Public comment. General Public Comment between puc and lafco. Public speaker to all this happening at our position. Supervisor john avalos thank you, any other member of the public who would like to comment . Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I believe that is our last item for our joint committee. I would suggest we take a 2minute break to allow puc to leave for lafco to get to its own agenda. Supervisor john avalos first i would like to thank c puc for their work and the program and i have heard from various members here today and see various members Supervisor John Avalos now we are back live. We have a few more items to go through. More updates. Item no. 6. City clerk approval of the lafco minutes from july 24, 2015. Public is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Motion from commissioner breed and seconded by commissioner crews. We can take that without objection. Passes. Next item, please. City clerk item no. 7, possible study on what the city and county of San Francisco can do to help increase voter turnout. Jason fried. You have a memo in your packet of items we can potentially study if we do desire. We have an intern Enrique Aguilar who is happy to do that study if we desire. What i ask for you if we want to move do the study we can move forward. Would it not take much of my time. We think we can get a draft done in the range because of the department of elections and will not be available after they are over and they finish from doing this stuff. He can do some work prior to the election and some research in the prewriting of the report itself. If there is interest, please let me know otherwise we will move to the side. This request came from our last lafco meeting, commissioner lindo brought it up as how to increase voter turnout among lower income, minority communities and thats where we came up with this suggested topic with the report itself. Okay. Commissioner lindo . Edwin lindo it was in the context of the equity of accessibility to voting in the city. Okay. Colleagues, any other comments . This item is open for Public Comment. Anyone would like to comment . Public speaker hi, our voter turnout has never been great but reached abysmally lower levels. I appreciate this discussion is happening. I dont know if sf students is the only way to doing that then i would support in doing that. At the state level i know they are looking at, i dont know if this is waiting for the signature or next session, a bill that would automate Voter Registration for drivers license which you would have to check a box. I would want ugg us to look at whether as a county we can go farther than that where is like oregon or washington like what they are doing which is to mailing a ballot. Im not talking about mandatory voting. Instead of making people check multiple boxes to register to vote, get a validated mailbox to their home. If we have the power of the county to send a ballot out to our registered voters to start there and look to how to increase our registered voters. You are talking about an opt out program by not turning in the ballot. Thats it. To keep that theme going. Okay. Mr. Brooks. Since my colleague raised a question, i have concerns about, im going to speak to this. This is a Crucial Program and we know that people in low Income Community are both incredibly challenged to getting them to turnout especially in off peak elections when there is month mayor running for office. I also advocate enrollment for everybody. It might be a good idea to send everybody a ballot. When i first moved to the city i was in one Residential Hotel and i moved to another one right near an election and went to use my previous address to vote with and someone had already voted with my mail in ballot. My absentee ballot. If we are going to do absentee ballots that we are doing the right process and still being done in San Francisco. Lets be careful about that. Just to reiterate, this is really crucial. Im sure uc sf has greats students to work on it. Supervisor john avalos okay. I will close Public Comment. If a student is interested in doing it, i will run it up the flagpole to see if its legal and what the other cost will be and other factors as well. Commissioner crews . Vice chair cynthia crews thank you very much. Im very excited about this and excited that we might have an intern available to work on it sooner rather than later. Certainly i have always been interested in having a robust pipeline of things that lafco would work on just as things are winding down or winding up however you would look at it with cca. I did have a question for mr. Fried. The bold sections that you have outlined is that set in stone or is that sort of a guideline of early information . Combination of the two. Its not necessarily set in stone. You can say we dont want to see any particular area done, if something is not listed, you can do that as well. I dont know the to say its set in stone. If you said go ahead and do the report and there were no comments made, we would be looking into these areas. Some of the areas that are maybe done in other parts the country but not here in southern california. So part of the discussion is what is the state law and if its allowed or not and what would be done at the state level to make that legal in the state. That would divide into two categories in the report itself. Okay, i think definitely the only thing i see missing would be the auto enrollment. I would love to see that flush you had out in various ways that other municipalities are doing and there could be an option here. Commissioner mar . Supervisor eric mar i just wanted to add that like commissioner lindo, my hope is that we are focused on equity and expanding democracy to neighborhoods that arent participating at rates that the average are. Every time the elections happen there is a good map precinct by precinct that shows the high incomes have much higher turn outs than other areas like bayview Hunters Point and other areas. So that is a key focus. Also supervisor avalos is looking at policy law and policy briefs on Voting Rights is good because it looks at a broad problem but gives solution from madison, wisconsin to michigan, policies of other local jurisdiction from dc to maryland on expanding the franchise to new voters and has a new vote process for the Student Advisory Council through ccyf that water born was one of the great initiators on the part of the program in the city as well. We have new transitional age Youth Programs in other key area people participating at much lower rates than the average immigrant Voting Rights. Weve taken up at the ballot in the past like other jurisdictions, exfelons and other participation rates. Im hoping we focus on those. Lastly my hope is that its supervised by jason fried could be the basis to look at. Supervisors avalos looking at 17 and 18yearolds that this can show how policies like that could make sense for local areas as well as we try to expand overall voter turnout and Voter Participation and also models in the community to ensure that people are continuing to participate as well. Thats my two cents. 0. 02. Supervisor john avalos commissioner lindo . Edwin lindo i want to echo supervisor mar t whole reason we bring up the conversation and into this report, im happy to sit down with you and other commissioners but to focus on the equity component of it because i think there is a lot of studies done on voter turnout, but not many done in how do we create equitable accessibility to the community that has historically have not been able to. They may want to, but they have not been able to. Everything from the Youth Commission and the vote and looking at what berkeley attempted to do providing the right for undocumented parents whose children were in the Public School system giving them the right to vote for School District elections. Again, very innovative, very progressive. The things that are unfortunately going through the news today with president ial candidates. I think we do need to be innovative in how we look at providing equitable sibt to the lower incomed and under served communities. Supervisor john avalos great, thank you. We have looked at ways to extend the votes to immigrants. We are going to open this up to Public Comment, we already have. The next item. Does someone want to make a motion to authorize staff to work on this report to work on this item . We cant make suggestions . In order to start an actual study we need authorization from the commission itself. Okay. Entertaining motions . And a second. Okay. So, motion from commissioner mar and second. Item 88 possible study on how the city and county of San Francisco appoint members to its commission. I dont have time to do the report right now. We can table this item or we can find an intern if somebody wants this on a quicker timeline or leave it for a future discussion. Im fine to back burn it personally. Weve had this item and different measures that have set dual appointments from the commission from the board of supervisors to the mayor and we always seem to kick them down the road and im fine with that right now. Okay. This item is up for Public Comment. Anyone from the public would like to comment. Public speaker eric brooks. If you have staff constraints i understand the delaying but of course i want the priority to be cleanpowersf. Even if the Planning Commission where we have split appointments, we basically have a disaster happening in how often bad projects get approved. And its because in my opinion the elected body, the board of supervisors should be making the majority of the appointments on all commissions and all government bodies. I hope that even if we are delaying we start pushing for that after the current executive gets reelected because the current executive in my view is appointing a bunch of people at all of these commissions doing us in. Please dont back burner it too much. Thanks. Public speaker jed holes man. San francisca as the board of supervisors are aware that currently the situation we have in the county is when someone needs to be, when an empty seat, a vacant seat is there the mayor is actually able to appoint someone who takes office immediately before the board of supervisors even gets an opportunity to hold a hearing on that appointment. This has happened with wendy and jordan on the retirement board and also i believe with art torres on the Public Utilities commission. The mayor has the power to appoint someone and the board can do their Due Diligence following their process. I think thats extremely unorthodox and almost in every other jurisdiction, an appointment is put forward, that appointment is vetted and approved and that person takes power and we can imagine an instance where the example when someone is appointed for the board to have the opportunity to hear that appointee takes a very controversial action for the city. Maybe an action challenged in court. That is the city and county is then on the hook for that even if the board eventually rejects that appointment. We are giving the mayor dictorial authority on this one. There are weeks of delay before Scheduling Committee hearings. I think we really need to look at rectifying this with the rest of i would guess most cities and counties in california where the vetting happens before the power is taken. Thanks. Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Any action on this item . Okay. Seeing none. Well go on to our next item. City clerk item no. 9. Executive officers report. A, report on cal lafco conference. Update on the open source elections study. Thank you. Jason fried. The lafco conference. The two were on broadband than it was about centralized city. Our lafco has gotten ahead of the game. Most lafco hasnt gotten to the point. So we are ahead of the game as far as other cities and counties go across the state. So it was interesting to see where other folks are at which is where we are farther ahead. On the other one on Climate Change once again, a lot of it was more about planning and how to deal with water shortages and stuff like that and how to deal with the Land Planning itself. Our lafco doesnt deal as much with Land Planning as others lafcos do but there was a lot of information i got out of that on general Climate Changes. That was useful. The other item, on open source, there is not much around that. Other than the cca program that i have not had a chance to get an update to that. My hoke is hope is that as we move through october i will get more free time to work on that. Right now is draft for general public. Thats all i have to report on that. Supervisor john avalos thank you. No questions on the roster. Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Next item, please. Item no. 10. Future agenda items . Colleagues, we just talked about it with our possible reports . Future agenda items. Seeing no one on the roster. Public comment is now open. Public speaker eric brooks San Francisco clean energy advocates. I want to reiterate. I dont think you need to take an action to do this. It would be really good if executive officer i blank on names sometimes. Jason fried, if he can look to before we get going to roll out and market giving you guys specific report backs on this idea of rolling out the program only on district 10 because there is some potential concerns that the public would have with that and specifically that. Pg e would be able to specifically target one demographic and one set of people and 1st district and really hammer them with a message to opt out based on that district and it might make more sense to do like half in district 5, 8, 9 and 10, and it would be something more in depth from staff to what the implications might be from that roll out and marketing plans. Thanks. Supervisor john avalos thank you very much. Any other is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I think its important to look at that issue to see how roll out can be more effective and what the risks are. I agree. Our next item . City clerk item no. 11. Adjournment. Supervisor john avalos colleagues we are adjourned. Thank you. [ meeting is adjourned ]