Transcripts For SFGTV Mayors Disability Council 112015 20151125

At city hall. I lick to welcome guests and presenters for ateneding the meeting today. Observe we get started with the agenda Councilmember Roland Wong will read the introduction. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to the Mayors Disability Council this friday, november 20, 2015 in room 400 of San Francisco city hall. City hall is accessible to persons using wheelchairs and other assistive devices. Wheelchair access is provided at the grove van ness and mcallister streets via ramps. Wheelchair access at the polk street [inaudible] entrance is provided via a wheelchair lift. Listening devices are available and our meeting is open captioned and sign language interpreted. Our [inaudible] are also available in large print and braille. Please ask staff sfr any additional assistance. To present electronic interference with this rooms sound system, and to respect everyones ability to focus on the presentation, please silence all mobile phones and tdas. Your cooperation is appreciated. We welcome the publics participation in Public Comment. You may complete a speaker card available in front of the room or call line at 14155549632, where a staff person can request to speak at the appropriate time. The Mayors Disability Council meetings are generally held on the third friday of the month. Our next reg yerl meeting will be on friday january 15 from 1 to 4 p. M. Here at San Francisco city hall in room 400. Please call the Mayors Office on disability for further information and to request accommodations at 14155546789 voice or, 14155546799 tty. A reminder to all of our guests today to speak slowly into the microphone to assist our captioners and interpreters. We thank you for joining us. Thank you Councilmember Wong. Well proceed with the roll call. Cochair supanich, present. Coshare senhaux, present. Kostanian, absent. Counsel woman hairian wong, absent. Councilmember roland wong, present. Thank you dona. Item number tworks action item will proceed with the reading of the agenda. Item number 1, welcome introduction and roll call. Item number 2, action item, reading and approval of the agenda. Item number 3, Public Comment. Items not on todays agenda but within the jurisdiction of mdc each speaker is limited to 3 minutes. Item number 4, information item. Comments by supervisor eric mar district 1 regarding city Employment Opportunities for people with disabilities. Item number 5, information item. Access to city employment for people with disabilities. Status update record on Advisory Panel recommendations and accomplishment to date. Presentation by ed wong city wide recruiter department of Human Resources. Public comment is welcome. Item number 6, information item. Policy recommendations on city employment for people with disabilities. Perspectives from Disability Service providers. Remarks by fionaimes system change Coordinator Community organize, independent Living Resource Center San Francisco. Anne stein San Francisco Mayors Committee for employment of persons with disabilities. Item number 7, information item. Prnl employment perspectives. A selection of a Diverse Group of employee with visible and invisible disabilities share their stories, challenges and recommendations for transforming the sit a and county of San Francisco into a model employer for people with disabilities. Prezen taishzs by joanna frugugy Deputy Director programic access. Anh [inaudible] marti Access Service manager San Francisco Public Library. Jonathan lyens project manager department of public health. Public comment is welcome. Break, the council will take a 10 minute break. Item number 8, information item. Department of aging and adupt suvss benefits resource hub at 2 along with timeline for comsknleegz description of the layout for the space. Also a plan to hire part time senior jz or young adults with disabilities to serve as community leaanhs. Presentation by jason nob nocintake Service Manager department of aging and adult service. Item 9, report from cochair supanich. Item 10, report from director of the Mayors Office on disability. Item 11, information item. Report flaum disability preparedness disaster committee. Item 12, public comnlt. Items not on todays agend a. Item number 13, information item. Correspondence. Item 14, discussion item. Councilmember comment and announcement. Item 15, adjourn. Thank you donna. Well proceed with item number 3 recollect Public Comment portion. Thank you. Lets continue. Item number 3, Public Comment. Items done on stoods agenda but within the jurisdiction of mdc, each speaker is limited to 3 minutes and are the speaker cards in front on the table along with the ajendsa in alternate format. Do we havesorry. There you are. Welcome. Good afternoon, marti godered and work at the San Francisco Public Library and want to say thank you to the Mayors Office on disability for having a wonderful event at the main libery yesterday. It was a honor and pleasure to have staff there last night and have chair denise [inaudible] at the library, but i want to tell you about 2 things coming up. Tomorrow, saturday november 21 from 1 to 3 p. M. At the main libery on the lower level we are having a games day. We call it come play and invite seniors and people with disabilities to come play board game squz word games so hope well see folks there. I want you tatoo know about a event coming up on january 27. The National Park service is celebrating the 100th an versery with a series of things called, find your park. At the library the evening of wednesday january 27 they will make a presentation of the National Park service and talk about accessible parks and park facilities in the bay area and that we dont have a date set for a follow up, but some lucky people are going to get to go on a tour of those accessible parks. The National Park suvs is going to rent a bus and take a small group of people and i dont know how well sign you up but a small group of people to see some of those accessible trails and facilities so i hope penal people will be interested in joining us. Thank you, marti. Any other Public Comment . Okay. We are going to go ahead and close Public Comment at this time. There is one. Excuse me, well reopen Public Comment. Okay. Thank you for your comment. Any other Public Comment before i close it this time . Okay. Thank you. We are going to now proceed and make some changes to the agenda because i believe supervisor mar isnt here so well go to information item 5, representation by ed wong city wide recruiter department of Human Resources. Thank you for being here mr. Wong. Thank you. Good afternoon. So, i am ed wong the city wide recruiter for city and county of San Francisco for department of Human Resources. Excited to be here today. The Advisory Panel on employment with people with disabilities, since the last hearing dhr initiated the Advisory Panel on people with disabilities. The purpose of the panel is to collaborate with Community Based organizations to brainstorm and Development Recommendations on how it city it improve employing people with disabilities. We began meeting in december 2014 and met on a multhly basis. Some topics are follow up on the recommendations. House [inaudible] and the city hiring process. What could be done to improve the hiring relate d education and outreach and recruitment and reattention. We had a presentation orn obtaining a certificate by dhr and representative by the city ofciateal on supportive employment and shares program. Highlights from the Advisory Panel, we all agreed education and outis a key issue. There were several recommendations. One, conduct outreach to City Departments and hiring managers and educate on rule 115 as one avenue to hiring people with disabilities. This would help insure they understand the process and recognize that peep with disabilities do have appropriate skillsets. Two, improve oument reach the the job developer squz Community Organization squz to individuals with disabilities who may not be connected to the Community Organizations. Three, hire a recruiter to taurgt the hiring of people with disabilities. Four, develop updated outreach teerm included brochures and website. Five, develop internet taining for silty supervisor jz hiring managers for people with disabilitiesism recommendations also include renaming sth rule 115 program, research the possibility of developing a internship program, annual reporting on 115 hiring, establish a group of City Employees with disability squz potential rule change to 115. What is accomplished working to date . Number 1 is recruiting, thank tooz supervisor mars office dhr is hiring a recruiting to focus on recruitment of people with disabilities. We are currently in the hiring process and anticipate having someone on board in december. Two, rename the 115 program. We renamed the program to access city employment or ace and we will emphasis this is one of two ways to gain a city job, three, education and outreach. Dhr outreached to several City Department squz we are proactively working on potential rule 115 place ments. Dhr also developed and distributed to the cbos a list of job classifications that qualify as rule 115 placement and listing of city wide internships. We continue to collaborate to the match potential candidates. Dhr in conjunction with the Advisory Panel are working on revising outreach brochures and ubidating the dhr website. With assistance of the ace recruiter we will findize the language and formatting and we continue to network with Community Based organizations and advise them to join on going meetings. Arafter the materials are finalized we will provide educational forms to Job Developers at different Community Based organizations and incorporate information about city employment of people with disabilities in existing city training programs. Also rsh we will plan for the development and delivery of Disability Awareness training to City Employees. We made Good Progress over the past month and have a Great Partnership with the Advisory Panel but have more work to do. Im exciting for it additional resource squz opportunities to employ people with disabilities y. Look forward to continuing our working relationship to insure more people with disabilities have access and a path way to city employment. Thank you and happy to answer any questions. Excuse me , thank you so much, i dont mean to play musical presenters but if will wait for Public Comment. I want to see if supervisor mar is available to speak at this time. Welcome supervisor mar, thank you for attending the Council Meeting thank you for chair jz council. Im eric mar supervisor for district run. I have learned a lot over 2 years working with people with disabilities. The ada anniversary and 5o 4 sit in helped me understand the struggles of people with disabilities. Victor lim from my staff prepared a fairly long probably boring number of statements, but i want to speak from my heart and just say im a alee and learned a lot from january and june of 2015 when we held several hearings whault i call civil right of employment and a process that is respectful of people as they go throCivil Service. It isnt a privilege, it is a right and see that coming out of incivil Rights Movement and Womens Liberation Movement and others that i have seen it that way as a ally, but the frustration and felt in the hearings in 2014 and then again in july, i respect the work of dana cu kostanian and wong but think we have a cultural problem of lack of respect for people with disabilities and lack of understanding for reasonable accommodation squz it shouldnt be a burden on people to be hired, the burden should be on the system and everyone so there is a equal shot so it is about equality and equity. As a al ee wanting to much more breeing done. Im glad there is a dedicated position but Jonathan Lyens and the disableed Community Fought for that. To have ed wong focus to come but he know juggles [inaudible] to center him focus on civilrectomies and that was a demamd for people. Jonathan lyens and fdr club and others brought that forward. Im frustrated because it has taken so long for a lot of different chaisks. I want to say what i learned flaumthe ada anniversary and appreciated being invided for the disability pride event thrks north light cort event that the department did and i guess what i learned is the struggle continues. It is not over and should celebrate but the struggle continues and as your ally or one of your allies i want to dowhat i can to move it forward and challenge the culture the barrier before us. I want to also say highlighted in the january and july 2015 to me are making sure that the taskforce and permanent and long term. I know in 2008 after the work was done years and years ago around rule 115 and other tools it dropped affthe face of the earth but yawant foosay the work everyone has done continues and we build off that. Other issueerize data gathering. You cant identify inequality and other ways to get better and to have improvements without having good data and i know Carla Johnson to many others gave good suggestions on how informal surveys, formal surveys, voluntary efforts, there are so many ways to get data. What i was angered by is a bureaucratic response to say no, there are legal problems and we wont do it instead of thinking creatively with the council and staff to get around a major issue. If you want to look at gender justice inequality for women in pay equity issue you need the data. If you want to look at lack of contracting for disables firms local and women and people of color you need the data so that is basic one to fight against had bure cratdic response is pornts. Also suggestions were made at the last hearing in july that goalsi dont think people said time tables, we are not talking about quotas but basic goals and timelines otherwise my fear is they will get stretched out and the passion people feel at a moment like benny at the hearings we had will dissipate but if you have clear goal squz time lines and accountability mechanisms i think you help to push it forward. I wanted to say too that in thinking about employing peoplethality are historically opressed or not given their due hiring process, you cant put the burden on them to identify what went wrong and it has to be allies and everyone thinking was it a fair process and were there reasonable accommodations. Im helping my High School Daughter getting reasonable accommodations in her high school and what bothers me oftensorrybut it is frustrating to me as a sod voicate for my daughter when the system purts the problem on peron and me. What do we do to make it more fair and equitable as well. Victor provided a bunch of different things, but ill say it is frustrating i know with the work of the employment disabled employment taskforce and other advocates is that through my office we are trying to do our best to promote hopefully ordinances and ways that we can get into the record all the work that is being done so it isnt lost. My hope is that we work with you to follow up on the 3 plus hearings, dozens and dozens of meetings and marches and actions around the anniversary time so we have something in place by the end of the year that doesnt have to be comprehensive but i think it has to codify the taskforce so it can continue to exist and it is treated respectfully with the importance the work deserves. We have a data gathering system in place and way to insure it is put into place. Not to violate privacy rights or open to law suits but to gather the Information Department by department and itsy wide. Also i think there needs to be a setting of goals. When impgrant right groups pushed for Language Access that forces departments to get [inaudible] making sure front line departments are doing everything they can to speak not only in english but languages people understand, Language Access was a key ordinance i think Still Department by department we are struggling through. Some departments do a great job and others dont do as great a job. Also for the gender analysis that each department has to go through as well, i know the commission on the status of women and Womens Movement pushed for different issues, but i think having goals of each department so there is jnder equality is another example. Language rights and gender equality, but i think goal setting for hiring of people with disabilities and i think that culture change and continue to speak from my heart instead of from a script thative given tome, i will say, the culture is that people with disabilities should be tolerated and if they can get hired good, but to me the culture should have to be they are really valuable employees that bring so much understanding to each of the departments so that we can better serve neighborhoods and i thipg that is the culture change. It could be the club over Department Heads by creating a ordinance but think it has to happen that way otherwise it will get dragged out like the 2008 tavforce. I want to be a alee and do what i can to support what is basic and right for people with disabilities and thank the council for hearing stories of people in the meeting. The 25th an versery of the ada, so many storeies need to be told and want to be seen as a story of a ally that helped get the stories out. Deserves the credit we brag about. That is my two cents and thank you for your hard work. Thank you supervisor mar for your kind words. Thank you. We will go back now to our presenter, mr. Ed wong city wide recruiter for department of Human Resources to open up questions from Public Comment. Council comments, do we have questions or comments from the council at this time . Cochair supanich. Thank you for coming today. So, there will be a full time recruiter just for people with disabilities is that the understanding . Yes. I understand correctly . Uhhuh. Okay. What is the new name oaf the programyou said 115 was renamed. Access sit to city employment or ace. Also the advisory board, can you tell more about the make up . It consists of different Mayors Office of disability, also different Community Based organizations such as the ark, lite house for the blind and the major Community Based organizations and trying to add more Community Based organizations. There are member thofz disability that are not tied to a agency they are all tied to a agency at this point in the future do you think a member from the Mayors Disability Council could have a seat on that board . Yes should we call and have a conversation about this . Differently. What will outreach look like to City Departments and will that beyour offices work . Outreach and education. Outreach and education is from department of Human Resources so myself and the ace recruiters will talk to different departmental personnel officers and different hiring managers to find where the need is forto fill that different talent for those positions especially within this community so that is goal. To match up those individuals and working with the Community Based organization to find thg toptalityant and match with the jobs they wilt be educated about things like reasonable accommodation and accessibility . Yes. That is all my questions. Thank you cochair supanich. Any other comments from the council . Okay. Turn it over to Public Comment at this time. Any speaker cards . Anyone on the bridge line at the time that has comment or questions . Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Hold on, please, we are just making changes for the agenda. Thank you. We have a real change to the agenda and to the schedule here. We are going to work with the control room on getting the visual part of our audio visual presentation clearer and more effective. We are going to take our break now and reconvene in 15 minutes and well begin with agenda item number 6. Thank you. Thank you for your patient [council reconvenes] good afternoon, Everyone Welcome back to had Mayors Disability Council meeting. Thank you with your patience for the technical difficulties and changing the agenda aroun. We will go to information item 6. Policy recommendation for people with disaudibility. Perspective from Disability Service providers and would like to introduce the following presenter, fiona hinze from the systems change coordinator to come to the podium, please. Okay, can everybody hear me . This is as close as i can get. Cool. So, good afternoon councilmember, colleagues and guests who are watching. Im from the independent Living Resource Center, San Francisco. I have the pleasure of sitting on the Advisory Panel for people with disabilities. We as the independent Living Resource Center are in the business of getting people off benefits and back to work, so we really appreciate the work of the panel and everybody at dhr and [inaudible] and ed wong and we appreciate supervisor marss initiative because we like to have a variety of jobs for to apply for. We think with the hiring of the disability Ace Program Coordinator recruiter, one of the key portions of their job is going to be outreach to various Community Based organizations to get the word out that this is a possible avenue that people with disabilitiesi know some people with disabilities the potential to work in the government is not always a high on their list because they dont know these opportunities exist. Some of the recommendations we would like to see moving forward is a searchable database that you can easily search on the city website for positions that would meet the qualifications of the ace program, similar to the state of california has their website set up so you can easily search for programs, jobs that are open in the leaks category, which the special hiring category for people with disabilities. Also, moving forward i think a key issue is thatand i think my [inaudible] would agree with this, but we dont want just entry level positions that are available for this particular hiring person because some people with disabilities would like more extensive opportunities. For example, the federal hiring head you can apply for any job. That is something i would like to see, but moving forward immediately i think that it will be really important that we get the word out that this is out there for consumer squz also to the cbos. I like to thank the council as well as mod for having this as a meeting topic for this month and i hope that you take action on it and support it and support the work the task force as well as making city and public more accessible for people with disabilities. Thank you. Thank you. Question . What ill do is im going to hold off questions and have the next presenter come up and have a opportunity for questions at that time. Cool. Thank you. I would like to introduce anne steiners for San Francisco committee for employment with people with disabilities. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. As a member the Advisory Panel, i cant thank supervisor mar enough for spear heading all of this. I work said in disability employment myself for decades and you rarely see or meet and get a chance to work a politician who is truly that good on employment of people with disabilities. When he said he spoke from his heart, i tend to really believe that and that is a rare bird and im so glad to see that happened. On the Advisory Panel, i alsoi ask other people from different organizations in Community Agencies found donna and ed to work with. It is a great team of people from different places and different venues who work together. I want to add a couple perspectives, the San Francisco Mayors Committee for employment of persons with disabilities is a coalition of employers and service providers. Primarily San Francisco base, but also the near east bay. We are currently on a hiatus while the board work ons critical project, but when we get together and have our regular meetings very often we plan for a event and employererize talked about. I want to tell you if you didnt know the sit a eand county of San Francisco has not had a good reputation for quite a few years. Even when i last did job placement i would call dhr with a potential rule 115 candidate or intern and eventually theywit get back and say sorry i cant come up with anything so after a while you give up. There is more to this than just recruiting. I think as soon as you get that ace recruiter out there in the field, you will have a flurry of interest and activity and will be ininidated with apps. As several people have said today, you need to look at everything that happens in city employment. It is not just enough to hire people, you need a culture change, you need to normalize disability. We always talk about various special efforts and also talk about special programs and unfortunately sometimes that inadvertently makes us folks with disucts seem more special and out of the norm than we are. That is part the trick the ace recruiter will have as well as the rest the people working for the city that i hope will work at a great Team Approach to talk about how we try to level the Playing Field so people who have not had a opportunity can have a opportunity to show that those of us who have disabilities are more like everyone else than unlike everyone else. Other things you can do, training and exposure are important. I always found the best way to have people warm up to hiring people with disabilities is simply hire them and be around them. This could be a large function the training video. I dont know what it is you have planned after this but perhaps something where you have as part of your training for management stories of real employees and show we are not all perfect but not all burdens either. I think that is part of it. Affinity strup groups are important and have seen that work very well for organizations such as the Environmental Protection agency here in San Francisco. You get people together whether it is aging with a disabilities or new assistive aids workshop or Something Like that, you have people with disabilities out and visible in the work place doing something other than just being recruited for a special program. One of the things i say and i know supervisor mar has said this, there is no sustainability without accountability in programs like this. I havent had a had a very smarl part in the creation of rule 24 and that was in the 80s and there was a effort in 2008 and now doing it all goferbp. This isnt unique to San Francisco. In my career i worked with a lot of local governments as well as state and the memory can be so incredibly short and you getd one person in who is a dynamo and has the passion and have a flurry of activity but you dont want them to retire or go for another job and everything stops and that happened here before. Some the ways we get around this, make sure it is a top down Team Approach as well as a sideways Team Approach. Make sure there are reports and records. Keep the Advisory Panel going for sure. I encourage the Mayors Council on disb ability to holdstuse task and make sure we progress and work with the ace recruiter. The last thing i want to say, something that can be tricky is addressing the isability employment needs of people with all disabilities. It can beyou looking at the ace recruiter of the god of disability employment. That personthe city of seattle has 1 person that works full time for people with intellectual disabilities. You need that teep Team Approach and a lot of people working on this and not focus on certain types of possibility and disabilitiesism for a employer as large as San Francisco i hope you will consider at some point should you have the time and money a special effort for people with intellectual disabilities as well as the physical and psychiatric and hidden disabilities. That is mostly what i wanted to say. It is a huge pleasure to be part of this process and looking forward to continuing. Thank you. Im open for questions or comments from the council. Excuse me. Yes . You may notice on your agend awe have missed a couple of our speakers who were at the Advisory Panel members who were not able to be with us today, however, we have more members who joined us and at thais point i would like to invite the colleague from the California Department of science or Resource Center. Please come out and share your perspectives around disability employment. Thank you. Thank you cochair. Thank you. Hello and thank you all for having this meeting. My name is amy wulfrm and do gurmt relation at the California Academy of sciences. I fill in for my colleague, leah vandder may. She has a bad flu. Leah is our director of Guest Services and helps coordinate all our ark access and inclusion programs throughout the academy. As some may know, the steinheart aquarium is part the city charter but the rest is part of a non profit that we have that as something we navigate. We are considered a City Department in some ways and in other ways we are a non profit. I know it is clear for me too. Leah helps us and has started our program, so for 3 years we worked with the ark of San Francisco. We have 4 employees now and onboarding two more. We have 12 project search internshave had 12 interns over the period we have been working in this area and 5 interns now through access usd, the School District program for tranditional age youth. So, when these interns are working with us it is what we call a part of the program eployed at the academy we call them a intern even though they are a employee. It helps keep the staff people separate. They help us from things from the [inaudible] check to opening rain forest doors to saying good bye and greeting guestsism leah worked to expand the program to different programs within the academy so that includes doing thingtaking care of animals in the aquarium, working with membership staff doing basic clerical work and other different programs so they get a well rounded experience so they can figure oit what they might be interested in and pursue in the future and hopefully join our staff. For the staff member jz how it has been for the academy as a whole over the past 3 years, i think that the last speaker anne said it correctly, the best way to get people use today people with disabilities and start working with them and i dont think it has been strange for us at all, i think it is agood part of our culture. I think the academy prides itself on opening its doors to everyone just on the public floor so we also like to take that attitude as far as our Business Practices go and the more diverse or employees are the happier we all seem to be. So, i know that we also have the top down leadership that john executive direction this is a personal passion of hisism we have john at the top and leah in the middle and the rest of us support the project. It makes us proud and look forward to participate and partner with you all. Thank you thank you. Do we have any other presenters . Good afternoon council bread andrew, exectev director of positive resource scepter and just for fun i was also appoint today the Ethics Commission and this is our room and i always get a strange feeling because i know what it means to sit up there and what folks have to go through when they are standing before us. Thank you. Yeah. So, i stand here to share nothing but good news and thank tooz the Councils Leadership and their work in raising awareness and resources and Human Resources that are going to direct more closely to our disability population. Positive Resource Center has been around for 29 years and in 1992 our Employment Services program came to be and we are the longest operating hiv Employment Program in the nation. That is a wonderful thing. What is challenging is the fact in so many areas employment for People Living with h iv there are not resources arounds the nation so we worked very very hard. Joe [inaudible] who is our Employment Service director and staff are here. Really hard to raise awareness and get not only the community about nationally through conferences to get folk tooz understand the importance of employment. In San Francisco we talk about how subsidized housing and glad we talk about it in a way that address said income and equality, but at the end the day whether you pay 3 thousand a month or 300 a month income is income and so many of our clients are in need of increasing income whether that is subsidizing ssi [inaudible] over the last year Employment Service program doubled with the great work of the staff and the increase of funding that has found its way to the city through Developer Impact fees. I believe there are ways and look at carla because well continue to talk about the Community Benefits agreements, ways ewe can strengthen the Community Benefit uzgrument that have Employment Opportunities for all but specifically people with disabilities. I just want to publicly acknowledge supervisor mar and his leader shp z look forwards to working with donna and ed at dhr and the great work they have been doing and think there is a opportunity here. Earlier we heard that often the effort is led by a individual and then when the strij goes away the erfd and some of the initiative goys waw squithe importance of it so i look forward to creating a model that is sustainable that covers administration and crosses administration and make it a part of the city culture and not only the City Government department but city of San Francisco importance. We talk about this low unumployment rate and i always challenge the city to think about unemployment in particular areas and key areas. We may have 3. 2, 3. 8 but when you drill to geographic areas and subpopulations like people with disabilities and people of color and women those numbererize higher and what does it mean for us and how do we pull a value to that and attention to that in a way we can move those needles and not take credit for the overall Unemployment Rate so we can pat ourselves on the back and go home. Sthra great commitment shared in the homoand seeking to continue to the have this conversation in all the meetings i have and look forward to working with the council and carla and dhr to move forward so people with disabilities have the great opportunities we should all have. Thank you for being here and look forward to continue to partner with you. Any other agency jz Community Based organizations or individuals that would like to speak . I dont want to leave anybody out . Im going to open finally for comments and thank you Councilmember Roland Wong for being so patient. Ill open up to Councilmember Wong and the presenters. Can aiohear me . I like to thank everybody for presenting regarding this important topic of employment. I was a retired city and county worker. I used to work at lagoona honda and didnt know about the rule 34 and went through the normal process of seeking employment and graduated from city college and just kind of locate d a job. Basically im glad to hear that this program, ace, is in place from last year and progressing very well from what im hearing. So, just kind of want to hear or not hear, but just want to figure out how we can outreach employers that may have people to fail to be more employable. To make it happen moreinstead of after the fact. I dont think a lot of employers know there are potential people out there that they go to school and graduate from college but some how or another they cannot find a job because they do need some accommodation and half the time they wont accommodate them. Im glad that now we will move forward and hopefully maybe we can draft up a support letter from the council and to move this to basically get more people employed. Thank you. Thank you Councilmember Wong. I just want to add a comment, i want to thank you for the patience with the ajnda going back and forth and the presenters who came up and spoke and gave their purb spective on the initiatives. We agree a lot of work needs to be done with people of disabilities and how employers view those differences and be educated more and reasonable accommodation and get people with disabilities into had work force so i thank you for the work we are doing and we will continue partnering with you. Unless there are changes to thugenda i will go back to information item 7, which is personal employment perspective. Sleckds selection of diverseome ployee with viz and invisible employee for transforming the city and count of affSan Francisco. We have two presenters unless that changed. The first speaker will be joanna fugullee who is Deputy Director. The next person is anne [inaudible] with sutainable streets coordinator, San Francisco municipalagy agency. Thank you cochair. My name is joanna fughouly. I usually sit on the other side the table, however, today im one of my peers. I have the fun part the agenda which is introduce a group of fellow employees, all of whom entered the cities hiring process not through rule 115 and unfortunately the weather and the seasonal flu has gotten a hold of us so 2 of our Group Members are not here today. They are the folks with invisibility disabilities. However, i want to alert you at some point we may be joined via the bridge line from one other employee, one other fellow colleague who is deaf and could not be present today, but she will be calling to share her experience through the bridge line. So, my personal experience started all most 10 years ago and it was directly with the Mayors Office of disability. I had a long career doing other things, taking a break to go to graduate school and working in sacramento and was sick of the commute, so i looked for a opportunity closer to home and the position of Public Access became available. So, i just throw my hat in the ring not knowing it was actually quite a competitive process. Thankfully i didvent to take a Civil Service exam, however, i had to go through a series of interviews and different types of testing. Testing about my ada knowledge and testing about my ability to quickly right and draft complaints based on an analysis and this is where it it became tricky. In the city hiring process it is not just the department that is involved, but it is the whole different section with the departmental personnel officers or the hr staff. When i first appeared for my onsight interview, thankfully i showed up about half hour urmy because i end up getting stuck on the lift, the wheelchair lift out at city hall. I joke i got injob because people felt bad for me. So, anyhow, the issueafter i made it to my nrbt view i was then told i needed to go and take a timed written test and the interesting thing about that is that timing works and i can show my skills however, not prepared the fact i had to quickly work on a Computer Keyboard i have to request accommodations for that. For those who cannot see me, i have very significant hand or upper body mobility so in order to effectively work on speedy word processing tasks i use a special software called [inaudible] naturally speaking. That wasnt available. I think this would be a opportunity to ask for a accommodation, it wasnt part the exam or that process, so that brings me to the first barrier that exists in a lot of our processes. This whole communication from the hr staff that scheduled the interviews to the individual who may or may not be aware that there is a task that they need an accommodation with. Supervisor mar earlier talked about the burden on the person with the disability to ask and to advocate and to prove that what they need is really something that they need. I was hoping that my colleagues with invisibility disabilities would be here because they often talk about the burden they have to prove that they indeed have a disability. Aside from that, the other part that became very important in my personal experience is the idea of being viewed as the only one. I am person using a wheelchair and it is very isolating over the past 10 years to look around in Group Meetings and Staff Meetings and big city hall events and not really see my people. Not really see myself reflected in the workforce. I know there are a lot of us wloo have disabilities who may not always feel safe coming out but we are disconducted and in different departments. We are seen as one of the same and represent a specific group or specific disability group. Finally, there is the issue with advancement or what i call, pigeon holing. Often times i have gotten comments from upper managers talking about what is a great job i do at the Mayors Office on disability and this is really where i belong. I think my skills are actually applicable in a lot of other different places in the city. This is not the type of comment that you would make to any other professional who is comp tent or good at their job. So, the ada was passed was passed with the following key goals, equal opportunity, economic self sufficiency and full par tisitation. I did get the job and having economic seft sufficiency even the bay area but do i have a equal participation in all the advantment out there. Are people able to move above and beyond just doing non disability work, doing whatever else in the city . Being engineer and lawyers and whatever else and not just disability, blah blah blah. Fill in the blank. So, in closing, i just want to talksorry, i want to make one more point. The ada also includes par tisitation and equal opportunity for employees not only in terms of employment and reasonable accommodation but in terms of all the benefits and activities that employees get to enjoy. Lets take a look at some of our city initiatives. How accessible or available are they . I will give a very small small example. We were having a meeting about the Health Wellness program for employees and there were a couple of us there that talked about disability and we talked about adaptive yoga classes. Aftered offered as part the full menu for courses that can be taken. We talked about how this might be super important because of age, different types of physicalucts. We talked about accessibility exercise equipment or weight scales and other Assistive Technology and im not belaborering that point because it is about whether we have access to exercise equipment through the city health system, but it is because it is indictative as a problem. If we see people with disabilities we make accommodations for and gradually get a part of the culture or staff, then we are not fully talking about disability Employment Opportunities. We are not talking about a way of making ourselves a equal opportunity employer. It is not about the token and not about inclusion, it is really about full participation. So, with that, i will not bore you any longer and will invite my colleague anh to come up and tell about his experience followed by jonathan. Good afternoon. Thank you councilmember, colleague squz public. My name is anh nguyen and the coordinator for sfmta. I want to thank you for giving up to talk about my experience with the process and working for the city and county of San Francisco. One of the interesting thing about my part in the planning field is that we often [inaudible] going out to field to do inspection. In the planning for planning jobs one of the criteria that i see is a Job Description is the requirement to have a driver license. Often that is often a barrier in the past because many people with disabilities may or may not have a driver license or be able todrive but by stating that is a requirement it is a huge impediment not only melthally but in the interviewing process or application process as well. I would say about 80 percent of my job is in the office bethined computer and the other 20 percent is going to the community by accessing Public Transit and not necessarily by driving. That is one area that i have seen that could be a hinder with people with disabilities. The other experience i noticed is the Civil Service examination process. Thees tests are often used to gauge promotional opportunities and also advancement as well. The [inaudible] uses very matrix to see and test a persons competency and ability, often the nature of how the examination is conducted is really difficult. One example, my test taking experiences was required a written component of it. I also have a mobility range in my upper extrimty where a use a computer to do a lot of my correspondence and holding a pencil is a hardship for me so being required to demonstrate and prove that where have a disability to take a examination is challenging at times as well. Thank you. Yes . Once again there is [inaudible] who is reaching us through the video relay interpreter so she is on the bridge line thank you and welcome. Please go ahead. Okay, hi everyone. I dont where to start but my name is orchard [inaudible] and im the City Employee and i have been for 14 years and understand that my job quh i first applied was under city rule 115. Was the exact position designed for a person with a disability. Other than that i would have never been able towork as a City Employee and worked here for 14 years and have seen deaf people who had never been into the city as far as a employee and i have been here 14 years and worked a specific Group Related to sign language users specifically. There are hearing people obviously that do come in and want to learn about sign language, asl and the Deaf Community and all of that and if they need information they often come to me. Really, i dont know if that is enough information for you at this point or not. And of course i am a deaf person myself. I should added that in and i use video remay and that is my preference of choice to be able to use video relay. I wouldnt be able to come in person because where have kids with me obviously so i cant just show up. More than that i mean, as a city worker for 14 years i have worked with a audience of a variety of people within and deaf people who apply for city jobs never really often get in. It is very hard for them, even with a interpreter or without a interpreter because they prefer to have someone that can hear and not deal with the communication. Those are my concerns. This is joanna, thank you for joining us and i was wondering if you can tell the council or the audience about the culture of asking for interpreters to attend employee related events, work trainings, or maybe promotional opportunities. Okay. Well, you know as a deaf person you know and deaf people in general, they like to have a choice of interpreters and often many of the interpreters bid a contract with the city and the city of course look frz the cheapest bid and we auch may get the worst kind of interpreter squz the top interpreters who are really good because they will accept deaf feedback, they are very involved in the community where other interpreters dont care, they dont care about our opinion. It means it becomes money in their pocket, it is not as if they have a vested intrest with the Deaf Community and we feel like we are the third person in this kind of exchange and really dont like that. People just get a interpreter good enough. No, i want to make sure my voice is heard and get a person that can work well with me. A specific person if they are available. Often in San Francisco deaf people will struggle with every day things in terms of sign language use. Can you lip read, can you read, can we just use paper and pencil. Paper is pencil isnt the same kind of Comfort Level in a level. Often the children that are deaf have hearing parents and struggle in terms of learning communication and they dont even get exposed to sign language until they are much older. Often parents will say it isnt necessary there is a lot of cultural feelings and oppression that deaf people face in the community. In the city does have hispanic interpreters and spanish and different languages, russian and so on, i can see that, but with asl it seems like it is a very limited group and we feel so marginalized in the community. We have to fight and it is very tiring and really often deaf people are quite. They dont know who to complain to. They dont know how to change the existing situation. In my job you know, i do have sign language use and interpreters and in the art museum they told deaf people you can go get your own interpreters. I said what i was so shocked. Im much more aggressive. I said no, the museum should provide the interpreters. Why do you think the deaf person should be a interpreter with them . I was shocked people saying bring your own interpreter. That is slap in the face. They need fraining in terms of culture and attitude. It is pretty bad in the city and deaf people do complain a lot. How can they change that . How can this be allowed to exist . We need advocacy. We need encouragement. It is very difficult. As im the only person as a deaf employee trying to be able to write letters, a lot of deaf people dont want to write deaf letters because english isnt their first language. There are so many issues relate today using sign language in the city public and private. Public event, closed caption as far as open captioning in y movie, and events in the park. They feel that isnt necessary. Often the venues are free and the technology is there, but there is no extra expense involved to provide captioning. So, you know, dealing with that is so frustrating, fighting to have equal access. We feel very opressed. [inaudible] thank you. I want to stop you here and ask you very quickly if you have any recommendations for Human Resources department specifically in San Francisco our very own San Francisco Human Resource department about providing greater access in the hiring and the employment process for deaf people . Well, deafblind and deaf people both, the city needs to hire more people that are deaf and deaflined. A lot of people ask mow. Mine was rule 115 but deaf people have to [inaudible] program was auch what they used but it is difficult and how to improve that access in hiring, you really need to have someone that is very familiar with the issues and provide the training to different departments, so they can not necessarily just be low jobs but meet the skill level the deaf people exhibit. For example, a grant design or apply for city jobs, a lot of times they could be hired but the interview process is difficult and a lot of times they say you have to speak and be able to communicate. I think hr you need someone skilled that is able to navigate the system to see if there are openings there that can fit jobs for deaf people or deafblind. There are a lot of issues, it isnt just me but hiring deaf and deafblind people to have a vision of where they can work. Accounting, file office, Public Library, even irs. There is a lot of thank you. Applied but have given up. Orchard thank you so much. We have toa couple more speakers to go through. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. And thank you interpreter. Youre welcome. Thank you. Thank you. We are going on to Jonathan Lyens, Department Manager of public health. Hell ocouncilmember, jonathan lion, proud poobe back here once again talking about employing people with disabilities. I do have to say i look for would to the day we dont have to talk about this anymore. It has been a very very long time in coming, but i think that we are as a city at long last moving in the right direction in a lot of ways and think that is a reflection of a lot of the good work that is happening. Many the good workers being in this room today, a lot of the folks from the community, a lot of the cbos that spoke earlier, partners on the acess committee and Carla Johnson and staff and department of Human Resources are rock solid partners throughout the process. Sometimeatize is difficult to think about how many jobs i have so ill speak with 2 separate hats, one as a City Employee and also as a president of the fdr Democratic Club in the city for seniors and people with disabilities. First off speaking as the president of the fdr club, we are proud to be really the spear head of helping to kick this thing open within the city. I want to say thank you to supervisor mar for his rock solid support throughout this process. I was disappointed i missed him. I missed his remarks today, but sure they are pretty much in line with every comment i heard him make on this issue. When the fdr club brought this isue to supervisor mars attention all most 2 years ago, the only thing he asked was how can i help. He never said anything else, he just said lets get this done. This isnt okay, how do we fix this and move forward. So we did. We brought forward a series of recommenditions one being to hire a disability employment coordinator in the city and proud to say that our members, we walk the halls during the budget process this year knocking on every door of the board of supervisors and walking through every door that was opened and saying we are here. This is important. Remember when our members helped you get elected . Well, that was because we thought you would be an ally and proud to say many of them were. Supervisor mar, supervisor kim, supervisor kim and farrell and breed and cohen in particular stepped up from the getgo and said this is important, we are going to take the sum we have in the budgetary process and put muno towards this because having somebody to be a single point of contact to coordinate disability employment in the city is important and they stepped up and did that and every one of those people deserves credit for doing that. The other things that our club put forward is policy recommendations that were things we brought forward to this council all most a year ago i think it was. Athround issue of Data Collection and goal setting. I think we need to do both. Too often good Public Policy gets lost in a lack of data. You have know idea howgood the policy is if you dont collect data. Basic think. Each individual department in the city in the city of which are are more than 60 should be required to set hiring goals for people with disabilities. It was said earlier and said again, we need to create a cull whicher of diversity. The cities strength and drawn from the diversity and the employees should be the same way rchlt we should have a work force that representathize city we serve. Moving quickly toi dont want to take all day, but moving quickly to my work within the sitee, i worked with the city for all most 10 years now. In many different capacity. Started in the mayors Budget Office during the recession and went from there to Budget Office to labor negotiate and now at the department of public health. I am now a senior contract analyst on the team rebuilding General Hospital and so going through this process, it has been a challenge in a lot och ways and in a lot of ways it has gin great. I have grown up in the city. I matureed in a lot of ways. I think some people still say i have matureing to do and that is fine but i have come into my own and think that is largely due to my work in city service. When i first came into had Mayors Office it came out there was actually a diversity training done for the staff ahead of time and i was appalled. I was like, whythey have to train these people to get ridy ready for me . Why is that big a deal . I realized it is because there were no blind people in city hall. 1100 people and i was the only one. There were a lot of catch atealing people i am the blind guy that works for gaven nusem. A lot of people enjoyed that. Stepping up as that one disabled person like the banner of disabled guy that sits in the Budget Office, there is a lot of pressure in that. But, i have experienced through the other issues i experienced that is a the biggest challenge to overcome is what i call compassionate discrimination. The idea that because i have a disability i cant do certain things and it is up to my managers and other Senior Management to define what my abilities are and what my abilities are not. That is a challenge for me through the years and think as i have grown through the process i think i have i want to say i learned to overcome that. I am proud to say that as a senior contractor analyst in the city i actually just closed a deali negotiate multiMillion Dollar contracts with Large International medical device prideers. I just closed a 25 Million Dollar deal with siemens so i think i have been able to prove to a lot of people what i am capable of doing. And also briefly want to touch on the issue of being able to get into city service. I worked for the city for all most 5 and a half years and i separated from the department of Human Resources and i was so confident when i walked out of dhr as the last time as a employee. I was confident very soon i would get opportunity in the city. I worked for 2 mayors, i have been done labor negotiateating, i have done budgeting, i bring a lot to the table. I spent 14 months after that out of work. I was on unemployment until congress decided i was unemployed long enough and cut off my unemployment and i have been to the dark side. I have experienced the depths of dispair and the depths of depression that come with applying and applying and applying for jobs that you know youre qualified for and never hearing anything back. Getting to the point where you apply for jobs you are over qualified for just because you need a job and still never hearing anything back. So, in sumimation i would say as a city we need to keep marching forward. We are marching in the right direction. We must work harder to develop that culture of diversity. Disability really needs to not be a issue anymore. We need to have a city that is truly representative. 20 percent the population identifies as having a disability. San francisco thats 160 thousand people. With our work force of 30 thousand that is 6 thousand people. Confident we dont have 6 thousand people with disabilities as employees. Thank you mr. Lyens and hope too one day we will no longer have to have this as a agenda item but thank you fl hard work. Now councilmembers i want to bring one last fellow employee, marti who was on the hiring panel that first day and she was talking with somebody who like many of the people on our work force age with a disability. Acquire a disability as a result of Different Reasons and then they have to be sorry, then they have to be accommodated in the work place. Marti, thank you. Thank you. As i said before, i am the Access Services man ager at the San Francisco Public Library and the ada coordinator. I have been there for 26 years next week and think i need to talk about both sides of my experience. So, my experience with the library has included using rule 115 as well as working through typical hr processes to hire people with disabilities to work in the programs i supervise and support. Because those services are specifically focus td on the information needs of people with disabilities and their family members and their allies, i think it is really critical we have on our team people who deeply understand and people who represent the community of people we serve. My biggest challenge through time has been figuring how to encourage colleagues throughout the Library System to take advantage of what is called access to sit a employment or ace. I see it as a opportunity to have a diverse and inclusive workforce and also a opportunity to have a fast track for hiring people to fill the positions we have open because if we can work around those regular hr processes we can hire people actually much more quickly. On the more positive note i am happy to say the library hires a number of disabled employees and who work through had processes to get accommodations they need at work and i have a couple recommendations as a hiring manager and someone who served on this commit eover the past year, i really believe that hiring managers throughout San Francisco departments should be educated about access to city employment and encourage to hire people who represent all the communities of people who live in the city including all our communities of people with disability. I say communities plural, this is not a homeo Genius Community but there are a number of communities with people with very different needs who represent our disability communities in San Francisco and once we get those people hired, my recommend is that Success Stories should be shared in a way that respects the privacy of those employees but encourage other City Departments to bring into our workforce people with disabilities. So, it is only through the past 3 years and not due to aging, but due to cancer that i havea quered disability and i have been dealing with personal changes and learning about what sorts of adjustments i need in order to keep working. Im grateful to say i only found support from my own supervisor and from our hr folks that library. I havent missed a step so im grateful for that. Thank you. Is there any more additions or anyone else who would like to speak . Finally i will open up to any questions from the council to any the presenters at this point. No questions . Okay. I will turn to Public Comment. Any of the presenters or anyone on the bridge line . I feel through the chair coming. I think you can hear a microphone moving. Couldnt resist. Carla johnson director of the may r office on disability. I want to extend my sincere and profound thanks to everyone who spoke today starting with supervisor mar who thrully has been a leader and a lion with the heart that is in the right place and never have to give him the talking points because he always knows them own his own experience. I also want to thank all the member thofz Employee Advisory Committee because we met for a period of 9 month jz sometimes twice a month and thrfs a extraordinary commitment for the people who showed up who really put themselves out on the line to develop the recommendations that have come sfrward. I also want to thank donna and ed. I feel having the relationship with Human Resources is critical if we move this task forward. Looking forward to work with our new ace recruiters. I think it is so important to have a recruit rr the disability expertise and the relationshipwise the various disability communities as marti so clearly articulated because i think a big challenge moving forward is making sure our recruitment effortss are not only effective to bring people with disabilities into the the application process, but also that we are able to match the people to the right jobs and matching the people to the jobs where they can thrive we want to work with Human Resources on how better to train our hr staff and our hiring managers about the reasonable accommodation. The reasonable accommodation process is reasonable and it is actually fairly easy in many cases to accomplish. It is about having conversations that are honest and straight forward about what the job dris criptions are and whether the individual is capable of performing the job with our without accommodation. I was happy to hear marti spuke but her experience but this is much more about bringing people into city service, it is also about retaining them and in retaining our employees we have to look at the life time contrary and how our needs and abilities change over time and how we need to ajustz how we work with the city. So i look forward to the work of the committee being something that is of a more permanent nature and i think that key the the committee is that Data Collection so that we can measure the progress that we make and the goals that we set. I just want to thank everybody who has been here today who told their stories either as a advocate or employee or committee and also want to thank the mayor Disability Council for shining a spot light on isissue with the hope that someone had spoken earlier about a future with this wont be necessary so thank you. Thank you very much for your comment director. Well go on to information item number 8 unless there are changes before i proceed . Okay. Presentation by jason anmark intake Service Manager department of aging and adult suvss. Good afternoon counsm rr. Jason adamek and here to talk about the soorn to be department of aging and Adult Services benefit and resources hub at 2 gauch is around oats and van ness. Ill talk but what the center will offer, we call the hub, and the serves we offer there, timeline and what the space will look like. It is a exciteic time for us. I manage intake for aging and Adult Services and the service we provide assist with applications and adult protective service, in home support service, home delivered meals, case manage jment connecting seniors and adults with disabilities with resources in the community through the Community Based organizations and other resources. We are physically moving to this hub but what is exciting and unique is i dobet go any other city in california that is offering a service that combined a assistance sunchs along with the benefits side of service. Medical and cat fresh will be combined along with our county veteran Service Office at 2 gauf. It is a one stop shop. We work hand in hand already with medical ihs and med kale is a great example where you need to be on medical. There is a lot of times someone come in for service my staff help getting someone connected with resource and also need assistance getting connected to benefit whether it be cal fresh or medical and on top of that a lot of people coming in are also veterans and our vice versa veterans that may need service outside the va system so it is a great way to combine those resources and provide a much i guess friendler environment. Friendler in the sense it is easier to gain access physically because the Current Location at 1650 mission is not the most friendly. There isnt a lot of confidence space. It is hard to do a interview sometimes and so people are being shuttleed from the 5th floor the the first or maybe drop over across the street to oat isstreet as a provider for ihss so ree all over the place. There is a real i guess recognitionnition that we need more public spaces site so it will happen. Sometimes it feels like it wont happen but as you can appreciate everything from getting the phone lines and computers in and kaf moved, there is quite a lot of lugestics that have to take place. My staff and part the medical staff are going to be moving we are told in 2 weeks. Trying to work around the holiday schedule. We are going to be completing the ground floor in december with anticipateation of a soft launch in january and in january we want to make sure we know what ree are doing, and all the systems work and know how to use the new technology how to route people in the right way and i can go into that a little bit. With the anticipateation of having a more informal site and doing outreach. There is a lot to do and been preparing for this for the last 6 months to a year. The think i would like to start with is for all of you to get a mental picture of dropping into the site at 2 gough we will have greeters who instead of a physical kiosk we have at the other benefits site throughout the city where you log in woorks ewill have a human being that will help that person who is a senior or person with a disability log into and get routed into the system and well have a Service Counter where we can hopefully expedite a lot of quick medical related issues. Maybe someone came in and lost need a medical replacement card or maybe quick housing information, so we will have this service countser set up then well have as part the router a ability to give people if you have at rens raunts a buzzer because we are mindful of people with hearing ishis and it isnt a friendly environment when you see a ticker come up on the big screen and a loud announcement so well go with the buzzer idea and have a waiting area while we meet with them to bring them into a more confidence interview space so we have quite a number of confidential interview spaces hooked up with computers and asust ivdevices so we can serve seniors and people with disabilities. For those that know the Veterans Office is colocated and provide the same type of service. The other nice thing about this space is right now a veterans go into the [inaudible] they get assistance with benefits and hooked up with the va but may not know about all the resources dos provides so what we are planning to do is for every person that comes into 2 gough they are expose sed to the resources through gough we with provide for assistance or benefits side so we try to provide a full service. The other exciting thing about the site is we have a out for bid now a contract with the Community Based organization to hire what we call, Community Liaisons and this will be to hire seniors and younger aadults with disabilities who can provide greeter assistance and help people fee comfort in the isspa. We dont have a sense how long people will wait. If you go to thedical office alt 1440 harrison 13450i78s there sometimes there is a wait and there can be a lot of traffic so we are mindful of having support from the community, having someone who is a senior or person with a disability to help other people that are senior jz people with disabilities to feel comfort in the space. We want to try to get a sense how people are experiencing the space so the community leozanhs [inaudible] accommodations whether for language or disability and just really be a leah ozanh between the greeters, the Service Counter, staff, security guards, be the eyes and ear of the lobby and help make people feel comfort. We are looking at hiring people part time and thinking about when we will have the most traffic. It may be something around lunch time where staff are not as available so that may be something we would depend on the Community Liaisons to help people feel comfortable. We have a lot of goals and a lot of timelines. Our phase 2 we have a computer lab that we will launch and for those that know the sf connected program, it helps seniors and people with disabilities get connected to the the internet and learn how to use computers. We will have a sf connected site there as well but we wont launch that in february. We are looking at giving maybe a few months getting the sf connect site fully operational and getting the staff necessary to run it. Then we are also looking at doing some other type of intensive counseling for people coming into the site. One the things that drove the idea of 2 gough is people under the age of 65 on medical they dont have the same asset limit tests that someone who is a senior has and we call that inl the world of medical the madgeee populationism people on ihsf and have a provider and get case manage squment other services through medical and may have a few thousand in savings and when they turn 65 they are there is a asset limit test and are only allowed 2 thousand dollars as a single adult. The ihfs director and Deputy Director are concerned about this real issue so part of this site will provide counseling for individuals who are between the age of 62 and 64 to be able to spin down and understand that the services they are receiving are tied to medical and the medical limits change when a person turns 65 so that can be my staff providing the counseling by my staff are knowledgeable in the Long Term Service and support in the community or medical staff doing that counseling so that is a another big change in our phase 2. We are looking out maybe a few months after we launch in february. The other thing that we want to do because Health Insurance is such a confusing thing for everyone, for people whening in that may not be eligible for medical, we want to also provide other types of Counseling Services so having someone from Health Care Options or a high cap office. We are looking at having people there part time to help people get connected with other types of helths insurance besides just medical services. We are really excited, slightly nervous because none of us are really used using all the technology you have to use to effectively track and route people because we do want to make sure we know what people are coming in for and also just making sure people are served in the first come first serve. They come in, the pager or whatever you want to call it, there is a whole back end system to that that all the staff will be use to route people appropriately, so fingers crossed, phones will be working and well be in in december and can come back and tell you more and more about our official launch date hopefully in february. With a soft launch in january, meaning people will when in and test our systems before we do the major grand opening in february. Thank you. We look forward and hold you to that commitment. Ill turn it over to questions from the council. Cochair sep supanich. I want to congreatulate you on opening this. I know it is a long road and tough at times. Could you describe where it is at because that is a difficult intersection and there are a lot of interesting buildings. Is the the building across the School District on one corner or the City College Board . There is city college on the other side of gough and if if you go the other direction across the street is our provider Enrollment Center for inhome support. That is a confusing block because that is where mission plits and turned into ottis. Well have more accessible parking for people who are dropping off so it will be better site than the county veterans Service Office has now because on van ness they are at 27 van ness and dont have a area for people to come be dropped off or park, so we should have a little better access there. The door is on gough, but the building is mainly on ottis. The big yellow building . I think it is brown. There is the parking lot along there is parking they will use for 2 gough and recurb it or make it so that it is not for public parking, it is just for parking for 2 gough loading and unloading right and disability parking. Great. I want our viewers and audience to know where this will be because i wandered around the block looking for it we just put the sign up so we have the city seal and name the site. Benefit and resource hub. It is beautiful building and a great space. It will feel like a nice welcoming environment and wont feel like im coming in to handle my head cal application, it will be a lot more than that. Very excited about it. My other question is respect with Community Liaisons you have inside the building helping people get oriented and to do satisfy action surveys, do you think you will hire people with disabilities and older adults that reflect the population that use the suvss . That is exactly the hope. We will contract with Community Based organization. We havent selected that agency yet but that is the scope of service they will hire people with disabilities and or seniors so they reflect the people coming to the site. It is no wrong door motto so people who may not have a disability or senior or adupt without a disability may come in because we are also part of a network of sites in the city that provide benefits assistance. But it is a center that we are really targeting serving seniors and adults with disabilities great. That is it for me. Um, i want to open Public Comment. Anyone on the bridge line . Okay. Thank you. I thought i left out staff. My apology to staff. Any questions just a very brief comment. I would like to echo jasons comments. It is a lovely space with a little signage it will be a lot easier to find. For those that know the neighborhood it is where the Power Exchange used to be so that is a interesting rebranding. [laughing] it is one of our mod architectural so it is a space im familiar with doing the plan and field check. Im intersested in the lei ozen that help people navigate the space and i am delighted to hear that is part the plan and will work with cbos to find folks like that. In light of the general focus of the meeting about employment wouldnt it be wonderful if the Staff Members could become City Employees instead of just member thofz cbo company . We would love to see more opportunities again for older adult squz people with disabilities point well taken. Thank you. To the chair as well. Jason, thank you so much. I know we have been talking about the idea of hiring or Employment Opportunity for seniors and people with disabilities. We had also talked about the communication access and connection with Assistive Technology, Adaptive Technology which i understand is part of your computer lab, what about tablets and vri capability, are your folks going be able to get connection to communication access for folks or assistive listening devices for folks who they need assistance with communication other than language. We have a video interpreting that will be set up all the Interview Room jz our tablets and wethat is fairly easy from a it perspect positive just a matter of getting the licenses but we have a commitment from hsh to have that. Listening devices i put in aordser for that. I talked with people at mod to get ideas so we are looking at having material in braille, those listening devices, the video interpreting, making sure thingerize in accessible print and also just in the buzzers are another example of just how we want to make this a really welcoming environment and not have to worry if someone can hear over the intercom there number is being called or dont have to worry about seeing their number over a large screen tv. That is something i have been concentrateing on making sure it is aachy sssable site as possible. We are suving seniors and people with disabilities so it is important and im sure we will learn there is more we will need to do so we are thinking of that and if you have other recommendations happy to take those on. I hope in your contractor Selection Process you choose perhaps a number of groups rather than just one that can address and offer you liaisons that reflect both younger adults with disabilities and seniors. Often times organizations tend to focus on one or the other, so i would like to caution you to set basically performance standards for numbers of peep youngal adults with disability versus seniors or vice versa so there is a good mix of abilities and visibility and all. I think for the next time i will talk about 2 gough when it is real and it will be, i promise, i think having the contract monitor for the community leaiz anh project talk about be a great idea. They are the hand on and i wont be the contract monitor but you point is well taken and bring that back. We are not looking at hiring just a couple people but the idea is hiring a pool of people so i dont know what the number may be but it isnt just a couple people. We want to rotate a number of people into these positions. Thats great. Thank you. Does staff have any other questions . Thank you. Thank you very much. We will go on to number 9, report from the cochair and chip supanich donated his time to me i have it 2 things per taining to the Long Term Care council which is a advisory body much like this one that advises the mayor and board of supervisors pertaining for Long Term Services for people with disability squz look at thijs for people to stay in their homes as they age with our without a disability and they are up to a couple things now. First of all, for those that follow local government and government politics, the budget season is about to begin the begin thofg year and they are trying to get a head start lobbying for these very important funds. In fact, their ask is quite large this year, it is seberal million more dollars than they received this past year. Not the council but the organizations that provide the services so if you have something you would like thoLong Term Care coordinating council to know about i suggest you come to next meeting or lrf r after that. They meet the second thursday every month including december and the next meeting is december 10 from 1 oclock to 3 oclock in the afternoon in the building address is 1 south van ness which is the b of a building on corn of van ness and market. It is on the second floor and as you go up to the second floor are thereare signs directing to the room. I suggest sth Disability Community sow show up and speak out and com 7b89sd on matters pertain toog the suvss we need so badly. Also with the Long Term Care coordinating council is they have a work group working on hiv and aging and they will get a report at the december 10 meeting about their findings, research and what they find is the needs for a aging community of hiv positive people. Very interesting and pertains to the Larger Community as well. The Lgbt Community and Larger Community of all of us. I encourage you to atened and comment. Thank you. Thank you cochair supanich. For time same well move to item number 10, report from the director of the Mayors Office on disability. Thank you cochair [inaudible] it has been a long time since we met. It means there were so many topics of events that happened between it was hard to choose what to talk about today. Ill focus on just 3, but i hope that everybody got a chance to atened the ada summit and the disability unity festival held in San Francisco in september and i also hope the people got a opportunity to atened the super fest film festival. Ardana atkins was a jur or judge to select the films and it was great experience to see films that are either made for people with disabilities or by people with disabilities. Broad spectrum. My 3 topics i want to talk about today are a disaster resilience summit. I also want to gave briefing on superbowl 50 and update on Affordable Housing. So, 2 weeks from now on tuesday december 1, here in city hall there will be a disaster resilience summit in the north light Court Running fraul 8 30 to 1 p. M. And there will be remarkess by mayor ed lee and nayoma kelly and [inaudible] from the city of new orleans. The focus will be how we can work toort on a neighborhood level to prepare and respond to a disaster. The city has a program called the ecp or emplowered Communities Program and there are 7 different neighborhoods that have signed up. The first resilient neighborhood is diamond height followed by bay views [inaudible] brotherhood way. Diamond height is the leader. They organized around the needs of the neighborhood residence including a large number of people who are older a dulted or people that live with disabilities and in the organizing they brought in neighborhood merchants because Diamond Heights has a Shopping Center and there is a drugstore and in the stropling center there is a supermarket. On the perimeter of the Shopping Center there is a church and what that brings all together is really the supplies needed to help support people after disaster as well as a play to be able to create a neighborhood shelter location. So, one the things that the resilient Diamond Heights talked about was well being checks for their neighbors and how we can evacuate People Living in multistory buildsings who may need help after power outages. The planning under the epc project is following that philosophy that comes out of the disability of nothing about us without us and that is why it is so very important to participate in these summits because when this summit takes plains 2 weeks, there will be a series of workshops that occur after the program. These workshops are a opportunity for people to identify the gap and needs and to start making this relationships with their neighbors so that we can be self sufficient on a neighborhood basis after a disaster. There will be asl interpretation for this summit as well as captioning for the speakers but if people want toper tace in the workshop and like asl our captioning thaig should contact 98ing web at the Mayors Office of disublth which is 4155546789 thmpt date is tuesday december 1 in city hall San Francisco from 8 30 to 1 and for other details go to the website, which is www empower sf. Org. The next topic is superbowl 50 and if you havent heard San Francisco is host thg superbome february of 2016 and this in light that the game is played in santa clara. In San Francisco there will be a lot of events. They will start on january 29 which is a friday and they will end with a big game february 7. Here are a couple basics about the superbowl 50. San francisco isnt the organizer of the event t is the sfr bowl 50 Host Committee and nfl. I mention that in terms of managing expectations because we have a lot of input in this but it really is a event that is thrown by a private party. There will be 2 primary venues, the fist is called the nfl experience and that will be at the maus connie Convention Center north and south and west and what will hapson this will be a by invitation or ticket only event so it is a private party. They will close down Howard Street very similar to what they do for the orgical world so any the traffic disruptions you experience with oracle world or sales force is replicated for the nfl experience. The second venue is called, superbowl city and this is open to the public. It will take place on Market Street along the embarcadero and there will be a closure of Market Street from beale to the embarcadero and partial closure of embarcadero. There will be different vendors and entertainment and information that will be setting up in Market Street itself as well as along the embarcadero at justin hurmen plaza and around the baunchy courts. What that means for people who live or work in San Francisco is that there is going to be traffic disruptions because most the Transportation Systems actually terminate at the end of Market Street. We have Good Transportation planners who are carefully putting together the rerouting of different bus lines, most of them will be going down to mission street, but what is really important to understand if you commute by either the fairy or Embarcadero Muni or bart station you can expect some delays because in light of security concerns we have seen around events lake boston and paris there will be Security Check points you have to pass through to join the superbowl experience and during the rush hour times that may be a lot of people to manage. What our office will do is issuing a lot of communications, adviseries telling people how best to continue with their daily living without being disrupted by a big party. Our office is working closely with the Host Committee around the issues like permitting depails as well as making sure that the plan will be maintaining accessibility at all times and also making recommendations about Effective Communications. So, well have more details to share at the january meeting and might even find it helpful to get a briefing from the Host Committee as we get close to that big party. My last update is about affordable and accessible housing and we had such great news in november that proposition a passed. It will be providing 310 Million Dollars for both the reduction and the acquisition of Affordable Housing. What i love about publicly funded Affordable Housing is that means our office gets to insure that will be accessible housing as well because of our architectural access program. Other great news is that the transfer of the former Housing Authority propts is taking place under the rental assistance demonstration project and under this new housing and urban development model, non Profit Housing providers will take over these properties and have the opportunity to make very long needed repairs and improvements to 32 sites and about 4500 units. They are investing 1. 4 billion theres into upgrading our former Housing Authority sileths. One the big improvements after big repairs like whetherization by putting iproofs and sideings and painting is we are finally getting fully accessible mobility dwelling units as well as communication units in addition to accessible paths of travel that connect the different buildings to things like our community center. This work is Going Forward in phases. Our office is working for what seems like around the clock during plan check on phase one which has 18 sites and then phase 2 will be arriving in a matter of weeks. It has been a huge effort city wide to process all these permits but what has been a Incredible Opportunity and privilege is the chance to really improve the quality of life for so many residence with such great need. So, that concludes my directors report and at this time what i would like to do is turn things over to nathan web who is the Mayors Office on Disability Office Operations Manager and he will share with you information about a recent event. Thank you. Thank you carla. Good afternoon council. Thank you for allowing me the chance to talk about the Community Forum, my offices, the Mayors Office on disability in partnersure with sf Public Library [inaudible] held at the cor etauditorium last night. This Community Forum was for the deaf and hard of hearing communities. Our office wanted to hear from these communities and get a better understanding of the challenges this dem graphic faces when trying to obtain city services. I worked at mod the last 18 months and i had a few client with hearing impairment both deaf and hard of haerbing tell he how up setting it is to try to get services from other departments. I had a number of deaf and hard of hearing clients sit down and talk to me and share stories with the problems they encountered when trying to take care of business or when trying to participate and enjoy Simple Pleasures offered through the city. Throw these conversations i sigh a common position of where the individuals stand. A position all most to the point of dispair and resistant. Resistment and dispair fueled by local Government Agencies or city contractors not providing adequate communication written or lip readen or slowly lip readen or exclude them entirely from activities or programs they are entitled to participate in as well. Many the deaf and hard of hearing clients know their rights of the ada which should bring them hope. Yet constant denial of service or exclusion of participation left many of deaf and hard of hearing feeling disheartened because they are in a ever lasting battle fighting for joiths ookual opportunities. I want share a second story real quick a. Few week ago our office had a city agency sen over a deaf man for us to talk to in regards to services they provide. This agency tried communicated with the man but it was far from effective. By the time this individual got to our office he was furious with the treatment from the other agency mpt to help deescutate the frustration i assisted the man by use thg little sign i know but primary uses the video interpreter. Vri is Video Conference and Electronic Technology inconjungz with highspeed internet that provide interpreting mpths i was able to talk with the client understand what the problem was and what able to assist by calling the other department to figure things out for him. The client was the office took the time with communication when the other office sent him off confused. After the fact after our office discussed with this with the aijs this individual was tolds by the same department if he wants services he has to provide his own interpreters thmpt disdenial to Effective Communication is enough to discourage anybody. With these type orphcases and the few we have happen to hear about it made me wonder how many deaf and hard of hearing individuals experience this same treatment. This prompted a initiative to holds a community conversation, a conversation ato allow the opportunity to discuss access right, communication access right, Effective Communication, the type of work mod does and how we want to be better allies. We talked about advocacy and mdc as well in this discussion we wanted to hear from these individuals first hand what problems they face with the city and how we can best serve them. We received pretty good feed back. Some feed back is what we can do to make our suvls more widely known to the deaf and hard of hearing communities. We received feed back on treatment as well as access and Effective Communication issues in everything from employment to public accommodations to local government. Through this feed back we not only hope to become better allies for this group, but gain a better understanding of the level of accessible by the deaf and hard of hearing communities in the city of San Francisco. I believe my Deputy Director may have more to say in regards to some the feedback we received. Thank you, nathan staff, thank you, nathan. Actually i dont. You have done a great job and want to publicly cumind you for taking this underfor this be a hard project for you. Your baby. I just follow along with your leadership so this was your opportunity to shine so thank you. By the way, he did a lovely signing on stage withhe is quite comp tent asl signing, so it is a pleasure to have someone in our office who is getting a warm welcome to to a community that doesnt aunch get seen i just want to chime in and thank [inaudible] for sponsoring this at the library and the Mayors Office on disability having the council there, it was a good tonight because the council wanted to reconnect and outreach with the deaf and hard of Hearing Community and nice to new and old friends eve wn the technical difficulties we had. We began a dialogue in addressing the communication access issues, so i hope the difficulties dont continue but the Partnership Still does and welcome you to the meetings and working with you and thank you for being here. We will go on to the next agenda item which is reports from the disaster prepairdedness committee thmpt cochair which is myself. The ddpc had 2 meetings and i did have notes from september and november because of time constraints ill review the november notes. Hold on, please. Mayor Disabilities Council subcommittee on disaster prepareardsness met november 6, 2015 and focused on el 9o. The meeting was well attended and included memberoffs city deerment pas, public helt, emergency management, human sunchss as well as Community Organizations in home support services, public support, sf card, aging and disability, friendly sf. The first part the meeting including a presentation from roger [inaudible] from National Weather service in monterey who shared the updates on the el 9ee information. We cant be concern certain on the mass of storms expected from late december and up to manch. For San Francisco some of the implications can include lands slide power outage due to fallen trees or flooding, city aijss pg e and Public Utilities are hard at work preparing for increased rain. The Human Service ages talked about efforts topoid Emergency Support for the Homeless Population that resist comes into the homeless filter system. Some of the ideas included ericting temporary structures that provide a dry and warm place for anyone to come in during days of anticipated storems. The next meeting will be helds friday january 8, 2016 from 1 30 to thre3 30. Room 141. This will include information on for superbowl 50. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information about the disability Disaster Preparedness Committee Contact the Mayors Office on disability at 14155546789. Email, mod San Francisco gov. Org. Thank you. This concludes the reports. Now well go on to item 12, Public Comment. Is there any Public Comment on todays agenda but within the jurisdiction of the Mayors Disability Council . Anyone on the bridge line . Any Public Comment . No . Okay. Thank you. We will go ahead and close Public Comment. We will go to information item 13 any correspondence no correspondence item 14, discussion. Council member wong. It is a very simple comment just like to wish everybody happy holidays and looking forward to seeing you all in 2016. Cochair supanich. I believe there will be no ndc meeting in december in lou of that there may or may not be a holiday party, we have yet to decide, but call mod office the number we have given you 10 times today, 5546789. And many of you will receive invitations as well so look forward to that. Thank you. Thank you everyone. So, the last agenda item which i know there wont be changing is to adjourn and thank you everyone for being here and have a nice weekend. [meeting adjourned] good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being here. San francisco is thrilled to be hosting super bowl 50. When we found out we were hosting super bowl 50 we were planning right away. Weve been planning last spring with many exercises and pulling together our regional partners and local and federal partners to make sure that super bowl 50 is a safe, fun, experience for everyone who comes here. Its the golden anniversary of the super bowl. Thats something to really celebrate and we are thrilled that San Francisco was chosen for this honor to be the super bowl 50 host. Today, we have what we are calling a super bowl scrimmage. We have the second of three exercises that test our assumptions, refined our plans and actively engage our players in planning and response. Each one of these we learn new things. We alter our plans and define them an deconflict them and as we move forward we are speaking with one voice and we know what other agencies are doing and what assumptions are in place. Our goal is to work through all of these challenges together. So, again, super bowl 50 is a wonderful fun family event thats going to be 9 days long here in San Francisco. We want people all over the region, all over the world to come and celebrate with us. We think that unfortunately our own team will not be part of this. But, other than that, its like it is the perfect event for San Francisco and the bay area. We want to encourage efrj everyone in San Francisco and sf to be alerted. It will be an important way to get messaged about with such information as what streets to avoid or what areas to avoid. So please encourage your residents neighbors to sign up for alert sf. Im going to introduce my good friend. Police chief suhr who is going to come up. There you are, chief. Hes going to give us a few words of wisdom. Thank you, ann. I will preface my comments as a lifetime 9er faithful, im not ruling out that we are in the game. Dont give up. Anyway. We are so excited to be hosting the 50th anniversary of the super bowl. Again, the planning has started in ernest pretty much as soon as we won the bid for our chance to show case San Francisco and as police chief of what i believe is the finest Police Department in the country, we want it to be as safe as it can be. Weve been to the new york fan fest where the super bowl played in new jersey, weve been down to arizona, where the super bowl was played in glendale and went to the phoenix Police Department to see what they do and it got us that much more excited to be able to host this event over a 9day period event in San Francisco. One thing San Francisco is good at is planning. Its what we do. No matter what eventuality that happens, our Fire Department and with the leadership with the Mayors Office, we plan as if that event happens here. Pretty much for every eventuality all the way up to and including typhoons and or anyway, tidal waves. So, or tsunamis, which we hope never happens. That said, well be planning and it will be a great event where we plan and get to know each other. Everybody has each others cell phones and we work with our state and federal partners on what may come and i cant say enough how much preparation is going into this effort to make sure that it is safest. I know with events going on overseas is leaving people right now anxious. Again, its just one more variable that we are training to. We are in regular contact with the fbi. Again, there are no known threats to the united states, no known threats to San Francisco and certainly no known threats to the super bowl. That communication will remain open regular and we will absolutely make sure that every precaution is taken to make sure the whole world can come to the super bowl in late january and february and have hopefully what is going to be the best super bowl and best fan fest ever here or nfl experience. I would just say as police chief here in San Francisco, you are all invited. Thank you, chief. Now i would like to introduce our very own fire chief chief hayes white. Good morning, everyone. Like the two previous speakers, San Francisco is very enthusiastic about hosting super bowl 50. Although we wont be in shoulder pads and cleats. The people behind me gathered around the city are like a team. We are the team preparing, planning and communicating about whats going to happen end of january, beginning of february. We are very well prepared and thats what you see today with the men and women of San Francisco county and state and regional partners. What i want to advocate to those visiting San Francisco is we will do our utmost to keep everyone safe. We operate at a high level in San Francisco. We know there will be additional challenges but we are up to the challenges and as a team we are practicing and per perfecting and we are going to assure everyone that we are going to respond to emergencies outside of the super bowl as well as those coming to the super bowl. Chief suhr wanted me to pass along what he always talked about and not just from Law Enforcement but Fire Department perspective. If you see something, make sure you say something. Its important to utilize 911. If its not an emergency you can use 311. If you have some ideas related to preparedness and transit, make a good plan and utilize all the citys resources many we want you to understand that from the San Francisco Fire Department that we have 15 more paramedics that will be available. We have private providers as well. We anticipate we will have a high call volume during the period of time, but we are prepared and ready and look forward to hosting everyone here in San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you, chief. Im going to call chief suhr back up real quickly. So my partner at the Fire Department shouldnt have to say what chief suhr said with chief suhr standing here. Anyway, with all of our devices we are never going to be as safe as we can be with the millions of people in San Francisco looking out for one another. Whoever comes to the nfl experience during those 9 days. Especially right now with everybody anxious in San Francisco and around the country. Please, if you see something, anything remotely out of the ordinary. Please call. 911 is on alert to expedite calls. That will be the case in the nfl experience as with other major events with our three world series championships and runs with super bowls in the past and other major events in San Francisco. We need to remain vigilant as a city as a whole when it comes to taking care of one another and looking after one another. Thats when we are going to be safest and you will get the most Rapid Response you can possibly get to checkout any possible potential concern. Er on the side of the caution, if its nothing, no problem. You would be remiss what i always call a predictable surprise where you saw something and didnt say anything and something went on. Just call us. Thank you, chief. Now i would like to introduce our director of sf mta, ed reiskin. Thank you, good morning, everyone. I would like to thank ann and the team for her leadership and what the team referenced. To put on a big event like this does take a lot of coordination and planning and is really preparing us for anything that might happen and that planning is essential to making for a great event. It will be a great event as everybody else has said. I think this is a great opportunity for San Francisco whether you like football or not, whether you are planning to participate in these activities or not. The super bowl being hosted here is going to bring a lot of people, a lot of excitement and a lot of goodwill to our city which is a good thing. From a transportation point of view, our task is really straight forward. We want to make sure that people can safely and readily access the event and from and to the event and everybody else in San Francisco can go where they need to go whether its work or school or just trying to make their way across town. We have been planning with the rest of the city planning but also with the rest of the regional transportation agencies and particularly Law Enforcement and homeland security, particularly the Transportation Security Administration to make sure we can have a safe and secure event and from secure transit agencies. We want to encourage everybody to take transit because of the transportation we have developed is very much reliant on people taking transit. But for people taking transit, we want people to report anything that looks suspicious or worry some. Like the chief said, call 911 and let them do their job. To support Emergency Services in particular, part of our effort is mapping out the security routes, the Emergency Vehicle access routes to and from all of the various events in the area to make sure that without being impeded, they can do their work. And then in terms of the Transportation Service itself, weve been working with all the providers and particularly with muni which is going to do a lot of the heavily lifting for this event to make sure that where we can work around and with the street closures to make sure that everybody who wants to take transit from and to the events can and everybody else who uses transit on a regular bases can get to where they need to be going. Weve been able to figure out routes to the buses and figure out where the taxi stands will be and the Emergency Vehicle access will be. This is something we do for many large special events. We did it for americas cup and for other large parades and other large celebrations. We are very confident in our ability to ensure people get to where they want to go whether they are participating or not safely and efficiently. We will be encouraging folks to use transit and just to address an issue thats been out there. There has been a lot of talk about the impact that sites down at the foot of embarcadero on muni might have overhead wires. Weve been working hand in hand with the community over many months as they are refining their plans. The issue with the wires if you get close to the wires, thats not a safe situation and we need to move the wires. As weve been communicating with them, they have been able to redesign their structures for the village so it will not require the removal of overhead wires. The removal of overhead wires would have brought some cost but brought disruption because it would have made the removal period long. Without the need to remove wires, that wont be an issue. Well be able to keep that window closure as soon as possible and get folks to and from the event and around the event as well as possible and well continue to work with the other Transportation Providers to make sure its great for everybody whether they are participating or not. Thanks. Thank you, ed. Its now my pleasure to introduce keith bruce who is the ceo of the super bowl 50 Host Committee. Keith . Thank you, ann. Good morning, everybody. Regardless of who is playing in the super bowl, it is 80 days from today. And more importantly 70 days to the opening of the super bowl city and the official celebrations that will mark this great event coming to the bay area. Safety and secures has been our no. 1 priority from the very first day that the Host Committee was formed. We have been working with the l,