibility within the organization. I thought it was really important to mention how thats something that really we have been focusing on in terms of