Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Land Use And Transportation Committee 20240711

Good afternoon, and welcome to the land use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board of supervisors. For today, november 30, 2020, the last day of november. I am aaron peskin, chair of the committee. Joined by supervisor safai and Committee Member preston. Our clerk is ms. Major. Do you have any announcements . Thank you. Due to the covid19 Health Emergency to protect Board Members and City Employees the legislativladies and gentlemene. Committee members will attend through video and will participate as if they were physically present. Public comment will be available on each item on the agenda. Depending on use provider they are streaming the number across the screen. Each speaker is allowed two minutes to speak. Comments to speak are available via phone by calling 4156550001. The meeting id is 14665730274. Press pound pound. When connected you will hear the discussions but be on mute and in his senning mode only. When your item of interest comes up dial star three to be added to the speaker line. Call from a quiet location. Speak clearly and slowly and turndown your television and radio. You may submit Public Comment by emailing myself erica. Major at sfgov. Org. If you submit via email it will be made part of the official file. Written comments to the u. S. Postal service, city hall room 244. Finally, items acted upon today will be on the agenda of december 8th unless otherwise stated. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Could you please read the first item. Ordinance. Designtion of 47674773 Mission Street aka Royal Baking Company building. Call the number streaming on the screen if you wish to comment. 4156550001. Press pound and pound if you have not been through already press star three to line up to speak. The system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. Thank you, madam clerk. We have heard this matter before in this committee. Anything to add or would you like to affix your name as sponsor of this measure . Yes, sir, thank you. I want to remind the committee and thank you to the chair. This is straightforward. This went be through the Historic Preservation commission. I want to thank again sf heritage and the Planning Departments work. We dont have many Historic Sites in our district that are recognized through the Historic Preservation process. This particular site, the architecture is unique for the area and also for San Francisco. Also, the business itself has the origins in north beach, over 100 years old. Moved from the Royal Baking Company in the 1970s and operating in the same location ever since. I had the wonderful fortune of meeting the operator who turned 100 years old a year ago. We presented him with that honor. It is not just history in the architecture, it is i in the us, the people that operate. We are very pleased. Absolutely i am the lead sponsor of this ordinance. I would welcome the committees support. Supervisor preston. No comment. Thank you. I do want to say for the record that, number one, i would like to be added as cosponsor. Number two. I finished reading the book spirits of San Francisco, and supervisor safai, there are other worthy Historic Resources in your district, some of which actually speak to the progressive history of San Francisco, including Early Buildings that you have worked to preserve and repurpose that were part of the delivery of quasi municipal Public Healthcare in the city and county of San Francisco. This is not the only Historic Building in district 11. With that, madam clerk, any Public Comment . Thank you. We have james checking to see if there are callers in queue. We have four listeners. Do we have anyone in queue . Please confirm. There is no one in queue. Supervisor safai would you like to make a motion to send this item as sponsored by yourself and cosponsored by the chair, myself, to the full board with recommendations . Yes, please. As you articulated. Roll call, please. On the motion stated, supervisor preston. Aye and please add me as cosponsor as well. Supervisor safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. You have three ayes. Next item, please. Item two. Ordinance ordering the summary street vacation of various streets hunters view bounded by evans and inniss avenue. Hudson on the west and Hunters Point boulevard on the east as part of the hunters view project and the Hunters Point neighborhood to quit claim the interest in the vacation of areas to the San Francisco Housing Authority. Members of the public who wish to provide Public Comment on item 2 call 4156550001. Press pound and pound again. If you have not done so please press star three to line up to speak for item 2. The system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand for this item. When you get to Public Comment it would be noted your line is unmuted and you may begin comments. Mr. Chair. In so far as my staff sends me emails and doesnt print the stuff out and i am old, i am not sure who is presenting on this. Who is presenting on this . Cindy evans, from the Mayors Office and phillip wong will be doing the slides. Please proceed. Is it possible to share the powerpoint presentation. I am having challenges sharing my screen. Thank you. Good afternoon, supervisor peskin and supervisor safai and preston. Would of you i know and one i io not. I am cindy evans with the Mayors Office of Community Development working on hunters view department. Which one of us dont you know . You, supervisor peskin. I have a project in supervisor safai and supervisor prestons district. I have never met you before. I am here to discuss the street vacation. I wanted to provide some information about hope sf and specifically hunters view. Launched in 2007, hope sf is a Public Housing Redevelopment Initiative that includes four Public Housing sites. Hunters view, Alice Griffith and papotrero. They wer were identified as havg the most crime. Hope sf seeks to improve through the multidiscipline marry approach including but not limited to providing existing residents with new units without losing Public Housing, maximizing creation of new Affordable Housing, creating mixed income neighborhoods, connecting the new street grids to existing City Services and creating new parks, some of which are owned by the city or through public privately owned Public Open Spaces, hunters view. Hunters view is the first of the hope Sf Developments to begin and complete one Affordable Development and the only hope Sf Development to be financially supported by both the office of investment and infrastructure and mocd. As Housing Successor Agency to the former Redevelopment Agency mocd is responsible for completing the market rate housing and Affordable Development, one is completed in phase two hunters view block 10 and phase three before you including affordables on blocks 14 and 17. Currently, the master developer, John Stuart Company, completed two phases. That includes six Affordable Housing developments totaling 283 affordable units, three managers units, new streets and two privately owned publicly open spaces iron wood park. With the market rate to be completed in phase one and two this past summer, but due to the pandemic have been delayed. We have completed some social services spaces. Child care in phase two block 10 operated by the child care enrichment center. There is a Wellness Center operated by the department of Public Health and in 2017 hunters view successfully relocated all residents who lived in the former Public Housing to phase one and two new Affordable Development. For hunters bay three when completed will contain two of 100 affordable buildings 118 units, five market rate parcels, a Public Open Space privately owned public space park between blocks 14 and 17, new hunters view drive, new fairfax avenue with the extension of the street that starts in phase one and goes to pays two and will complete in phase three. We will be doing improvements on the east side of the street. In order to Begin Development on the site we need the required street vacation. The purpose of the street vacation is to implement the site entitlements improve the in 2008 extended in february of 2020. There has been some concerns about parking impacts for the design, which includes all phases, one one, two, three, but proceeding with phase three straight vacation and infrastructure does not affect the Parking Spaces to be provided on the street in phase three. In order to avoid delays on Affordable Housing we would like to proceed with street vacation. The master developer jon stewart is outreaching to residents about parking as well as the overall design. John stuart continues to work with hope sf, mocd, and with the Supervisors Office on any issues affecting legacy and new residents of hunters view. Ms. Stewart is no longer with us . Jon stewart is no longer with us, but the company is still existing and catherine, the Housing Development director still works for them and the company still. The principal passed away. Is she here today . She is here today and will be able for answering questions. This slide on the left is showing the phases of hunters view and as previously mentioned phase one and two of the affordables are complete. Phase three outlined in green shows what we are asking to be vacated. We are seeking to vacate the dead end street of west point and a portion of middle point road and ingle street. The total Square Footage we are vacates is a little over 61,000 square feet. However, when hunters view phase three is complete and includes the new hunters view drive and fairfax avenue we will be returning to the city approximately 63,000 square feet, for a net gain of approximately 2000 square feet. Approval by public works and by planning as well as a Real Estate Division evaluation memo ensures that the phase three and infrastructures are returned to the city for ownership and maintenance. As previously mentioned, john tostewart continues to work with residents and the speakers and this is a schedule showing the outreach to residents, the street vacation when it will come to the board and the supervisor committees as well as when the city loans that the m ocd will be presenting to the budget and finance as well as board based on the financing schedule. That is a visual presentation here. In this slight summarizes the hunters view benefits, which includes 650 units of affordable and market rate housing of which 4 0 unit 400 units are new afford annual housing replacement housing and market rate housing totaling 60 of the total development. It includes creation of new street grids connected to City Services, three privately owned Public Open Spaces totaling 1. 5r which is already completed which i mentioned that has the Child Care Center as well as the Wellness Center. That is about 4,000 square feet. We have also completed some new Residents Services spaces for the site. We have a goal of achieving 30 first source hiring program. This slide is just a sample of what was distributed to residents regarding the street vacation. We are distributing information in three languages, spanish, chinese and english. That concludes my presentation. With me today for any additional questions that i cant answer are justin true, jason wong, phillip wong and catherine with the john story company, Housing Development director. Any questions . Thank you, ms. Evans. I would love to ask 20 questions of mr. True, which he could probably answer five of them. Colleagues any questions for ms . Good afternoon. Can you explain to this panel why an instrument like this comes before a body like this . The street vacation ordinance is required under city codes in order for the city to give up this property which is what is happening on all of these large scale multiphased development. Not this this project, essentially, the projects have a plan to rebuild the streets and utilities. In order for that to happen, the city must give up the property that is the current street and we will later as ms. Evans mentioned take on the property of the new streets in this case right in the same vicinity. Most of these projects involve reconfiguring neighborhoods. In some cases will are no streets to be vacated. In some cases will are like the other hope sf sites, for example. The reason that law has evolved overtime is presumably in the old days there were city officials who gave up city land for lack of a public purpose . It seems reasonable to think that could have happened, yes, knowing the history a little bit. It is definitely good public process to have transparency around what property the city is giving up and why. We are all working hard, all departments involved to get construction underway for the next phase. Now there is a fence along that section of road that leads to these culdesacs and removing that and starting construction is something the community would like to see happen sooner rather than later. To the original question, anytime the city is giving away essentially granting property for a private purpose it is good to have an ordinance and public process around that. I think that we all agree as matter of public policy. In the same breath, the city maintains and is required to have certain liabilities and responsibilities over the property that it is dissolving from city ownership, is that correct . Could you ask that question again . Do we have to continue to maintain the public rightsofway . The vacation, i would look at the ordinance again. I believe the vacation transfers ownership. When the owner ship transfers the rights and responsibility of ownership transfers as well. Lets try to figure that out before this leaves this committee. The question here is do we have to clean these streets by public works or pursuant to proposition b embraced by the voters, have to otherwise provide services for these vacated rightsofways, ms. Pearson . I dont know the answer to that, but i can find out as you continue to ask questions. I can get back to you in a couple minutes. Catherine mightlaborate. I believe the vacation. I am not interested in the private parties. I would think the company and we can reach out to the City Attorney jon stewart individual to make representations to the committee, mr. True, what was the name of the individual . Ms. Catherine edsel. Supervisor peskin. That is supervisor preston. Excuse me. Sorry. Supervisor peskin, did you want my to respond about maintenance of the streets after vacation . Yes, that is the question. What happens with the street vacation and we did this in phase one and two of hunters view. We Jon Stewart Company as codeveloper of the project temporarily enter to a short term ground lease with Housing Authority for the entire phase three. Hold on. You did that in the previous phases. We will follow this for phase three as well. Got it. The city temporarily vacates the street to the Housing Authority. We as the developer enter to the short term ground lease with the Housing Authority for these streets. During the time so that we can undergo and complete Infrastructure Improvement work for the streets. During that time while we are doing the infrastructure work, it is our responsibility and we have the liability for maintaining the streets, keeping them clean, once the infrastructure is completed and before we open the housing we are still on the hook to maintain and provide all of the obligations that the city would normally do for those streets. Once all of the infrastructure work is complete so the underlying utilities and street construction, we go through a process that we are going through right now for phase two. Then the liability transfers back over to the city to own, maintain and clean those stree streets. Ms. Edsel, the deputy City Attorney pearson or mr. True, if the board refuses to accept it, then is the John Stuart Company on the hook forever for cleaning and maintaining the streets . I would defer to ms. Pearson for a legal answer. My understanding is the property would either, depending on the terms of the lease, it would stay with the company or defer to the Housing Authority at some point. Would it cease to exist . Those responsibilities would be transferred to whoever the land is transferred to. The issue with the acceptance possessing. If the city doesnt accept the street, then the owner of those streets are under no obligation to make them available to the public. That is exactly right. Every project has has a dift public infrastructure. Nobody would be able to access their units. That doesnt work, does it . There are legal obligations on both sides. Depending how long it had been and what good faith efforts were on each side. If the city didnt accept it because of a defect we would continue to push the private party to fish. If it was the citys ability to execute or the board didnt move forward depending on the contractual infrastructure agreement or what not, there could be further proceedings. Mr. True, you and i are in absolute agreement. We did this in phase one and two. We have not accepted phase three in those phases and that is coming forward and now we are asked to do that in phase three. This is about good faith. We have always dealt with all of our contractors and agencies and in this case Housing Authority. It is not the city but a federal enterprise quasi enterprise in good faith. If you scratch this a little bit, you have got to ask yourself a bunch of questions. Which is is the federal government bringing anything to this party . Are they . I think with the federal tax credits involved for Affordable Housing, i dont know. Just the Housing Authority is an important partner on all hope sf projects. We work closely and well with them on transactions like this that were other items at the other hope sf projects. I am not sure if there is anything else you would want to add to that . That is right. You cant underestimate the value of the land. We wouldnt be able to build the Affordable Housing to improve and ad additional Affordable Housing but we wouldnt be able to bring on market rate housing that in this case if the model proofs correct is more moderate income. The pandemic slowed that down. That is part of the ideal of mixed income housing. The land has a lot of value. Then additionally the federal tax credits are another piece. Lydia ely. Hold on. I want to follow ms. Evans for a second. I think what ms. Evans said was just because of the function of the pandemic, the market rate or moderate rate units are lagging behind. Ms. Evans, can you talk about that a little bit, please . We had plans to start the phase one and two market rate housing this summer. The palling built us with the the pandemic market rate developer who planned to build had to cease plans until they had a better until the market settled. It is not off the table. Part of hope sf is including this mixed income model including ownership or middle income. Ms. Evans, who was that market rate developer. Stephen tur. When did they pullout. City venture. They are on hold but they pulled out in may . Not pulled out, just stopped. Pullout means they walk away with no obligation to finish or build. They are not saying that. They have plans at the Planning Department that are ready to they are nearly approved. Going through one of the designs. Once the market settles they will be prepared to Start Construction on that. Ms. Evans, ms. Ely, mr. True, can you regail us with what the terms of the contract are relative to the pullout, not pullout, put on hold by City Ventures holds as a matter of contract . I would defer to lydia to speak to that. Right. The contract for market rate is between Housing Authority and City Ventures. The city is not a contrac a part contract. The developer is going to provide a certain amount per unit then as the condos sell they will be providing additional proceeds to the Housing Authority. Under m. O. U. Between the Housing Authority and city the responsibility will come to the city and they will be used for the affordable project. I am asking a very focused narrow question. What does the contract hold relative to City Ventures right to perform at this time . There is no contract. That is what i was going to get to. No contract between the city and city City Ventures. There is an approval by hud to be sold. There is a performance schedule. It is everybodys understanding, and i hope you agree, that under the current Economic Conditions and uncertainty, it would not make sense for City Ventures to move forward if they are not ready to do so. They are on pause. They have not pulled out. Things are moving forward with design approval. They are privately funded by Equity Partners so they are taking a pause. Why should this panel vacate streets at this time given the uncertainty that you just articulated . The streets, vacation of the streets is necessary to proceed with the Infrastructure Development at hunters view. That is necessary for the next affordable project, phase three, 118 units. 53 are Public Housing. Who is paying for that infrastructure. How much is the private party with no contract which blows my mind and has no liability which blows my mind, who is paying for the infrastructure . The city is paying for the infrastructure in the hope sf model and other funding sources, state or federal are paying for the infrastructure. The market rate parcels are sold as improved by the infrastructure at market. Again cross subsidized. The market rate developer does not directly pay for the infrastructure. So the source of funds for improvement of the street vacations is what . City that is expensive money, isnt it . Like i said, the bonds havent issued yet because we havent used a lot of the money. We are using commercial paper. When you get a Critical Mass they will issue the bonds. You will takethe commercial paper out with cheaper bond . I am not sure if that is exactly the way we characterize it. All right. Deputy City Attorney, would you like to shed light on this before Public Comment . I am available for any questions you might have. I cant speak to any of the financing issues. I have no questions. To my colleagues on the panel, do you have any questions . I am good. Supervisor preston. No. All right, madam clerk, please open this up for Public Comment. Thank you, chair. We are checking for callers in the queue. There were nine listeners. If you would like to speak press star three. There are no callers in the queue. We just got one. What was that . There were no callers but one just popped up. James is going to unmute them. First speaker, please. This is for item number three. We are on item 2, maam. Sorry. Any members of the public for item 2 . There are no callers in queue. Public comment is closed. I would like to make a motion to continue this for one week. A roll call, please. Motion to continue the item for one week. Supervisor preston. Aye. Supervisor safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. Next item, please. Item 3. Hearing to receive updates on to status, progress and implementation of the city and county of San Francisco Scooter Permit Program. Members who wish to comment on item three call the numbers on the screen. [roll call] call. Press star three to speak. The system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. Mr. Chair. Thank you, madam clerk. This hearing has been brought by vice chair safai. Supervisor safai, the floor is yours. Thank you, mr. Chair. I will not spend a lot of time speaking in advance. I know we are joined by the s. F. M. T. A. And jamie parks and their team. I do want to say that there was a lot of controversy around scooters in San Francisco when they were first rolled out. A lot of companies chose to disregard the laws, not abide by or attempt to work with the city on a permitting process. They would argue there was no permitting process. Their attempts to flood the streets certainly received the rath of city government. We put in a process to allow for at least a temporary permit process. That has gone on for some time. I think there are good actors, companies that met the spirit what we intend to do, but thinking about employees, people that work for their companies, how and which and what areas of San Francisco will be served. When this was originally envisioned there were parts of San Francisco the outer mission, bayview Hunters Point that were being ignored by scooters. I work with supervisor walton and others to ensure that and chair peskin to ensure the scooters would be distributed ex equitably in San Francisco. We are thinking about the people works for the companies, are they treated as employees, are we respecting the labor harmony process in place for these new technologies and modes of transportation in San Francisco. I call for the hearing today to hear an update in the process from when i called for the hearing until now, one company has had temporary permit expanded. More scooters will be hitting the streets of San Francisco. I have a series of questions i want on the record today because i know that in the spring we will be moving to a full r. F. P. Process to portlandalize this. There are things to learn over the last year and a half as this program rolled out. Unless colleagues have questions or statements back to chair peskin. He is involved in this with me. I do want to see the presentation from the s. F. M. T. A. And we can jump into a series of questions that i have. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, vice chairman safai. I want to thank the staff for the real work that they have done to bring this what was originally as you just said, supervisor, lawless and outrageous at the beginning. Starting with bird and line and number of organizations that dropped several thousands of these devices on our sidewalks freaking out elders and people in wheelchairs when they knew this supervisor was introducing or had introduced legislation to regulate this under local law. Having said all of that, and having watched this outrageous behavior mature over time, i want to start this conversation what it appears, supervisor safai. I need your unguided attention. I am listening to everything you are saying, sir. It appears, supervisor, that the fire that started at the golden gateway, threealarm fire to the 11th floor week before last was started by somebody who was charging scooters in his individual residence. The Fire Department confirms that there were five scooters which means a commercial venture that were in that at, albeit the Fire Department confirms one, which is the one that allegedly led to the cause of the fire, was being charged at the time. That says to me that the labor harmony provisions that we insisted on when we were trying to get this under control have been ignored by at least one of the entrants. Now that information is not yet publicly available, but i do not want to start this conversation until one of these companies fess up they are not using the 1099 labor, they are using employees. That is clearly unclear at this time. Once we get to the politics of cool with this. I am not cool with this when they are starting highrise fires in my district. Supervisor safai. Mr. Chair, i wanted to allow the s. F. M. T. A. We have information to that point. I want to hear from the Fire Department. Are they here today . Did you call them . It is your hearing . I was not aware of that fire. I was aware of other practices using thirdparty hiring entities by some companies to avoid having employees directly hired by these companies. It is one of the things to get on the record today that is an absolute contravention of labor harmony practices. Do we have representatives of the three permitted companies here today . I am hoping that s. F. M. T. A. Would get them here. Cut the middlemen out. Do you have anybody here from scoots . Inline and what is the other one . Accessible services. We do have a presentation for you today. Thank you for inviting us. Before the presentation. Who are the three permitted outfits . Lime, scoot and spin. Do you have representatives of those three outfits here today . I believe they are here. They have not dialed into the live meeting as far as i am aware. I will wait until each and every one of those threeinchdicate to this panel that they were not the company that had five you and i talked about this. This is not a surprise. I want to hear each and every one of them admit or deny whether or not they were using a residential address at 440 davis street where they were charging scooters. I want each and every one of them to say yes or no. I will wait until all three Companies Get on. This is sarah sfmt. I am texting one of the company spin. She has been on the whole time, same with scoot bob walsh. She said i cannot speak. When we figure out how to get those three companies in the meeting, i want a simple question. Were the scooters at 440 davis street one of your scooters. Yes or no . To the three companies. I will turn it back over to supervisor safai. Thank you, mr. Chair. Bob walsh has it hand raised. Mr. Walsh. We only see phone numbers or last four digits of the phone number. We have james. I will give you bobs phone number. Hold on a second. It looks like they have folks on the Public Comment line. 9495. Release that, please. Checking. We have 916294. I have those numbers. They both are on. Hands are raised. 415 6979495. That is bob walsh. When you are done give me that phone. I am looking for the numbers now. I believe i found that one. I will unmute them. Hi, this is bob walsh. To answer your question. No, we do not charge in private residences. Those were not our scooters. Lime or spin next. This is sarah. For spin please release 719 3211430. Please proceed. To the representative of spin, please proceed. Hi, can you hear me now. Yes, we can. Good afternoon. This is alex from spin. To answer your question, supervisor peskin. We do not have contractors. All scooters are charged at our warehouse. This was not a spin scooter. Okay. Thank you very much, alex. Is there any representative of the Third Company . Lime is trying to get on. They are not on yet. When they are on, i will let you know. Can you provide that number . At the bottom of your invitation. She is on. I cant publicly say the phone number. I apologize. I made this abdone bun abundantly clear last week i would be asking these questions. I appreciate the representations of two of the three companies. I want to hear from the Third Company. While this is not being done under penalty of perjury, it could be done under penalty of perjury. This body has that authority. This is very, very serious. Many people could have died in that building the week before last. Here is the number for lime. 503 2721685. Please release. We have a check on the numbers. One second. Sarah. We dont see a 503 number. Can you verify the number again. That would be portland, oregon. They have a poor connection. I told them to call in again. Okay. Again, the numbers on the screen. 4156550001. You will be asked for the meeting id1465730274. Press pound and pound again. Our it staff will be able to see the numbers calling in. The numbers calling in. I need to see your right hand. I just got that. Thank you. Im waiting for the advice. If someone can send me a link. Send. Through the chair, if you can email me your email address, i can send you the invite link and i can send it to you. So, before we do that, sam, whats the last name . Sadle. To your knowledge, did your company or anyone affiliated with your company have scooters on the 11th floor for a 40day that led to the fire the week before last, sir . No, sir. We did not. To the best of our knowledge, we have no connection whatsoever. And that would be the best knowledge standards. We do not all of our scooters are charged within our facilities or with commercial contractors which our Companies Partner with us to charge. We do not utilize or charge scooters in any individual residents in San Francisco. And the contractors dont do so either, is that correct . No, these are full scale businesses with warehouses and other similar facilities. Theyre not individual oneoffs. We will get to the bottom of this supervisor safai, thank you for humoring me. The floor is yours. By the way, someone tried to burn that place down and all three of these Companies Deny it and well figure it out. The floor is yours. I have no doubt that the truth will come out. Well find out because well know which scooters were at the site because they have their names on it and the Fire Department will do what needs to be done. Thank you for drinking that up. Into hodrink bringingthat up. It also gets to the construction of some of the things that we want to talk about today because if were talking about direct employees with companies versus contractors, there would be no ambiguity. Im going to hand this over to you for you to be able to and we can go to Public Comment. Thank you, director kate, taxi and i want to add to the conversation that i did speak with the Fire Department on wednesday evening. I asked if there were details or information about the permities. We did not receive any information that it was one of the three permit and we will certainly followup and reports on where they were charging their devices is accurate. I want you to know we take this seriously, as seriously as you do, thank you. And thank you, sarah. Shes been running the slide this and my colleague jamie parks as well. Well be co presenting. Thank you for teeing the up presentation. So we do start the presentation by senting context and context that youve already set with the unpermitted deployment in spring of 2018 that was as much of a concern to the mta as it was to the residents and we certainly heard a lot of feedback received thousands of complaints about scooters blocking travel and scooters riding on the sidewalks and people riding the scooters on the sidewalks and the turn off my video, they can focus on the presentation and so, this problematic behavior was a concern for all of us. The board of supervisors, as you know you noted. Granted the mta board the authority to create the Scooter Permit Program in april and and and it it ran from october 18th and we had two permities as part of the pilot. We saw our complaints decrease and we saw improved parking behavior. We had Lessons Learned from the pilot to create the Permanent Program and that permit Program Began october 2018 with four and next slide. We have 75 permit terms and conditions. We have a very robust set of requirements. We have parking requirements and parking enforcement. We have requirements on how the scooters should be distributed throughout the city. We have a requirement for low income plans, we have labor harmony adds, weve all mentioned this is the key importance to us. Theres requirements for the permit tees to engage with the communities. They also pay a bike rack fee. They have many reporting requirements and weve also required anna captive Scooter Pilot program and we work to root the requirements with har , we have a robust compliance monitoring and we have weekly review of complaints and we have on Street Investments and they respond to parking citations. Theres followup on 311 complaints. We meet with the Scooter Companies to talk about where they need additional attention in terms of compliance. The monthly reporting requirements includes a range of information on labor harmony and their staffing plans and low income plans, et cetera. We also require a Quarterly Report where each permity has to submit information on how they are complying with each permit condition. Weve been working on transparency. We know that the Scooter Program is started as the supervisors, youve set the context started in a manner that was not well received by the residents and many in San Francisco and so what weve done is worked to build out a program where we have clear requirements that have responded to what the concerns the community and that were transparent and how were monitoring and the number of complaints we received and the service on the street. So we have two sets of dashboard one set shows complaints received and the other as well as parking citations issued and you can map those out. You can map them out by company, so you can see if you want to see how one company is doing as compared to another. We have another set of dashboard that shows the Service Levels statistic. So if you want to see a number of trips and neighborhoods and work trips are originating, you can see their live links that are clickable we have issued three citations in this permit program. Thank you, next slide. Currently there are three permities, one required jump in may and weve been working with them to get into full compliance before approving the permit transfer that this happened in the past few weeks. And scoot and spend also continued to operate and weve heard from them all at the top of the meeting here, the top of this item. The permanent fleet size is different. They have the ability to operate 2,500 scooters. Line is at 2,000 because they just received the approval to operate jumps 2,000 and based on compliance with key metrics, each permity can request increases of 500 devices at a time. They all pay bike rack fees, 7n see that each has paid for their required devices and bike racks weve installed over 1,200 in thats where were working to ensure that the infrastructure keeps up with the number of devices on the street. Ridership has started off fairly stable and obviously no surprise to anybody during the initial felter in place order of just plummeting the trips plunged by 90 . Spin was the only Scooter Company that continued to operate throughout the duration from the beginning of shelter in place to present and the other two Companies Lime and scoot, did pick up service again and the summer and in trips have started to increase again but right now theyre stabilizing, theyve stabilized at about half of number of trips as precovid. Thank you, next slide. The maa board this summer approved a sixmonth permit Term Extension and the current permits now are valid through midapril 2021 and this was to allow the companies to stabilize during an unstable time and to consider for mta to consider scooters as in the transportation Recovery Plan and we also over the summer made some adjustments to allow the companies to expand but to make sure that theyre expanding within the context safe thats and to ensure that theyve met the key metrics to allow for expansion so, as the number of devices expand each is required to serve more neighborhoods in the city. So, my colleague, the district our of livable streets will now run through the remaining slides. Thank you, good afternoon, chair peskin and members of the committee. I have received the sfmta and primarily involved in working on the policy side of this Scooter Program closely with case teams and i want to talk about some of our next steps in developing the program before opening it up and going into the questions that im sure you have for us. As kate mentioned with the sixmonth extension, for the current permit, all the current permits expire in april of 2021, so thats about five months from now, t so we are issuing new permits and so we are collecting feedback on how to adjust the programs to make sure it functions more and more smoothly as we go through this process another time so we welcome the feedback from this committee for that process. This is our third time through the scooter mer mighted process starting back in the wild west of the initial scooter craze and while i dont we dont have a Perfect Program yet i think were starting to converge on a program that is a lint more stable and meeting the citys lofty goals around Transportation Sustainability and equity, accessibility and ensuring that all other operators are accountable to the public at large and so because this is our third time, were not proposing major changes to the permitting process, but we are proposing a few changes we wanted to highlight today. So there are three specific areas where we see opportunities for improvement in this upcoming permit round. The first is around Community Engagement and i think just being a lit more detailed in terms of some of our expectations for how the operators are engaging with communities around San Francisco and in particular requiring that staff from the operators who are doing Community Work to go through a mobility Justice Training to understand the school that scooters play in trying to face equity in San Francisco and we are also looking at redoing the way that our distribution requirements have worked. Theyve been prescriptive in the past in terms of saying you need 125 scooters and 45 in the 27 in the western edition, or whatever the numbers are, what were trying to get to is a little bit more nuance and data driven process where instead of prescribing how many scooters have to be here and here and here, we have use of data that we require the companies to provide and to anywhere in San Francisco, when you open up the app, you need to be within 100 meeters of a scooter and holding the companies inform that metric, were optimistic well see better results there as oppose today some of the clustering that weve seen where maybe a Company Provides all the scooters that are required in the debut but they put them all on third street instead of throughout the neighborhood. And then the third area is around an adaptive Scooter Program and ill say a little bit more on that in two slides. Jamie, i unfortunately, this is aaron peskin, i had to walk away for a hot second because all sorts of things are going on and people are getting arrested. Did you deal with the issue of collisions while i was gone . No. Ok. Sorry. So, in terms of changes to transmission code, we are makinwe havedivision and and whr supervisors under division one of the transportation code. No, no, jamie. Those were granted to the ssmta commission by the voters of San Francisco pursuant to proposition and not board of the supervisors. Thank you for reminding me of that. And the division two amendments are one is to require and we have a pilot to see how it works and were going to make that a requirement of the program. Ill say more about the a tap tivadaptiveprogram on the next. We want to provide the flexibility at the full discretion of mta director to allow for permits to be longer than one year and so, we see this not as a benefit to the companies as much as our ability to hold them accountable and also reduce the timeconsuming nature of the permitting process and going through that and kind of continue youllly instead of allowing us to, as things work well, to keep things going for a longer amount of time. I dont want to be argue tive and this is aaron peskin asking again, insofar as the transgressions if they are in deed true, are violations of a contract, doesnt the director of transportation hold that right now anyway . We do have the right to revoke permits. I think theres a fairly high bar sometimes for establishing the need to revoke a permit. We are i think looking at Additional Authority for summary suspensions of permits based on violations that we can add to the code and give us more tools for compliance permit revocation is a tool but its a pretty big hammer thats been difficult to apply for minor transgressions. If you want to add to that. Thats right. The chair wants to add another question before i respond . No, no. I mean, are there any of the permitted or for that matter unpermitted companies that rose to the level where you would have issued a suspension or wanted to issue a re revocation . Not at this point. We do have various tools in the toolbox when you say that, do you mean as the suspension and replication when you said what you just said . Correct. We have not yet moved to revoke and we are looking to add the summary suspension ability in the next round. At this point, we have, in order to revoke there are a lot of steps you need go through and the summary of suspension happens a lot faster and can be much more responsive to Public Safety issues, publichealth issues, if theres a permity charging illegally, as we mentioned and at this point, if that were to be the case, we would followup with all of the enforcement tools that we have at hand. I really appreciate that. Let me try to rearticulate what i was trying to say. Had you had the ability to spenn instances where you may have used that in the current environment . No. Not yet. Not at this point. We did have a problem with an unpermitted Scooter Company a number of months ago. Yes, we are very aware of that and the City Attorney dealt with that matter. Yes. So that would be, i would sigh thats an example of the most longstanding egregious behavior. With the current permities while theres been issues in many areas, weve worked with them to get into compliance. There hasnt been, again, as of yet, with information that we know now, a case where we would request or require a summary suspension. Ok. You are not aware of any of the three permitted scooter outfits that are in anyway violating the labor harmony provisions . No. From our compliance review, they are all currently in compliance. So were not aware of any of the permities that are out of compliance and we recently did a 12month compliance review that review happens quarterly and so that happens at the owned of october so feel free as information we received and our review, we had determined that the permities are in compliance. [please stand by] we dont have any indication it is one of our permittees. When we get that information we will follow up immediately. We had this conversation last week. I have had this conversation with the fire chief. Just so we are clear, it is not a matter of law, this is a a matter of suggestion. I am a member of the city council. I hope you do not do anything to extend any of these folks permits until we have an answer on this item of safety and welfare. I made that clear to you the other day. I am sure they are telling the truth to the best of their knowledge. Do not, please, extend any permits until we actually have real life ass. By the way real life answers. In they were charging scooters from oakland in the building at 440 davis, they will pass the test. Supervisor safai. Respectfully i know you are excited about this topic. I am not excited, i am angry. You are excitedly angry, whatever you want to call it. I have a series of questions. You are jumping ahead. I would like to press in on a number of questions. The floor is yours. If you can allow the presentation to finish, i will jump in on a number of questions you wrote. I appreciate it. One of the key things we are looking to do is make a Program Permanent for adaptive scooters where the vehicle site serves a wider range of population, like three wheel scooters and scooters with feet. We are making this a permanent part of the program to require Companies Make sure they are serving the widest range of users as they develop the program. Last things to mention. Between now and april 2021, the current schedule for issues new permits, we do plan extensive engagement to groups around San Francisco who have expressed interest and opinions on the Scooter Program in the past. Regularly scheduled meetings, such as citizens advisory, physical advisory will be doing an Online Open House and survey to provide information and feedback, talking to specific Community Organizations who have had feedback in the past. I think especially on the Community Engagement guidelines. Feedback o on what has and hasnt work dealing with the scooter operators. The Community Hearings today for feedback and we continue t conto understand how to tweak the program to what we hear from the public. That concludes the presentation that we have. We are happy to take your questions. I appreciate the questions that chair peskin was bringing up. Some i want to return to. One of them is around the issue of labor harmony. It is my understanding, and i would like to confirm with you all, and if we can get on the record what the aspects of labor harmony are. As i understand the companies are required to submit monthly reports disclosing number of employees, status, how many w2, how many full and parttime, compensation, number and percentage of direct hiring and staffing agencies. Are you aware of any companies . Are they using staffing agencies or thirdparties to hire employees or do they have direct employees . None of the permittees are using the 1099 employees directly. I believe that lime used some contracting agencies or Contracting Companies for some of their work. Now, in your interpretation, that to me seems like a direct contravention of labor harmony. If you allow the permittees to use a Contracting Company and whether it is labor or organizing entity, contact that entity, it seems they are going to say we are not directly employed by or working with lime or a thirdparty vendor. We are working with these folks. I dont know if you want to add to that supervisor peskin. You had your hand up. I believe means what, mr. Parks . To the best of my understanding where they are. How do you independently verify that, mr. Parks . We do, i think, supervisor safai did mention that we require that each permittee submit information about their employee status in our monthly reports, also in Quarterly Reports. That is something that we receive reports on and we are happy to share the information. How do you verify that . Is that under penalty of perjury . We meet with the Scooter Companies biweekly. There is a lot of communication. If we have concerns about the information they are submitting we do and can follow up. When they submit the reports. It is trust and verify. No, is it under penalty of personal rewhen they submit it as supervisor safai and supervisor preston and i submit reports pursuant to the penalty of perjury. Do they submit under the same standard . I do not believe it is under the penalty of perjury. That would be a thing to change. Staying on that point, to the best o of your knowledge you understand they are working with a thirdparty or contracting agency, that is a clear violation of labor harmony rules. Well, the labor harmony is to the extent we can require certain aspects we do. Labor is governed by federal law. We cant require specific employment status. Again, to the extent we can require a labor harmony plan and collect how they manage labor and signal what is important to us, we do that. There is a line whereby we cant specifically require a certain type of employment relationship. You can ask for wages, you can ask for prevailing wage, multiple hiring, first source hiring. You can ask for all of these things without explicitly saying. If they are using a thirdparty contractor, if those benefits are lower, i they are in direct contravention of labor harmony. To supervisor peskins point going back t to the underminingr suspending that seems to jump out as clear example of where an entity should have or could have or would have had their permit suspended. It also says as i understand if there is a change to your labor model. If you get monthly reports, maybe they didnt start off with thirdparty contractor, then they switched to it, you were notified. You should have been notified of that. Labor harmony is extremely important to this body that is why this body put it in other forms of transportation. That is why we underscore it today. I believe when you move to your permit, your permanent permit, you can make an award or score these entities based on how they are achieving or intend to achieve labor harmony. I want to be clear it is for this supervisor, i want to make sure that is part of your process. Temporary permits, i understand it sounds like you meet on a monthly basis, we agree when you submit information it should be under penalty of perjury. That is an easy fix for you to work with the City Attorney on, but if you are going to adjust the system to have the ability to sum marely suspend based on violation of the permit this is one that is extremely important. It sounds like lime is the only one of the three using a thirdparty contractor. In the meantime what i understand from conversations we have had asenten as the entities. They have gone out to undermine that process. Are you aware of that . I am not aware of any of that. I will say that the importance of the labor harmony provisions of the permit, i think they were clear before. They are more clear now. We are happy to work with the City Attorney to craft the language in the strongest possible way. We will work with the attorney to adjust the language. We can continue to work to the board of supervisors to adjust that. What i would say just add to that point. If you are going to go back to the s. F. M. T. A. Board of directors and ask to sum airily suspend be you should monitor this in the meantime. Worse case if you are using Third Party Vendor and i dont know what entity or what scooter. People are using homes to recharge these modes of transportation and causing fires and threat to health and safety that is a grounds to suspend immediately, whether they were San Francisco or not San Francisco. I want to underscore that point. Member safai, let me start with this. Maybe this is not appropriate question and maybe we should get director of transportation into this meeting. Relative to the expansion of mocromobility devices, what do we think is the underlying policy consideration as to why we embrace these as a city and a society . During the pilot we conducted what we saw was that some of the challenges with scooters. They were supplementing transit trips and replacing single occupancy vehicle trips. While each commuter trip is different. When we surveyed what people used the survey we found that roughly 40 of the scooter trips were replacing a single occupancy vehicle trip people were driving themselves or taking lyft or uber or tax see. There is a benefit to using the car. That is the principal why we are pursuing the program at all. Mr. Parks, would you call this the last mile solution . It is a first and last mile solution, not the only solution. It is part of a package of solutions. When you look at the heat maps and you look at how many of these are clustered which happens to be in the district i represent in San Francisco along fishermans wharf, would you say it is part of the transportation solution or joyride . There is some joyriding that occurs as part of the system. That is one of the reasons we have the provisions to cap the number of scooters allowed to congregate in is noter east quadrant. At any time only 40 of the operators can Congress Gate in is noter east quadrant. Service is to be provided in disadvantaged neighborhoods that otherwise have limited Transit System in bayview, Hunters Point and excelsior to have them where they are needed at another and not coul Congress Gate. Congregate. Basically these companies occupied the area illegally. Is that true or not true . That is not true. In which case do you mean organizoccupythe territory ille . In the beginning, a bunch of these Venture Capital funded outfits put several thousand of these things on the street, our department of public works put many of them in the back of their trucks, and they do ployed them where the food was, which is by fishermans wharf. The new theory you are operating under says that is okay but you have to actually do equity in the rearview mirror. You have not reconstructed this. You have allowed the bad behavior and said but you have got to pay a penalty. Yes or no . That is not the way that we have seen it more as taking the bad actors and providing a very specific set of rules they need to follow to operate in San Francisco. They have come back, as you said, after being bad actors with no permits. They have come back and now are in compliance with the 75 terms and conditions we track regularly. Water over the dam or under the bridge. Having said that, let me ask you this. Have you seen any affirmative behavior by these organizations that changes their bad behavior . Maybe i could reinforce the point of the intention of the permit program is to make sure we dont have that wild west problem and to make sure we do have compliance. That is why we put so much energy and attention into compliance. How did you get that authority . The board of supervisors provided that. We think it is working. We think that was the right decision to allow a structured permit process whereby we have the tools to require compliance, and the ability to Issue Citations for improper parking and for infractions of permit terms and conditions. And there has been some affirmative positive behavior, as i mentioned earlier, to continue to operate through shelterinplace and have done programs to provide trips for essential workers. We do see there can be benefits of this program. It is one of many transportation choices. This is biased. I do believe that spin has been the best actor of the three permitted actors. That is a personal bias noted. I will say in the same breath that lime has been the worst of the three, personal bias opinion. Having said that after Public Comment, i am going to actually make a motion to transfer this item pursuant to the board president s agreement to the government audit and Oversight Committee, which committee actually has the ability to make individuals testify under penalty of personal re. Let it was into that. I want all three of the actors who testified earlier, not under penalty of perjury, to say they did not start the fire on the 11th floor of 440 davis. With that, vase chairman, the chair is yours. I am fine with that, mr. Chair. I want to make sure that we get as much of these transportation related issues on the record here today and we can follow up and ask for the item to be reheard again in gao. We can dive in deep on that item. This is always a concern for me when you have it is piece rate. Do you understand what that is . By the piece or by the unit. A lot of entities use their model, bikes, scooters, whatever industry it is. They are doing things by piece. You get paid by the item. I have seen situations when this first came out where independent contractors, people were double parking, running across three lanes of traffic because they are getting paid by the number of scooters they bring back to be recharged. Putting themselves in harms way, not thinking about working conditions and all of that. It is not surprising to me when this investigation for this fire is concluded. It wouldnt be sure pricing to me to find this might be somebody that is an independent contractor working for one of those entities that was trying to use their home facility to recharge them. Maybe it is taking to the point of absurd where they are not just required to take and return to the facility they are asking to recharge on their own time. I hope that is not the case. I cant understand why they would charge five scooters at their home. That is why going back to labor harmony in terms of compensation, local hiring, all of the things we require. It would be important for you to look at even the existing permittees and how they are operating and what their information is because that is extremely important to us. One of the Companies Went from 1,000 to 2000, which is based on your permit that is permitted because you have a cap to 2500. I want to switch over to the deployment. Can you talk about do you require these to be deployed near bike racks . How each company is doing in that regard . I heard you in the beginning, jamie, say a clustering effect. Some companies are trying to meet their Underserved Community requirements by clustering in one location. I want to understand how these are deployed across the city. Is a bike rack an important as packet of that. How you spontor and ensure people are following monitor and ensure people are following that. If it is true and there are rules against congregating them, how do you ensure a Fair Distribution of that . Second piece of that is communities of concern. I started to i know all three companies in my district, el sell see your. I dont see all three. I see one or two. How are you measuring that process . Then i will get to the next question after that. I can start with some of the policy around parking them and maybe you can add how to enforce that. In terms of parking we were the first to require they have to be locked to something, primarily bike racks. Initially we saw no locking mechanism and they were left anyplace and ever place including blocking sidewalks and curb ramps. That was unacceptable. We imposed the condition of the locking mechanism. We published detailed parking guidelines how customers need to park scooters and requirements to educate the scooter users on parking. Those emphasize bike racks. We charge a bike rack fee to the companies for the infrastructure they use and need to install more bike racks. We have installed 1200 new bike racks where we have seen demand for scooters. Do you want to add specific weighs in which you enforce parking requirements . We do have on the street enforcement and seven taxi or mobility investigators on the street. We look at the complaints and heat maps. We have a team that is out on the street conducting enforcement, issuing citations. Along with the citation is an immediate notice to the company to move the scooter. There is a requirement the scooter be moved in a certain amount of time. So the accessible path of travel remains accessible. That is a big concern for us. You also had a question about communities of concern and distribution. The way we do that under the current permit is by establishing minimum numbers of scooters in key communities of concern, and the number of scooters to be d deployed in eah of the neighborhoods. That has sometimes resulted in clustering in the neighborhoods rather than spreading throughout the neighborhoods. We are planning to move to something we are doing with ebikes and it is in the contract last year. Instead of specifying a particular number of scooters in a given neighborhood. We specify coverage. Workout the percentage of the numbers. 80 of San Francisco needs to be within 4 00 meters of the scooter at alltime and not clustered. All of the companies have a data feed where the scooters are to monitor compliance. Lets say a company has 1,000 permitted scooters on the street. What percentage do you ask them to deploy in communities of concern . I could pull up the chart. In that case with a fleet of 1,000 scooters, the Downtown Core there could be no more than 400. The mission, the minimum would be 19. Southeast neighborhoods bayviews and Hunters Point minimum 51. Southwest neighborhoods 47. Western addition minimum of five. When you say southwest neighborhood does that include my district . Yes. Excelsior. That is the southwest neighborhood. Included in that, yes. What else is included in this . So if i am a company i am going to put a lot at sf state. I moothose are the things. One of the things i would say in terms of boundaries of communities of concern. I had the supervisor talking to him from bayview Hunters Point prior to this. His reaction to this hearing he hartley sees the scooters deployed in his district. That is frustrating to us. As i said, i have seen more in my district. I havent seen all three companies. If the requirement is for all three companies to be deployed in communities of concern and that would be 50 plus 50 plus 57. I am not seeing that level of deployment, for lack of better term. That would be something that would be a concern to me when you are doing the r. F. P. Is truly measuring and having a better understanding of how these communities of concern have deployments in them. Chair peskin. Thank you. If we are doing public policy, we have issues of equity and and the geographic distribution. That is what the vicechairman from the southeast corner of the city spoke to. If you represent ground zero for tourism prepandemic. The issue in is noter east corner of the city is enforcement, right . We dont have geographic or equity distribution. We have it under permitting and we dont have enforcement, or enough enforcement. Back over to you and we had this conversation. I really appreciate the transparency on your website. I think i tried to up your game relative to what needed to be on the website. The enforcement is lacking a little bit. It is getting better. This is an evolving area of law and behavior. Let me turn it over to you mr. Parks and ms. Toreren. Enforcement is important. Thank you for pushing us in this matter. We have recently published the dashboards and received feedback from chair peskin on additional items to include. Those were well received. We are going to work as a team. So, indicate kate, can you ae those. I dont think many people got into the slide deck and the links that you sent me because of thanksgiving i went through each and every one of them. Maybe you inform us what we are talking about. Thank you. What we put on the website and what we are working toward in terms of transparency is a geographic mapping tool, visual tool to show where complaints are coming from, what company it pertains to, and the same for parking citations, scooter parking citations. I want to add here another aspect of our parking requirements is that we work with the Mayors Office on disability to establish those parking requirements as part of our accessibility goal and commitment. We post the information for the public to see. You can go on the website and toggle, you can look at citations for a specific time period, you can look at citations as it pertains to bike point. M. T. A. Has many reporting requirements. Making that Information Available online and you need to understand format is the next frontier for us. We do collect a lot of that information in the monthly reports pan Quarterly Reports. We asked as a team. We need to standardize the information. Now if we put it all up without any management, it would be an over load and hard to understand. I get all of this. The fundamental question for the decisionmakers, albeit, you can do this under vision two, i can take back your division i authority. I cant, but i can probably count to six. Is this a first mile, last mile solution . Is it really working . We have equity issues in supervisor safais district. People are going to the hospital all over the city. Play toys at fishermans wharf. What is the objective analysis and criteria that says this is a really Good Transportation solution . Well, those are greatkies. Your point is well great questions. It is of concern to us. We want to make sure this is helping m. T. A. Meet equity goals. That is why we are looking to update some of the requirements with the next go around. We have done a survey go ahead. I am sorry. I want to stop you and drill down on what chair peskin was saying. He is asking you to give your insight. Is this program really working . What type of program is it . It is obvious we have permitted a program with a certain number of these on the street. There is policing issues. What transportation objective . That is the question i want to hear answered. What transportation objective are these scooters meeting, in your opinion . Let me preface that question by saying my apologies. I am the supervisor who created the legislation that puts this upon you and your agency. There is no wrong answer to your response. Thank you. I know jamie is on the analytical side of the house. A key metric shifting ride from single occupancy vehicle. We saw 40 mode shift in our survey under the pilot program. That was a keynotable shift for us at the agency. Does that mean that that is also a mode shift from muni . We can share the staff report and do evaluation of the pilot. There was some small shift from muni. We saw a much larger trip being taken to and from muni. Fundamentally where we see the value in the program. I will say i dont know where the program will be two years from now, five years from now. Right now the value is that people have been using it instead of taxis which we see transportation benefits there. As we look at our current Transit System and the transportation recovery with the challenges that muni service is facing. Supplementing the muni service is an opportunity. There are a lot of challenges. The points on distribution are welltaken. We have had equitable distribution since the beginning of the program. The outcomes on the street have not matched the intentions. We are looking to redo the requirements again because we do not see what we want. Mr. Parks, can i call on myself . Go ahead. The three companies permitted are owned by what interests . Speed is owned by. [indiscernable] stop. Who is burt . Burt is a Scooter Company. When we get into this Venture Capital i do not know who owns the companies. It is a multibillion dollar company. Started by the people who came from uber. Go ahead. Lime is owned by lime. There is some complicated interests with uber related to the purchase of jump and a controlling interest from ford. The nature of the ownership of the companies is complicated and difficult to keep clear. Are these companies that care about geographic distribution, equity, companies that need to have a city that enforces against them with a strong hand, yes or no . They need policy guidance and enforcement from San Francisco to meet our goal. Good answer. Supervisor safai. Thank you, mr. Chair. I have more questions. We spent a lot of time talking today about further accountability on behalf of s. F. M. T. A. For these companies. What i want to know as part of the permitting process do you ask the companies to hold themselves accountable and customers accountable. If someone is not wearing a helmet, not following the rules, riding on the walk. Whatever the issues are, are the companies themselves policing or for lack of a better word, holding customers accountable. Are you asking them to hold customers accountable . Yes. We have a number of permit terms and conditions that relate to customer accountability. One of the reporting requirements is that each company, each permittee has to submit a complaint database. They need to let us know how many complaints they have received and the status of that complaint and how they held the customer accountable. Yes, that is of importance to us and that is a requirement. What about one of th the this we hear the most about is when the scooters are parked. Are you all asking how many complaints that these Companies Receive themselves about their scooters parked and where and not necessarily returned to the appropriate place . We ask for all types of complaints. That is a common complaint. Unfortunately we have a mechanism to enforce them. That is 100 citation for each scooter improperly parked. How many of those citations have you issued . We issued over i think 275,000 we collected as it pertains to improperly parked scooters. I will take a look to make sure i dont give you an incorrect number. We have issued 3500 citations in this permit program. That is on slide six in the lower righthand corner. You can see the parking citations. You will note the gap that is related to the shelterinplace order. We had the on Street Enforcement Team giving Disaster Service work during the early days there so we did have a gap in enforcement related to support and Disaster Service work. Is there a particular company with a worse track record . We issued the most citations to lime. Lime has consistently had the most scooters on the street. I am seeing a pattern of behavior. I want to point out from this presentation today. Company circumventing labor harmony, company that has had the most issues of compliance, yet we recently doubled the number and allowed them to double the number of scooters on the street. We allowed them to expand with the purchase. I feel like from what i have heard today they saw some of the changes you are going to make in the program and holding these companies more accountable. I think there should be a connection between number of citations and Rewarding Companies to continue to be part of the process. 3500 citations issued and the majority going to one company, it seems to me one company is continuing to do the bare minimum. The bare min bare minimum. I havent seen many of those scooters in my district. I can tell you right now i dont see lime. I said that is already an issue. Along with citations along with labor practices. That is a problem for this supervisor. I think those are all things that should be considered. When are you going to be crafting and presenting your r. F. P. To the m. T. A. Board . It is a permit process, and we are working on some changes as we went through in the presentation. Those changes we are intending to spring before the m. T. A. Board in middecember. Updates to the transportation code. It is not an r. F. P. It is a permit process. No longer temporary, it is permanent . Permits issued up to one year if the m. T. A. Board approves the recommendation to approve the permits up to two years, that would be the timeframe. It is one or two year permit. It is a buffer present process. Different process. The transportation code will be considered in middecember. The elements of the application process will be updated as appropriate and issued in january so they will be the chance for interested parties to apply to let m. T. A. Know how they will meet our standards and help us meet our goals. Your point, the application itself has a detailed scoring criteria as well. We havent figured out the metrics for the rounds yet. In the past we had 66 separate criteria each application was scored on. A lot of points you are correctly raising today are things we can take into account in the scoring criteria for those applications. I feel like in the beginning this started off as Companies Just completely disregarding our local laws or attempting to work with us. We stopped that process. Put the permit process in place. It sounds like we have one actor. I know for a fact one actor repeatedly worked to meet the principals of labor harmony, working with fulltime employees, havent heard any real complaints, work to deploy their scooters in communities of concern. Then we have another company doubled in size that is consistently having citations and fines, working around the labor harmony practices and not represented of communities of concern. What is your plan to address that and ensure in the next round of permits you are going to have enforcement . I heard the ability to sum airily suspend but i would also ask that you all take a strong look at increasing the criteria so we are not rewarding bad behavior. These permits are about this fire in the spring. I would hope that when we go the next round of permits that you all are working to ensure that we are not rewarding or giving out permits to people consistently regarding our laws and our attempt to achieve fair labor practices along with dealing with communities of concern. Not to mention in the next two weeks we will have results from the investigation from the fire which could tell us a lot more about one particular company. Thank you, vicechairman. We have been hearing this for a little bit of time. I have a meeting at 4 00, which is in 12 minutes. I wanted them to answer the question with regard to these practices, this behavior and moving forward with the next round of permits. Ms. Torren, you are doing a great job of getting the wild west under control and you have done that remarkably well. I say that with all sincerity. The companies were complete aberrational behaviorists at the beginning. Some of them have been better than others. Lime not so much. We will get to the bottom of the fire. They have not been great players in our society. Having said that, to the extent this is really a good solution, i embrace it. I have been clear about that from the beginning. If these folks do not adapt to modern era, let me be abundantly clear, i am the author of the division i of the transportation Code Amendment which i could rescinds. It will end badly for the company. I dont want to take away my division i stuff and you and your board have to proceed very carefully on division ii. That is what this hearing is about. I have never spoken to supervisor safai about this until this meeting, not onetime or one second. If scoot and spin and lime are not listening. In our last hearing did not go real well with those folks who were hiding the numbers, that is the way they have always behaved. If you want to operate in this town you have got to be transparent, collaborate and fundamentally be equitable. That means district 10 and 11. That is year. The funny thing is my district has compliance issues because we are over run. Supervisor safais district has issues because they cannot find one. Supervisor waltons district has them clustered at one place because that is the way the rich Venture Capitalists think they will comply with your urgency or your division ii admonitions. Here is the deal, lime, spin, get it or get out. Supervisor safai. Thank you, chairman. I will be brief, supervisor safai. We are looking at compliance. It is very important. We consider at this point the companies are in compliance. If we do get information or if we verify information or we work to verify and find out that it is not correct, we will certainly follow up. All of your feedback will be rolled into the next round of permit issuance. This is a very helpful hearing for us, and we take it very seriously. We take our division ii responsibilities very seriously and point welltaken that it is important for those that are issued permits that they understand what our goals as a city are and that they must comply. All of this is very important to us, and we are working on following up. We will follow up with specifics and continue to i want to say for the record based on the information today and all that you have presented i dont believe one company in particular has been specifically in compliance. I want to say when it comes to meeting the labor harmony, communities of concern, citations, overwhelming number. If you have the ability to suspend that toed all would be grounds to suspend the permit. When you come up with the new criteria that it is abundantly clear the bar will be raised. Not just because someone has 2000 permits today or 1,000 tomorrow. The bar needs raised as to chair peskins points to allow them to continue to operate in this environment. That is the last thing i will say. Thank you, chair peskin. And thank you to supervisor safai calling the hearing. I have a lot of questions. I know that time is short here. I just want to echo the concerns raised. I have a specific question about the process that you have described about the permitting and it is one year permits now looking when those expire at the possibility of per year permits . Given the significant concerns raised, the broad range of them. I wont repeat them all. Have you considered proposing this as something shorter than two year extensions or in certain cases, particularly if they are companies that are maybe dont warrant renewal at all. There may be companies on the fence where either some shorter renewal might be appropriate or probationary renewal revoked upon a finding of further violation. Can you shed light on why you are proposing two year permits to the board . Our intent is not to issue two year permits, to increase maximum flexibility. Option to extend rather than two year permit. We feel the option to extend six or nine months initially with option to extend later based on good behavior. If we dont exercise that option the permit expires. That is another tool for compliance. It is option to expand and not longer permit. Are we viewing the potential renewal coming up as an extension that could be denied the behavior that is not good . There is a right here of renewal with potential consequences later. It is a new process entirely. Companies will apply and have to meet our criteria. The fact you have a permit today does not guarantee a permit in the future. We saw that from the pilot to the permanent. Not all companies that operated under the pilot got an i mitt. It permit. It is independent process. Real quickly, what you were saying earlier about two of the three companies suspended operations during early shelterinplace. Was that a violation of any rules of the program . Are they free to continue or discontinue service as they move forward in the next phase . Scooters are essential as part of the transportation network. It was new for us and short term. We hadnt anticipated this type of event occurring. I dont think anyone had. You know, we may want to look to that to build in something going forward. It was not violation. It was a short period and they restarted operations. How long was it for . I think a couple months. They started backup in may. They were ramping up in may and june. One other thing to clarify. You mentioned about muni and some of the Movement Mode shift from muni as being limited or minimal or smaller. Can you quantify that and within that number of folks, how much is replacing a muni trip versus to and from the muni stop . It was a year and a half ago. We did not do one this year because of the pandemic. We did collect whether or not people there were those people that took the scooter instead of muni. More people that took a scooter to muni and supplemented the muni trip. It was a met positive for muni service. It was give and take. Some people used it instead of muni. Others used it to get to muni. We can share the specifics of the evaluation report which goes through the details of the survey. I see a huge difference this is effectively while we have our drastically reduced muni service if we are using this as a crutch to replace lines through the private companies versus something that is actually helping people get to and from muni to the point that those are night and day to me. We found and i will put up the number. 34 used scooters to get to or from Public Transit. 28 of respondents stated they would not have taken transit at all if a scooter wasnt available. That is the user report. They may not have perfect knowledge what they would or wouldnt have done. It is a substantial update. Jamie, the margin of error is what . We had almost 2000 responses. It is not a question of having enough responses. It is whether or not they were accurate and what they would have done if there was not a scooter available . It is are they responding to the survey . That is really important. Can you do the numbers at a high level again . Sure. We had 36 said they would have taken uber or lift if not for scooters. 34 said they used scooters to get to or from Public Transit. 28 of people said they would not have taken transit at all if a scooter wasnt be available. 31 of users said they would have walked if not for the scooter. It is disheartening to think scooters are taking away from walking trips. You can that in any number of ways. This would be a fun conversati conversation. Conversation. They are part of what is going to the board now . They would not need to be approved by the mta board. Theres something that is theres something that staff put together and were happy to share that with individuals offices before we publish it but its not something that requires approval by the mta board for us to change the retirement. Great. I will wrapup. Thank you. Just a final comment just on the labor issues that we were discussing and the representations being made by the companies whether its certain things should be under percentage. Personality of perjury. I would like language for liabilities and truthful and i also dont think the lack of that date they have any aspects of this program in their application to a Government Agency for a license and they are not free from liability Enforcement Actions whether they said its under penalty of purge on and i am very troubled by some of what commissioner safai said and what folks in the Labor Community said around some of the labor practices being in play, which are not consistent of labor harmony requirements and objectives of the program and some of this i think is dating back to the summer and i want to make sure we have a robust system of investigating and acting on those complaints. With that, ill wrap it up again with thank you so supervisor safai for calling this hearing. Thank you supervisor preston and thank you ms. Torez and lets open this up for Public Comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on item number 3 . Thank you mr. Chair. We have james from dp checking to see the status of the callers and it looks like we have 10 listeners with eight in queue. James, if you can unmute the first speaker, please. First speaker, please. Hello, thank you all so much for your time today and for your detailed conversation. Im speaking on behalf of the San Francisco chamber of commerce. At the chamber, weve had the pleasure of working with sense and theyre the only Scooter Company pardon me nerring with the chamber of commerce and its a great member of work with as well as the only micro Mobility Company that was nominated as a finalist for business awards. Its also the company who consistently had a write a transportation option throughout the pandemic supplementing transit and reducing congestion in the city. We feel its imperative right now that we support safe modes of transportation during these unpress departmented times and its been a Great Community member and worked closely with the chamber and with labor and we support them and urge you to support their efforts as well. Thank you again for your time. Thank you. Who knew the chamber of commerce still exists, next speaker, please. Hello, everyone this is joe im a business agent with steam sters local 665 and i hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. Our principal officer is not able to make it today so im speaking on his behalf and a couple weeks bag i spoke on behalf of our local at a meeting asking to halt the increase of scooters until this meeting today. And that ask fell on deaf ears. Lime did not have labor harmony as previous stated and supervisor safai essentially clarified that with his question of Third Party Contractors and at the end of the day, they were given a reward for ignoring labor harmony provisions in the permit and handed additional scooters and everyone knows they just spent, i dont know, 200 million to buy prop 22 and doing that it proved that they can buy what they want and undermine dignity of workers with that proposition and we cannot allow uber to buy San Francisco here and this is not just about lime but every company ultimately must legitimately prove they have labor harmony and their growth had be hinnered not helped as just happened. A company like spin that has followed the rules, they have labor harmony theyre at a disadvantage because of these resent actions. From the teamsters, our position are ask at this point is you know, forward for the labor harmony within the permit to be fulfilled they must be required to hire employee directly not through thirdparty hiring agencies. Thats all i have. Thank you for the time. Next speaker, please. Caller, you are on the line. Caller hello, my name is michael. Im working for spin for a couple of months now. I used to work for uber, as an independent contractor but really the hours and the pay wasnt consistent and since i joined them i have been able to work full time and i received full benefits and also become part of the junior which provides the job security that i need at this time. And that would be all for me. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Hi. I just wanted to say that i feel the mta should issue a new rfp so all the companies can be held accountable resulting in better behavior by the vendors, particularly lime. Who seem to think that permit requirements are nearly suggestions and lime has the worse compliance record and a terrible labor record and theyre getting rewarded for this awful behavior. You know, this all points to uber and lyme influencing the department to their lobbyist and finding the demonstrated several times they do not play by the rules so if theyre getting a permit, its clear the bar is too low. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker, please. Caller hi, this is boob and im with scoot and i just did want to call in. I think really what i want to say is thank you for this hearing. It was really great to hear all the issues out there and i think that we at scoot are very, very interested and listening and learning and understanding everything. I do want to say that this program has worked. Scooters really do replace car trips and i think to the point supervisor peskin made about muni, is that the scooters can really 47t help with public trat and help with mode shift. If you have a great public Transit System, scooters, bikes, if its safe to walk the streets, those are the things that keep people from deciding to jump in a car and i just want to say that i think that sfmta, taxi Accessible Services i worked with them for 10 years and for more years on the motor scooter guide thats been terrific and theyve juggled a hot potato well and ive enjoyed working with them and i hope you will work with them into the future. Thank you, everybody. Hold on just a second. To the speaker, you said you worked for which company . I work for scoot. Got it. Right. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear for the record. Next speaker, please. Caller hi, this is wendy and im with the mission atma and we just started as of three weeks ago, a program for our low income employees at mission bay with in access programs. The objective really is to make available more transport options for those essential workers and basically weve had 16 people sign up in the first two and a half weeks for the program and every single one of them is in the healthcare arena in mission bay so that goes to show that the essential workers are really looking for an alternative and whether its what theyre doing shift work or Public Transit and our shuttles are not running or they dont feel savor whatever so were very, very excited and weve had a good response and were just launching so we think this is a very valuable program particularly in the pandemic. And beyond that we think there will be a real value to the program like this. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public for Public Comment . We have three callers left. Next speaker, please. Three. Ok. Great. Thank you. Caller hi, good afternoon. This is alex april and im here on behalf of spin, one of the Scooter Companies. Id like to thank the board of supervisors and mta for all of your continued work on supporting the powered Scooter Share Program during this difficult and uncertain time. Spin proud to deployed our scooters throughout San Francisco including all communities of concern since last october when we launch frommed. As mentioned, spin was the only provider to continue service in San Francisco without disruption during the covid19 pandemic this year. They are launched last october weve really lived up to our permit promises to curb sidewalk writing and improper parking and we utilized incomes complaints and checked photos and submitted by users and take pictures at the end of their ride so to date, weve cited 3,815 users and have suspended 59 accounts for failure to park or ride properly. So our efforts have proven to be effective and spin has the least amount of citations issued by sfmta or any Scooter Company. Weve also executed on our labor promises by signing and following through on our labor Peace Agreement with teamsters local 665 and our workers voted to represent last december and recently signing and onto the collective Bargaining Agreement the first of its kind in the scooter share industry. So you know, spin is really committed to continuing to provide good, quality job without making our employee settle for independent contractor status or work for Third Party Staffing agency thats provide inconsistent hours and limited to no actual benefits. We appreciate the opportunity to give Public Health today and appreciate the conversations today, let me know if you have any questions. Alex is my first name. April is my last name. Alex april, my apologize. Alex april, number one and i would like to refer this matter to the Government Audit Committee were in you are representative of your company will have to testify under penalty of perjury relative to everything that you represented but as i said earlier, i do believe that the conventional wisdom is that spin, on any number of levels, has operated maturely and in good faith with the community so i would like to conquer with yotoconcur with yo. Colleagues, are there any questions for alex april . Seeing none. Thank you for your testimony. Next speaker, please. Caller good afternoon, im calling regarding the scooter issues in the city of San Francisco. There is a great disparity between the scooter providers and the district 11 and i never find a scooter near my home. Especially during the pandemic ive been using scooters since its easier than taking the bus and im concerned about lime and their distribution around the city. With all know that lyme is zoned by uber and they do value their workers and he we believe in fair and equitable compensations and protections i urge you to make sure the sfmta revisits their contracts and programs with scooters around the city that implement a fair and honest process. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker. Mr. Chair, i have james from dp messaging that was the last caller. All right. Seeing no other members of the public for Public Comment, Public Comment is closed. Before i make a motion, i thank supervisor safai for bringing this. Let me be abundantly clear, this board can, and im quite sure, has more than the super majority to rescind the division amendments we gave the authority to regulate this matcher. I understand that annie thornily thought it was a bad idea. I think it was a good idea and i think the sfmta has done a relatively good job on it. Having said that, uber and all these other multinational Venture Capital funded corporations got to figure it out. Youve got to enforce, be fair, do equity on a racial basis and if you cant figure that out, i do believe that supervisor preston and safai and myself will rescind the division one authority that we gave to sfmta under division one. Having said that, i would like to call on vicechair safai. Thank you mr. Chair. I actually just got a text message from someone that was in the queue waiting to Public Comment that wasnt able to speak so if its all right with you, its just one person. If we can just reopen Public Comment so we can speak out i would appreciate that. Without objection well reopen Public Comment and i will ask for your cell phone records. First speaker, please. Go right ahead. Madam clerk. We have dt pulling up the person to unmute them and theyve been unmuted. Thank you. Caller thank you, my name is doug block and im a Teamsters Joint Council seven and thank you supervisor safai for bringing this item forward and for getting me back into the queue. Id like to gift a little history to some people starting with this boards unanimous support for labor harmony for commuter shuttle buses. That was not only about protecting workers but ensuring labor issues dont interfere with our residents and businesses and it became relevant when sfmta was developing the permit program for e scooters because as weve heard, not only with were the Companies Operating illegally in sf they were violating state labor laws. We reached out to all the companies at that time and move of them including lime and bird politely nodded and then walked out the door and went back to business as usual. Only one company has risen to the challenge and when do you see labor on the same tied as the chamber . You heard from the workers who were taking care even when the pandemic hit earlier this year and theyre district employees of spin and our members of the steam terse and contracting out with staffing you need to receive to the way to keep workers from joining together in union. To us, this is putting our money where our mouth is. If we value good Labor Relations in the city and our permit process should reflect that and we should reward good corporate behavior not the bad. Thank you, very much. Thank you mr. Black, that was no spin whatsoever. Is there any other members of the public who would like to comment on this item . Thank you mr. Chair. There are no more callers. Ok. Seeing that Public Comment is closed again. Any final words from vicechair safai . Thank you, i appreciate your support, chair peskin. I know that you have quite a bit of history in this area and as you said, article, these articles were conveyed from the board of supervisors so the sfmta with trust. I also agree and i think the team has done as best a job as they can under the circumstances but i do want to say some of the stuff has been very clear that we need to raise the bar. We need to be clear in terms of how were going to achieve labor harmony and ask the companies to achieve those goals and how were going to distribute and deploy these scooters all over San Francisco and its a value that we have. How we hold them accountable and ask them to hold their customers accountable and we shouldnt be in the business of rewarding and allowing to expand these permits otherwise what are these tap address there for so i look forward to having the draft permits sent back to our office for the conversation of the sfmta and asking them to ensure that since they are having by weeklweekly meetings and they he information that shows these companies should meet the tenants of labor harmony as well as the other things weve listed out today, when do you have the ability to suspend permits, you need to use that tool. Otherwise, we might have to do exactly what supervisor peskin has said which is bring this authority back to the board and be the bad guy. I do agree, 40 is a significant number of respondents that would be not using sungel occupancy vehicles as a former transportation so thats a significant number statistically that are not using vehicles, which i think is a shared goal of this city. Which need to do better in holding them accountability and we can do that collectively. So thats it, i appreciate it. What i would say is maybe we can continue this item to the call of the chair or you are going to transfer it over to the dao, thats fine. You can do that as well. I do want the item to come back and have an update if these entities will go to if this item goes in front of the sfmta board of directors. Understood mr. Vicechairman. Supervisor preston, any comments before we close this thing out . No. All right. So, id like to make a motion to duplicate the file, which i can do in my sole and absolute right and then id like to make a motion to move it to the Oversight Committee which committee has the power to make individuals and companies testified under penalty of perjury. On that motion, a roll call please, madam clerk. [roll call vote] so weve duplicated the file and on the motion wait, that would be the motion to send the duplicated file inform the government audit and Oversight Committee. On the motion as stated [roll call vote] i have three ayes. I would like to continue the motion that remains in committee to the call of the rare and on that motion a role call roll ca. Supervisor preston. Aye. Supervisor safai. Aye. Supervisor peskin. Aye. You have three ayes. They gave us the bird and now were back in the game with that, we are adjourned. And supervisor walton, our clerk is john carroll and i, of course, want to thank the folks at sfg tv for staffing this meeting, as well as board of supervisors operations it for their hard work. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements . Yes, thank you very much, mr. Chair. In order to protect the public, Board Members and City Employees during the covid19 Health Emergency, the room is closed. This is taken pursuant to all various local and state federal orders, declarations and directives. Committee members will attend this meeting through Video Conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present in our chamber. Public comment will be available for each item on this agenda, both San Francisco cable channel 26 and sf gov tv are scrolling a callin number across the screen. It will be available by phone by calling 14156550001, and once youve connected youll be prompted to enter the meeting id, 1462251223. Following that you will press the pound symbol twice to be connected to the meeting. When you are connected you will hear the meeting discussions but your line will be muted and in a listening mode only. When your item of interest comes up on our agenda, dial star followed by 3 to be added to the speaker line if you wish to speak to that item. The system prompt will indicate that you have raised your hand. Please wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted and you may then begin your comments. Call from a quiet location, turn down your television, radio or streaming device. Everyone must account for potential time delays and speaking discrepancieses that we may encounter between the live coverage and streaming. Alternatively, you may submit Public Comments in either of the following ways. You may email me, clerk of the committee. My email address is john. Ca rroll sfgov. Org. If you submit that comment by email, i will add the comment to the public file for each of the items you comment on. You can send them by u. S. Postal service. The Clerks Office is 1 dr. Carleton b. Goodlet place, room 244. This information is available on the front of the agenda as well for your reference. Items acted upon today will appear on the agenda of december 1, 2020, unless otherwise stated. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Please call our first item. Agenda item no. 1 is a hearing to discuss the San Francisco housing conservativeship preliminary evaluation report. Members of the public who wish to provide Public Comment on this hearing should call the Public Comment number, 14156550001. Enter todays meeting id, 1462251223. Press the pound symbol twice to connect to the meeting and then press the star key. The system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. Please wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted and you may then begin your comments. Mr. Chair . The chair so, colleagues, this has been a very long hearing. We began it back in june, and to refresh everyones memory, in june i was concerned that the my office had heard concerns about the fact that the 1045 program which the city had opted into about a year prior at that point, or more than a year prior, had still not resulted in a single petition for an sb1045 conservatorship. We began this hearing in june to understand what the reasons for the delay were and received assurances from Public Health and the office of the public conservator had made progress, that they had been delayed by covid and other things, but they were on the cusp of, in fact, being able to bring a petition. We had them back in july and again heard that they were making progress but had not yet been able to identify a candidate or bring a petition. We skipped august. We decided to give them a little bit of time and had them back in september, and september again heard much the same, that they were making progress but still had not quite gotten around to bringing a petition. At that september meeting i decided again to give them, you know, a little more time until today, november. Its been basically two months since then, six months since we had our hearing because it had taken seemingly far too long, six months ago, to bring a single petition under sb1045. I said in september that if the petition had not been filed petition had not been filed by the date of this hearing that i would no longer be berating the staff in these departments and i would want to hear from the directors, from grant colfax and trent lohr, and in fact here we are november 12, not a single one has been filed, and so i do think it begs a deeper question about what we are even doing with this program if we intend to pursue it, if not why not, and what we are going to do about the population of folks that sb1045 was supposed to address. Unfortunately director colfax is not able to be here today, and so i do want to hear from him, and i will be making a motion to continue this hearing to our next regular meeting in december where we will be i hope hearing from directors colfax and lohr about sb1045 implementation and the issues that the citys difficulties in implementing this very Small Program raises. So ill make that motion. We will need to take Public Comment on the motion, or on the continuance. Is there no comments from colleagues, which i do not see, lets open this up to Public Comment. Thank you, mr. Chair. Do we have any callers in the queue for this agenda item one. For those already connected to our meeting via phone, please press star followed by 3 at this time if you wish to speak on agenda item no. 1. For those already on hold in the queue, please wait until you are prompted to begin. You will hear a prompt that informs you your line has been unmuted. For those watching our meeting on cable channel 26 or streaming item, please call in now if you wish to speak on this item. That would be by dialing 14156550001, enter the meeting id for todays meeting, which is 1462251223, press pound and then star three to speak. Could you connect us to our first caller . Operator there are no callers in the queue. I will not say a few more things about Public Comment and i will close Public Comment. I have made a motion. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. On the motion offered by chair mandleman, that this hearing be continued to the date of december 10 meeting, that being the next committee meeting. Vice chair stephanie . Aye. Member walton . Aye. Supervisor mandelman . Aye. The motion passes. We can call our next item. Agenda item no. 2 is an ordinance amending the health code to prohibit smoking in all dwelling units in multihousing complexes containing three or more units and all common areas. To remove the exception for child care facilities located in private homes, to require the department of Public Health to initiate a Public Information campaign to raise awareness of the smoking prohibition, to require the department of Public Health to initiate the imposition of the suspend the provision of the health code by this ordinance which requires owners or managers of multiunit housing complexes to provide certain disclosures regarding whether smoking is authorized in certain units. And affirming the determination provided by the Planning Department. Members of the public who wish to provide public on this ordinance should call the Public Comment number. I will repeat it. 14156550001. After youve connected to that call, enter todays meeting id. Todays meeting id is 1462251225. Press pound twice and then star and then three to enter the queue to speak. A system prompt will indicate that you have raised your hand. Please wait until the system indicates that your line has been unmuted. That will be your opportunity to provide your Public Comment on this agenda item. Mr. Chair . The chair thank you, mr. Clerk. President ye, i believe you are here. Yes, i am. Thank you. Take it away. Thank you, chair maendelman. Thank you for hearing me on this item today. I am joining you all to discuss legislation to protect residents of multiunit housing from the Harmful Health impacts of Secondhand Smoke. I am proud to join my to be joined by my colleagues, supervisor walton and fur in sponsoring this legislation. Today we are discussing the right of our residents to breathe clean air. Many decades ago people did not have the right anywhere to breathe clean air, not restaurants, not bars, not Sports Events, not common areas and not on public transportation. Maybe some people are old enough to remember these things. When science proved there was a link between Secondhand Smoke and Health Impacts, when people breathing the Secondhand Smoke, things changed. Today we have laws prohibiting smoking in most of these situations. We can enjoy without having to breathe in smoke. We can participate in large crowd venues like concerts and Sports Events without worrying about the harmful effects of Secondhand Smoke. I was alerted and reminded that San Francisco has fallen behind many cities in enacting policies to protect our most vulnerable from Secondhand Smoke, a mother with an infant. She contacted my Office Asking for help because her infant who was subjected to Secondhand Smoke from her neighbors and Health Impact this would have on her infant. Our reply to her at the time was its the sad state for our residents, but thats the policy of the city, which is currently in San Francisco if you live in multiunit building you do not have the right to breathe clean air, unlike many cities throughout california. I would like to thank the Public Health experts and advocates who worked with our office to ensure that the policy will be effective, including San Francisco tobacco free coalition, researchers at the university of california San Francisco, the heart and wellness association, Bay Area Community resources, americans for nonsmokers rights, and the american cancer society. In january we held a hearing. That seems so long ago now, but it was in the middle of january, before the pandemic, at this committee on the Health Impacts of Secondhand Smoke. We heard from Public Health experts from Secondhand Smoke exposure was skyrocketing in recent years. We also heard residents from multiunit housing were particularly at risk from exposure. When my office was contacted by those suffering from Secondhand Smoke, including those with Chronic Health issues and families with small children, we looked into that, as i mentioned before. And here are the facts about smoking. Smoking is the single most preventable cause of disease and death in the united states. Its responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year. Secondhand smoke alone is responsible for more than 41,000 deaths per year and causes cancer, lung disease and and heart functions. It also causes increased health risks to children, seniors and those with existing health issues. Secondhand smoke can cause permanent damage to childrens growing lungs, pneumonia, ear infections, sudden infant death syndrome, and can make asthma attacks more frequent and more severe. Unfortunately home is one of the most common places where we can be exposed to Secondhand Smoke. Residents of multiunit housing are more likely to be regularly expos exposed. Our health code prohibits smoking in common areas, as mentioned before. This legislation would amend the health code to prohibit smoking inside owneroccupied and rented units of multiunit housing complex complexes of three or more units. It would require that signage be posted in common areas and residents are notified as a policy by the Building Owner or manager. The department of Public Health conducting a Public Information campaign to raise awareness of the policy and to share information about available Smoking Cessation resources to support residents addicted to nicotine. Half of san franciscans live in multiunit housing. Residents of multiunit housing are likely to be people of color and will more likely be lowincome. Exposure to Secondhand Smoke in the homes Amplifies Health Inequities and disproportionately impacts our most Vulnerable Community members. By granting relief to residents living every day with Secondhand Smoke in their homes is more important than ever as we continue to battle covid19 pandemic and prepare for a flu season. We know that Secondhand Smoke exacerbates the impacts of many respiratory illnesses. During this time, we have asked San Francisco to stay at home to slow the spread of covid19 and asked children to go to school remotely, we know there are san franciscans who cant escape the smoke in their homes during the day and arent able to breathe clean air. If i am a parent of a child who suffers from asthma or a person recovering from covid19, right now i get no help at all if a neighbor is smoking every day right next door or downstairs. Its legal for everyone to smoke inside their own unit regardless of the serious and Dangerous Health consequences. We should not prioritize to smoke over the right to breathe smokefree air. This is simply unacceptable. I also want to say that we know there may be some concerns surrounding unintended impacts that a smokefree housing policy can have on tenants addicted to nicotine, specifically there are concerns around how this policy could be misused to evict tenants. That is why this ordinance specifically states that violation of the policy is not grounds for eviction. Over the past ten years, 63 cities and counties in california have adopted 100 smokefree multiunit housing policies. Im hopeful that these policies will increasingly become the norm. In San Francisco we have against tobacco and Secondhand Smoke to protect the health of our communities. We can and should continue to protect our most vulnerable communities from this devastating Health Impacts of smoking. There are a few nonsubstantive amendments i would like to propose today. My office has shared hes amendments with all the members of the my office has shared the amendments with all the members of the committee. First, the health code currently prohibits smoking in enclosed common areas of buildings that have two or more units. This ordinance we introduced would change the law about smoking in all buildings with three or more units. This will clarify that smoking will continue to be prohibited in common areas of twounit buildings. Second, we would like to add language that clarifies the intent of the legislation to prohibit smoking in all housing used to provide child care, including child care facilities that operate in singlehome families or duplexes. Third, we would like to include an exception that would allow for the use of medical marijuana in multiunit housing. And finally we would like to include clarifying language to speak that not only is violation of any part of this ordinance not grounds for eviction but existing tenancy to prohibit smoking in a tenants unit. So chair mandelman, i hope that the committee can adopt these amendments later, but before you take action, i would like to bring up a few presenters. Waynt to thank the department of Public Health i want to thank the department of Public Health, marina speegel from the tobacco project and jennifer colliver from the Environmental Health branch for joining us today. I believe that they are here and are prepared to share a brief presentation with us. I hope theyre here. I cant see them. Im here. This is jen and marina is here too. Shell probably be coming on in a second, and shell start the presentation. Good morning, supervisors and everyone. Let me see. We have prepared a presentation for you this morning. Can you see the screen, the presentation on screen . Yes. Fantastic. Well, good morning, supervisor mandelman, walton, stefani and others. I am the acting Community Engagement lead for the tobacco free project and our program is part of a Community Health equity and Promotion Branch within the department of Public Health. First we wanted to thank you for your leadership in addressing the leading cause of preventable deaths through tobacco prevention policies and programs, including policies such as prohibition of unauthorized ecigarettes, so sales and others in the past. Your support continues to be a leader in implementing laws that protect communities, especially people of color, youth and lowincome communities ft. Thank you for the opportunity to prevent to you about the outcomes based on Secondhand Smoke for san franciscans. Before i begin, i wanted to emphasize that we consider that smoke is smoke, and when we talk about Secondhand Smoke exposure to smoke, we will be talking about both traditional tobaccos, Secondhand Smoke, so such as from cigarettes or cigar smoke, as well as secondhand aerosol exposure from ecigarettes and cannabis smoke. First we wanted to share with you what proportion of san franciscans are smoking basing our use in cannabis. Our most recent data is from 2018, so these data show the smoking rates among adults and young people has not changed much over the years. So approximately 12 of adults currently smoke in San Francisco, and approximately six and a half percent of sfunh High School Students reported smoking, and thats despite the laws prohibiting sales of tobacco to anyone under 21. So those rates have not changed. On the other hand, more students than adults have ever tried an ecigarette, and this rate has been increasing over the years for both groups. Its unclear how many adults currently use ecigarettes. However, the portion of students who currently use reports using ecigarettes doubled over the last couple of years, so from 2017 to 2018. Lastly youll see that about six out of ten adults have ever tried cannabis and almost tlae out of ten sfusd students have ever used cannabis. The good news about the majority of san franciscan adults and youth who do not smoke or use ecigarettes. This means we have been doing a great job in San Francisco protecting and preventing adults and young people from using highly addictive product, especially traditional cigarettes. That said, we do still see some tobacco use disparities. So as youll see in our data in the graph on the left, these data are a little bit older than the previous slide, and the overall tobacco use rate does appear lower. Generally for this particular data we think its because the time period is different and the sample size is different. The 2018 data that you saw previously comes from a more recent oversampling of the California Health Information Survey data, so its probably a little bit more accurate than these older data. So despite the fact that these data are a little older, i wanted to share this chart to demonstrate the disparity in fwk use rates between the two socioeconomic groups in our cities. So the data showed that the lowerincome folks living at below 200 federal Poverty Level tend to smoke almost twice the rate than their more financially secure peers. Lowincome residents also have less access to health care and are more likely to suffer from conditions such as asthma that are worsened by Secondhand Smoke exposure. Data does point to racial and ethnic disparities in tobacco exists as well. As you see in the graph on the right, black women are significantly more likely to smoke before or during preg pregnancy in the city of San Francisco, and while the local data are not as easily available on specific tobacco use rates, we know that nationwide africanamericans and American Indians smoke at significantly higher rates than their peers. So tobacco use is also much more prevalent in the lgtb community, especially the trans gender unit, and among those suffering from Mental Illness and have a history of substance use. Currently we dont have recent population level data on Secondhand Smoke exposure specific to San Francisco, but we do have the following statewide data for adults and High School Students. More than half of california adults reported being exposed to Secondhand Smoke tobacco smoke in the last two weeks, and this figure has not changed over the years. So california High School Students, one in three reported being exposed to each type of Secondhand Smoke in the last 30 days. And that happens usually in the room or in the car. Notably there has been also an increase in recorded exposure to ecigarette aerosol and cannabis smoke among adults, and its likely that these statewide trends are similar in San Francisco. And Secondhand Smoke exposure also has documented disparities nationally and locally. Centers for Disease Control study show that about 40 of children nationwide are exposed to Secondhand Smoke from cigarettes however that number is much higher at black and African American children at seven out of ten. Children exposed to Secondhand Smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, ear problems and more severe asthma symptoms. Black and African American children, filipino children are twice as likely to be diagnosed with asthma by middle school than their white peers. The home is the main place they are exposed to Secondhand Smoke. Among the children admitted to the zuckerberg San Francisco general hospitals pediatric and patient units in 2019, one in five were exposed to Secondhand Smoke in their homes. An additional 9 reported being exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke. Again as we dive into the specific harms and types of Secondhand Smoke, i want to stress that there is no riskfree level of Secondhand Smoke. All three types of Secondhand Smoke harm the user and others through shortterm and longterm exposure. The 50th anniversary Surgeon Generals report on smoking and health released in 2014 stated that smoking is the single most preventable cause of disease and death and that scientists indicate there is no riskfree level of exposure. Secondhand cigarette smoke contains hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic including many different chemicals. Secondhand cigarette smoke is also a known cause of disease, so not just a contributor to worsening symptoms but an actual cause of disease, including lung cancer, coronary disease, stroke in healthy nonsmokers. Breathing Secondhand Smoke for a short amount of time can have immediate effects on the cardiovascular system. Concentrations of cancercausing and toxic chemicals in Secondhand Smoke and nicotine are the same in Secondhand Smoke as in the smoke inhaled by smokers themselves. Exposure to the Secondhand Smoke is also correlated with more er visits and more hospital stays among adults and cost billions of dollars per year in health care in the u. S. Nationwide. In 2010, the annual Health Care Cost attributable to Secondhand Smoke exposure at home were up to 1. 9 billion. So often people think that ecigarette vape is harmless, but we want to emphasize that it isnt. It is not water vapour, as advertised when ecigarettes first came on the markets. In most cases it is a solution which poses health risks similar to cigarette smoke. Ecigarette aerosol most commonly contains nicotine and nanoparticles of benzene and lead and are more easily and deeply breathed in due to their tiny, tiny size. Studies have shown that nonsmoerks exposed to ecigarette aerosols absorb similar levels of nicotine to those who are exposed to cigarette smoke. Breathing secondhand ecigarette aerosol can result in Actual Development of asthma in children and is damaging to the lung tissue and the blood vessels. Mostly we wanted to talk about the harms of Secondhand Smoke cannabis smoke. Secondhand cannabis smoke contains more than 33 other identified toxins. Similar to secondhand tobacco smoke, cannabis smoke contains chemical constituents that may have harmful cardiovascular effects and may lead to heart attack and stroke. Children exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke in one study had detectible levels of thc in their blood streams which can impair the developing brain and nervous system and impact iq and memory. While only limited studies exist on the effects of second habd cannabis smoke on children, a recent Study Suggests an association between secondhand cannabis smoke exposure and increased emergency room visits with the latest issues, diagnosis of an ear infection, asthma or eczema in children under 14. Lastly i wanted to share with you the impacts of thirdhand smoke. Thirdhand smoke refers to the leftover particles from tobacco smoke and ecigarette air sol which cling to indoor surfaces long after smoking has stopped in the space and then can be resorbed by others entering the same space. Thirdhand smoke is a potential health hazard. It contains carcinogenic materials that over time presenting a hazard far after that smoker is gone. Thirdhand smoke remains months after nonsmokers have moved into units where smokers previously lived. It potentially poses the greatest dangers to infants and toddlers that crawl on rugs and furnishings and put things in their mouth that they shouldnt. Nonsmoking people who are exposed to thirdhand smoke have significantly higher nicotine and levels than those who have not been exposed to thirdhand smoke, and some research has shown that thirdhand smoke can damage humans cellular d. N. A. In multiunit housing, we just wanted to share some of these things that might be relevant to today. We know that people of color, young adults, lowincome residents and smokers are more likely to live in multiunit housing. In San Francisco more than half of residents live in multiunit housing with two or more units, 53 . A study has shown that San Francisco residents who live in buildings with five or more units are three and a half times more likely to report and residents of districts three and six reported being exposed to drifting Secondhand Smoke at much higher levels than residents in other districts according to the healthy Neighborhood Survey conducted in 2013. We spend the majority of our time in our homes, and as i mentioned previously, approximately half of the San Francisco residents with multiunit housing that has more than two units, so that includes condos, Public Housing and apartment buildings and duplexes. Secondhand smoke from a neighbor can easily seep through windows, cracks through the hallways and walls into others homes. Thirdhand smoke is also a concern, and so it is important to emphasize that opening windows, air ventilation, air conditioning, fans, h vac systems, none of those current practices in the home can completely eliminate exposure to Secondhand Smoke and ecigarette aerosol. With that, those are the data that we have to share with you today. I wanted to thank you for an opportunity to present to you, and im happy to answer any questions. The chair i dont see any questions on the roster. I mean, i guess so i will perhaps oh, there you are. Im sorry, i was on mute. Was that the only presentation . Or was there another one . I wasnt sure. Thats it for the tobacco free project. And i think supervisor walton has a question or a comment. Okay. Thank you, chair mandelman. I dont have a question. I guess i do. If thats the end of the presentations, i just wanted to make a comment. Is that the end of the presentations . Yes, it looks like it. Thanks. I just wanted to thank president yee for bringing this ordinance forward. We know the dangers of Secondhand Smoke as discussed not only in your comments, president yee, in the data, but also in the presentations, and i just wanted to thank you for bringing this forward. As you know, a lot of our concern in the beginning was about making sure that tenants would not be evicted and people would not use this as a grounds for eviction, and i just want to thank you for being thoughtful and making sure that we included language that specifically states that individuals cant be evicted because of this. But also stressing the importance of making sure that we do everything we can to keep people from having to inhale Secondhand Smoke because of what it does to folks in our communities and our residents, and so thank you for bringing this forward. I was happy to cosponsor, and were going to continue to do what we can to let people know that smoke does not just affect them, and we need to avoid Secondhand Smoke and come up with the measures and policies to do that. So thank you so much. The chair thank you, supervisor walton. I guess i do have if thats the end of the presentations, i also have well, i do have some questions. And i appreciate that the legislation provides that smoking that the violations of the ordinance cant be the basis for an eviction. And i just want to be clear on what the enforcement mechanism is. It looks like the department of Public Health is tasked with issuing notices of violation. So if someone is, in fact, smoking in their department, dph and there were complaints, the dph would issue a notice of violation. If the person did not cure that, then there would be administrative penalties i think of up to 1,000 a day . Hmm. That is correct, if youd like me to answer. This is jen calowert with terminal health. That is how it is written. I think that its theres still room to kind of figure out what that would look like. To try to determine if someone is actually in violation is probably the biggest question that we have to start thinking about, yeah. The chair and the owner of the building, would the owner of the building be in violation if tenants were smoking in their units . I might ask it is my understanding that it doesnt read that way, but maybe, you know, following up with the other you know, supervisor yee and the City Attorney, but its my understanding it doesnt read that way. Theres a lot of notification requirements and, you know, posting requirements, but the enforcement section speaks to the person in violation, so thats kind of every piece of the law. The chair okay. [indiscernible] this legislation trying to emphasize the education component of this rather than putting a lot of emphasis on enforcement. There is mechanism for enforcement but it is targeted towards the individual not so much the owner of the building. So again, you know, try to protect all the people here and go as far as we can. We were pretty sensitive to lobbyist issues, but at some point we have to figure out whether or not what we present is going to be impactful or not, and to the point where if you dont do this, dont do that, it means it becomes pretty much back to what it was, and i think what im presenting today is really those compromises that were made but still feel like it can be very impactful. People know when i get another email from the mother of the infant, i can say, no, they are not supposed to smoke. Sure, the landlord posted that this is against the law, the smoking in your unit, and thats more than three or more units. So thats a bit of the emphasis. The chair i guess then my other set of questions relate to cannabis, and i noticed the presentation did include information about the harmful effects of Secondhand Smoke from cannabis. I appreciate that the author has done an amendment to exempt out folks who have medical cannabis but i would say in the current environment, many people who are using cannabis for medical reason dont get the card because cannabis is now, in california at least, legal to consume in your own home. The concern i was about the legislation is that for folks who do not have a medical cannabis card, there are very few places outside your own home where you can consume cannabis. It is not in that way it is not parallel to cigarettes in that way. Cigarettes there are still places where smokers can go and smoke. Thats not so much the case for cannabis smokers, and so i do have some concerns. Im curious about the reasons for not having a blanket exemption for cannabis consumpti consumption. Well, we said it you heard the presentation. Its not any less harmful than tobacco, and for us to just have a blanket, we are then worsening once again to others is that youre going to breathe cleaner air. It gets trumped on other things being a priority. Im making the case that my priority is to provide clean air for people to breathe in their own homes, and im not trying to what this does is try to solve for that issue. That means that theres going to be other issues, and this is going to be people will find creative ways, in my mind, to be able to smoke a cannabis. I know not everybody has a car to sit in, but theres different ways you can do this. Were trying to fix something here and basically it gets in the way a little bit of what you heard putting out is really a state level, and that has to be fixed. So for us to not try to say, well, the overarching problem here because of state laws, i prefer to be more aggressive about this, and it feels okay for people again, you have People Living in a unit where whether they are infants or seniors, people who have asthma or what, its not a party for th them. We are just going to have to make a decision. So theres no clear answer or clean answer to that, but i guess i side on the health of san franciscans is more right than wrong. I just want to ask ms ms. Callewaert a little more about that presentation, because it did present cannabis cigarettes and nicotine cigarettes as being essentially parallel in their Health Impacts. And you know, i am not im not a im not urging people to use cannabis. I do not use cannabis myself, but i want to understand if that is, in fact, the position of the department of Public Health, that because because its my my impression is and has been that nicotine and nicotine addiction have been i know generally recognized to be a Serious Health problem. Is it the departments position that cannabis is every bit as much of a problem as nicotine . Thank you for the question, and ill also let maryna chime in as well, who gave the presentation. I dont know if we know exactly the level of comparison, but as maryna stated the chair we know nicotine and cigarettes kilotons and tons of people every year. Yeah, and i think we can say nicotine and tobacco smoke and cannabis smoke have Health Impacts secondhand and thirdhand smoke. Having impacts is but your presentation suggest that theyre the same. The diet coke that i drink has Health Impacts. Its bad for you. I shouldnt do it. Yeah, i dont have the answer of if its impactly the same level of impact, and maryna might want to answer as well, but i dont have that data. Im not sure i can say specifically that, you know, share a specific answer to that question, but we can jennifer and i can pass your questions specifically to our Health Officer to provide, you know, an official dph response. The chair i think that would be interesting. All right, thats the end of my questions. We i understand we do have Public Comment. President yee, did you want to say more before we go to Public Comment . No, lets go ahead and take Public Comment. The chair okay. Mr. Clerk . Thank you, mr. Chair. Operations is checking now to see if we have any callers in the queue. Please let us know if we have any callers who are ready. For those who have already connected to our meeting by phone please press star followed by three if you wish to speak on this item. For those in the queue, please wait until you are prompted to begin. You will hear a prompt that states your line tab unmuted. For those watching our meeting on cable 26 or sf tv gov. Org, please call in following the instructions by dialing 14156550001. Enter todays meeting id to connect to the call which is 1462251223. Press the pound symbol twice and then press star followed by three to enter the queue to speak. Mr. Chair, did you want to go over your the chair i will add that speakers will have two minutes. We ask that you state your first and last name clearly and speak directly into the phone. If you have prepared written a written statement, you are encouraged to send a copy to the Committee Clerk for inclusion in the official file, and in the interests of time, we do encourage speakers to avoid reputation of previous statements. Thank you. Could you connect us to the first caller . Good morning, supervisors. My name is bob gordon. Im cochair of the San Francisco tobacco free coalition. Supervisors, please listen to the science. Owners of multiunit housing who are detroit red wing business in our city have a responsibility to provide to us Living Spaces that are 100 free from toxic ecigarette tobacco and marijuana smoke. As you heard from the health department, people continue to suffer needlessly here in the city, and ill add think of the immigrant restaurant worker who comes home to his cramped apartment in the mission who needlessly suffers from one of his roommates lights up. Or the grandchild whos been taught that it would be rude in her culture to ask grandpa not to smoke inside the familys apartment. Some of us who live in San Francisco are lucky enough to have clean air to breathe, but it shouldnt be a matter of luck. Most who smoke dont want to harm the health of their neighbors. Most owners and tenants want clean air for themselves and their neighbors. We can Work Together and create smokefree air for everyone. Support is available by phone or by text message at 1800n 1800nobutts. Its available in different languages, people addicted to ecigarettes and those who chew tobacco. I want to applaud mr. Yee and my hope is that san franciscans can hold on to housing while holding on to health. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is patrick haguan. Im here as a volunteer of the american cancer societys cancer action network, and im also a biologist who specializes in cancer research. Im here to just add a little personal comment to what weve all been speaking about. Im happy to see the committees excitement about this movement. What i would just like to add as someone who studies cancer and biology is that we really need to acknowledge the Science Behind this and how harmful Secondhand Smoke is to our communities and that everyone should have the right to breathe clean air. Theres absolutely no safe level of Secondhand Smoke exposure, and smoking is the singlemost preventable cause of disease and death in the u. S. And more than 41,000 people are killed as a result of Secondhand Smoke exposure. In a time like today, i think San Francisco can set a precedent by understanding our commitment to science and underlining that by supporting this. Additionally, i would just like to add that i am a i live in a multiunit housing right now, and although i try my best to meet my neighbors, its honest that in San Francisco with the sections of diverse population and many People Living in these units, its unlikely for a lot of us to meet our neighbors, and its really unfortunate to think that one of my neighbors could be making every right Health Decision for their them and their family, and yet if someone else in the building isnt as cognizant of their risk and the families around us that they could be putting all of us at risk. Thank you for hearing my comments. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning, thank you. My names antoinette, a resident of district eight and a proud voting native of San Francisco. Thank you for taking this important step to reduce exposure to Secondhand Smoke in homes like mine. I reside in a multiunit building currently and most of my life with people of all ages in this building. I know firsthand how smoking by parents at home can impact the health of family members, especially innocent children, which can cause lung damage and health issues. I do not support the proposed exemption for medical marijuana. I encourage you to pass a comprehensive smokefree policy that addresses all kinds of smoke and the health of our Community Needs it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, im a resident of the Marina District and 29 weeks pregnant, living in multiunit housing and in support of the ordinance. This is necessary to protect children, adolescents and seniors with existing health conditions. Pregnant people exposed to Secondhand Smoke show greater risk of giving birth to low birthrate babies. I do not support the proposed exemptions for medical marijuana that may be prescribed for patients, that smoke is dangerous for the building and contain many of the same problems for tobacco smoke. Its known to have alternatives available to patients. I ask you to carefully consider whether the preference for secular medicine should be prioritized over the rights of all over neighbors, including children and pregnant women, like myself. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Board of supervisors im speaking today in support of this ordinance. Thanks so much for calling me. I live here in San Francisco and work at an Investment Firm with an office here in the city where i cover the health care industry, and im on the associate board for the society here in the city. Until six months ago i shared walls with a family with three small children. I know firsthand all of the things that pass incidentally from their space to mine and vice versa, from water leaks to the sounds of piano practice, the smells of burnt cooking. I cant bear the idea that those kids would have had no choice to breathe in my Secondhand Smoke had i been a smoker. Unfortunately many children in this scenario today in San Francisco as discussed. I think back to the wildfires in our region as well. Just about everyone who could took protections. Its clear to all of us that this smoke represented a threat to our health. Why then would we be complicit with the free flow of cigarette smoke or cannabis smoke in our hoemz . I should add im reading from the cdc website, smoke cannabis has many of the same cancercausing substances as smoked tobacco due to the risks it poses to lung health, experts strongly caution against smoking cannabis and tobacco products. One final anecdote is about my grandmother who passed away in september from lung cancer. She was a smoker for years in the 60s and 70s, which almost certainly contributed to her death. She was ultimately a victim of the lack of Public Awareness and the lack of public action around smoking in her time