Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 12516 20160202

So, mr. President , i will go to item no. 1. Call to order, roll call. Do your announcement first. So were going to start make ago monthly announcement or an announcement for every meeting to let you know and to reinforce the notion that the office of Small Business is the only place to start your business in San Francisco. A lot of people dont know that and when starting a business in San Francisco, the first place you want to go is either in person or online to sfosb. Org and or come to our desk here at city hall and you will learn everything you need to know about starting your business and where you go from there. We are also letting all the other desks throughout city hall know that if someone comes to them and says, im starting a business, they say, well, if you havent been to the office of Small Business first, go there first and we will see you when the time is right. Okay, so thats our Public Service announcement for today. Thank you. And its free. And our advice is free. Thats very important. Item no. 1, which is call to order and roll call. We have officially called the meeting to order and roll call. Commissioner mark dwight, here. Commissioner steve adams, here. Commissioner kagts lean dooley, here. Commissioner ortizcartagena, here. Commissioner riley, here. Commissioner toursarkissian, here. Commissioner zouzounis. We have a quorum. General Public Comment. This is the point in the meeting where we allow the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda. If you have something pertinent for right now and you want to say it, thats great. Or even better if you want to place something on the agenda for the future, the Small Business commission is open for new business here at these meetings and we encourage people to come here to recommend what they would like to be on our future agendas so this is the time for that. If there are any members of the public who would like to comment on something that is not on the agenda or recommend something for a future agenda, please do so now. General Public Comment is closed, lets move on to 3. Item no. 3 is discussion and possible action on a resolution in support of superbowl 50 and the benefits businesses. We were to have a presentation by the office of economic and Work Force Development. The presenter is currently not here right now. You want to table this until later . Here he comes. So, todd, you are up. On cue. Thank you, commissioners, todd rufo, office of economic apblds Work Force Development. I want to thank commissioner adams for putting forth this resolution and i want to speak today in strong spoertd of it. We look at data from past superbowls and the data is clear. Lots of people come and spend money at local restaurants, Small Businesses, hotels and others, driving sales and this in turn results in more revenue for host cities. Now, the office of Work Force Developments goal was two first is to ensure that San Francisco business, particularly our Small Businesses in commercial corridors were the beneficiaries, were connected to the hundreds of thousands of fans who are coming to the city. The second is to connect San Francisco residents to the Work Force Developments created by the superbowl. First on the Small Businesses, we as you know launched the shop and dime, the 49 campaign, last year, a targeted campaign specifically designed to promote local businesses of local commercial corridors to get residents throughout the city to shop local. We did that last year and launched it again as part of the Holiday Season this year and we through the superbowl partnered early on with the Host Committee to drive traffic and leverage the traffic being done through shop and dime and drive traffic to commercial corridors. We did extensive to Community Benefit districts, to our local merchant associations as well as other partners on the ground in the community to support this initiative. Working together we created with the superbowl host program a targeted Marketing Campaign to drive fans and visitors to neighborhood Small Businesses. Those include the creation of shop and dime and 49 maps and you may have seen those, the hundreds of banners that are up around the city and weve distributed those maps to hotels, thousands of those maps have also been distributed to the Taxi Commission as well to make sure visitors who are riding in taxis also have access to that. We have the shop and dime, the 49 web site which promotes the local events at local commercial corridors in the city and we understand that the Host Committee will have ambassadors that are guiding visitors to these events throughout the city, as well as promoting our local corridors and handing out this material as well. Sf travel we have been working with as well, we will have kiosks within the superbowl area, showing and presenting the areas within the city, within the superbowl city, to drive traffic as well. One of the other aspects weve worked with the Host Committee on is the superbowl program. This is a Phenomenal Program designed to leverage the excitement around the superbowl to promote our commercial corridors. Weve worked with the program at the host city to promote several neighborhoods and the activities they are puting together. Currently on their web site neighborhoods including the excelsior, bayview, castro as well as chinatown are highlighting special events that visitors who are coming to San Francisco for the event can learn about and go to those neighborhoods. They include everything from pub crawls to mardi gras celebrations to weeklong neighborhood events. Beer week is also going on in San Francisco and beer week is being promoted through the Super Community as well, so a great example of local neighborhood efforts and events and promotions going on that are being directly connected to the opportunities created by the superbowl. A great example is whats going on in the bayview. I know earl may be here as well, earl shaddocks, who is a merchant leader who weve been working closely with, and ill let earl speak more to it as well, but they created the super soul 50 program which will invite visitors to explore and experience the bayview from february 2nd through the 7th and they are offering food specials all along 3rd street at local businesses. They have partnered with the Host Committee to create Super Community posters, these beautiful orange posters in the windows of businesses up and down 3rd street. Again, its a great example of a neighborhood that has come together to promote the neighborhood and take advantage of this great opportunity with all the visitors here. Another great example is the work being done in the castro led by the Merchants Association as well as many others that are on the ground in the castro. They created a great web site and campaign called visit super castro. Com which highlights local events and businesses. There are also promotional ads and banners that will be up on busses and sides of busses highlighting, promoting the castro. There is also way finding to ensure visitors can get to the castro from superbowl city and know of the many transportation methods to get to the castro. The third kie key program was a Program Designed to kick local businesses to the contracting and purchasing opportunities being created by the superbowl through reginas work and early meeting with them, with the Host Committee, it was highlighted to them in those early meetings the importance of ensuring that lgbt businesses were included as part of the key group that is we would focus on related to local purchasing and targeted groups targeted for local purchasing. I believe it was the first time that a Business Connect Program did include lgbt and worked with ggba on that key program. The second thing we have worked with has been work force and jobs. I will go through this piece very quickly and take any questions you might have on it, but we worked with the Host Committee to identify 500 job opportunities, they are temporary in nature because the event is temporary in nature, at the superbowl city as well as the nfl experience location. And of those we have held 6 hiring events and of those we have been able to identify 321 residents from our system and of those, 176 of those residents referred from our system has received job offers from the contracting firms. The top three neighborhoods where those residents are coming from is the bayview, the tenderloin, as well as the excelsior. Important data to highlight that these opportunities are translating into real opportunities for San Francisco residents. As you also know our local hire provision applies to the city built program to ensure that incredible San Francisco talent is getting connected to those opportunities. Theres been a lot of discussion around transportation, obviously, and its importance to Small Businesses to ensure that not only can goods and customers get to Small Businesses but that fans and visitors to the city can get out to our businesses and visit them as well. And the sfmta has launched an incredible web site, sfmta sf50 which is wonderful for helping visitors to understand the transportation opportunities to be able to move around in the city. I want to close with one final point and thats related to the Financial Impact of the superbowl. We again looked at the data of past superbowls and we focused on the past superbowls because those are the actual events that created real data that we have something to evaluate. Based on those, in phoenix in 2015 their superbowl generated an overall Financial Impact of 719 million. In new orleans was 227 million. Its the impact to Small Businesses and hotels apblds everybody in between. That translates directly into local tax revenue. The new orleans the number we saw was more than 10 million for just local sales tax and hotel and car rental taxes. Again, very specific numbers that speak to the direct Economic Impact to not only the local economy of superbowl host cities as well as the direct tax revenue that translates into cities. A final point related to that. It is important to note that cities that host the superbowl do so time and time again. They host the superbowl and then they compete again for the opportunity to host it again, which highlights to me at least within those cities that they have done analysis and said, it is worth it for them to continue to host the superbowl and to try for it again. And i think its instructive that other cities experience just that, there is positive economic output and impacts that occur. Happy to answer any questions that the commission may have. Thanks, doug. Commissioner adams. First off, thank you very much for your presentation. And i want to say thank you to the office of economic and Work Force Development, the Superbowl Committee. I know in our neighborhood some people had issues with the f line not running and right away your team jumped in, you brought sfmta in, you brautd us all in, we came up with a solution, we have an awesome web site and people in the neighborhood are very, very excited. And you said a couple of things. Millions of people will be coming to this town, its the superbowl and who doesnt want to come to San Francisco. We will be showcased all over the world and our no. 1 industry is tourism. We want to get those sites and i, for one, am very, very excited but i really am grateful for the help we got from your office and im very impressed with the superbowl 50 how they jumped in, they even blessed our super castro 50 web site name which we trademarked already and they were fine with it. Ready for the next one. Well, thats something that we are actually going to use that web site year round now for tourism because it came out so well that were going to use that during pride, during Chinese New Years and all these other events that occur during the year. I cant thank you enough for everything you and your team and superbowl 50 has done, especially for our neighborhood. Thank you, commissioner, you bring up an interesting time that february in particular is generally a slow time for San Francisco. I know for hotels and the folks focusing on tourism, after the holidays people are kind of traveled out so its coming at a time in the year where our local Tourism Sector as well as our Small Businesses can really benefit from that boost. Commissioners, any other comments . Questions . Okay, seeing none we will open it up to Public Comment. Again, we dont have any speaker cards today, unfortunately, so if you are interested in Public Comment please line up and i want to remind you that Public Comment is limited to 3 minutes. Its not because were bad people, ogres here and want to drag you off the stage, but thats the way it is so everybody goats 3 minutes. You will hear a little bell about 30 seconds before your time is due, dont get nervous but that means the gavel is coming. If you have written your comments by all means read them. Better that you stick to the script you have written than wander off into hyper space because its amazing how 3 minutes can turn into 5 or 10. Anyway, lets get the show on the road. Before we start there we go. Sorry, never mind. Thank you so much. Mr. President , commissioners, first of all thank you for being here. I will take your advice and speak quickly, my grandmother told me how to speak and she always took the advice of Franklin Delano roosevelt. I always find it amazing that someone who in 8th grade made a touchdown. My name is david perry, i started my business at 18th and castro with a small apple 2c computer and for the record of transparency, i am working with the superbowl 50 committee specifically to talk to our community. Businesses, nonprofits, people who are reaping the benefits of superbowl 50. Superbowl 50, as the commissioner said, will not only be good for the next few weeks for business, its going to leave a positive legacy for the entire city. As for this mornings press conference over 7 1 2 Million Dollars, thats actual cash, has been donated to bay area nonprofits and charities, specifically groups that work with at risk and disenfranchised youth for the legacy of superbowl 50 and the work of the committee will truly be super, not only super castro, super haight and others. Im here to encourage other people who may be suspicious of how the superbowl may be good for them to look at the numbers. Look at what you can do to make this good for tour i haves. As an lgbt owned business i am proud to say for the First Time Ever in superbowl history in addition to working with all kinds of businesses and vendors there is a specific supplier diversity program. Over 3 million in contracts that we know of, today, have gone to Small Businesses that are women owned, minority owned and for the first time there are two new categories, lgbtq and businesses owned by disabled veterans. We live in San Francisco, we know its political, ive worked on almost every large event over 30 years in San Francisco and discourse is the soul of democracy. So i want to thank our board of supervisors for looking at superbowl 50, asking the questions, but i would like to point out just in the sake of fairness that one of our supervisors who now is opposing superbowl did vote for it four years ago. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, commissioners, my name is barbara aco, i am the executive director of the bayview opera house. S and the bayview opera house is a Community Cultural center owned by the city that we operate and we applied for a grant opportunity for superbowl 50 and were awarded a grant for kids in the bayview. Arts have been pretty much eliminated from the School Curriculum because they are struggling schools so we are happy for this grapblts to help the kids of bayview experience the arts. We also put on a lot of events, especially Outdoor Community events that are arts based and weve been doing that for several years, many events supported by a grant from the office of economic Work Force Development for which we are very grateful. We conduct surveys at every event so we know about 20 percent of the people who attend our events have never been to bayview before, period, not to one of our events. Many people come from other bay area cities as well, at least 10 percent of our event goers come from outside so it shows you even a district like bayview that is not considered a primary attraction in San Francisco, events attract people from all over the bay area. So i just wanted to say that im in favor of this resolution because i think events really are an Economic Development factor, definitely in bayview but i believe all over the city and i thank superbowl 50 for their donations and contributions they have made. Thank you, thats great news. Next . Good afternoon, my name is dan burk, im the executive dregtor of the first t of San Francisco. For those of you not familiar with our organization, we are a leading Youth Development organization, a nonprofit, and we teach kids life skills really through the great game of golf. We reach about 10 to 12 thousand youth right here in our great city every year. Historically our partnerships with the city, including the Mayors Office and park and rec and the San Francisco Unified School District has really been critical to our success over the last decade and kind of a vital component of this partnership has been the Financial Support we have received from events that have come to this great city. Speaking of professional golf events alone have contributed over 2 million to our chapter over the last decade. Superbowl 50 is no exception, thrown around that have been contributed to charity have a meaningful charity. Even though you wouldnt see anything in the local newspaper or espn the reality is hosting an event like this provides resources to those Whose Mission is to help those this need. We are honored to receive a very generous 10,000 donation. Specifically this 10,000, its going to allow about 750 kids that live in the richmond and Western Addition and sunset areas to get on a school bus and come to golden gate golf course one day a week for six weeks for pe, learn about the fundamentals of golf, and more importantly learn about some of the values in the game which is honesty and integrity and perseverance. These lifechanging opportunities such as this, they just really wouldnt come to fruition without support from events such as the superbowl and were a great city and doing these things is the right thing to do and i do urge you to support this resolution and thank you for your time. Thanks. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, commissioners, thank you for having this hearing. My name is gwen kaplan, i am the ceo and founder ofase mailing on 16th sfreet between full sum and harrison and i am here to support the superbowl and the Superbowl Committee. Ase mailing applied to be and was accepted to be a superbowl vendor during that process an as such we have a very nice contract to do product literature fulfillment for the superbowl, so we are delighted with that. My family received a phone call before the handshaking yesterday after the broncos graham with some family and friends telling us move over, were coming out for the game. So were very excited about the superbowl itself and i think it can only benefit the city and it was my understanding that a normal week in february, early in february, that wae would be bringing in the city about 90 million, but through the superbowl itself it will be an additional 70 million over that. So not having the figures that todd has, but i think it can only benefit the city and i thank you for supporting it. Thank you. Boy, we havent had turnout like this in years. Good afternoon, commissioners, my name is karen flood, im the executive director of the Union Square Business Improvement District and im here to speak in favor of the resolution to support superbowl 50 and all the positive benefits it will have to our city and union square in particular. As our Organization Purpose is to promote business in and around union square, we represent properties and Property Owners and merchants in about a 27block area which includes a large number of hotels, high concentration of retail, both high end, moderate retail, as well as a number of bars and restaurants so we look forward to all the additional people visiting our establishments. While were not the center of activity, we are close by with the experience of the moscone and the Ferry Building and we know a number of players, organizers and fans will be staying around union square. It looks like anheuserbusch will be hosting an event in the park itself and will offer an experience to learn more about the history of football and such. We know macys will be hosting a week long celebration in the square with players and signings and exciting things going on, the hilton is doing events so there is a lot happening in and around the square. San Francisco Union Square in particular received a huge economic benefit as has been mentioned from tourism and convention business, but we know february is quite a slow month, we have seen that over the years, so we are looking forward to this big boost in visitors that will be coming to the area to again stay in our hotels, dine in our restaurants, shop in our stores. And as todd mentioned the last 3 cities that hosted the superbowl did earn in excess of 275 Million Dollars. We certainly look forward to seeing the numbers but we are hopeful for that and certainly with all that is planned with superbowl city and the nfl experience theres going to be a lot of visitors in town, just incredible entertainment planned, of course. This will be a huge draw for San Francisco and well be on the world stage. With the media hits alone there will be people coming and a big boost to tourism for years to come. With that, we are in support of this resolution and we certainly will be promoting our union square bars and restaurants on our news letter to know you know of the specials that will be happening in union square. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, xhirs, commissioners, my name is kevin carol, im the executive chairman for the work Investment Board working with the work force teams. The Hotel Council we are fully in support of superbowl 50. Our hotels were part of the to bring the superbowl here and involved commitments early on to secure the to have the superbowl come to San Francisco, so were definitely fully support of it and the resolution thats here before you today. We have hotels that are 25 rooms up to hotels that are up to 1900 rooms, so we represent both small and large hotels and all the hotels in between that work to welcome our visitors here to San Francisco. With over a million visitors to our city during superbowl 50 we will have benefits both short and longterm and for our businesses both small and large. Having the superbowl during a time of year when we are not always fully booked helps us and helps all those surrounding businesses around us. It will benefit our hotels, of course, but all the businesses working and surrounding our hotels would be included and we know that weve worked closely with the office of economic and Work Force Development on the shop and dine in 49, our concierges are working on the maps that will given out to visitors as well. It will benefit our taxes and the local vendors our hotels work with will benefit by the increase ode business as well. The majority of our 24,000 workers in the Hotel Industry work in San Francisco so when our business is stronger and theres more hours available and people are working more, thats always benefiting our neighbors as we. The city will benefit from the hotel tot tax, theres more additional people coming in, theres more revenue coming in for the city as well which will help with the expenses related to it. The superbowl is watched around the world, the global audience is a hundred million or more. When people are watching the superbowl and making a decision where they might come on their next vacation, thats another reminder of our world class city and hopefully they will make the decision to choose San Francisco which will benefit our economy as well. Again, the Hotel Commission fully supports superbowl 50 and the resolution thats before you today. Thank you so much for your time, i appreciate it. Hey, jim. Good afternoon, memorandum bers, jim lazarus, San Francisco chamber of commerce. Im distributing a letter that the chamber is putting out to you today and will give copies to the board of supervisors and the mayor. This is certainly a proud time for San Francisco, for our residents and our businesses throughout the city because we have an unparalleled opportunity to come together and celebrate what makes the city such a special place. The superbowl celebration includes an array of activities throughout the bay and San Francisco generating millions of dollars for nraupb philanthropic opportunities. We strongly believe the superbowl activity will bring an enormous benefit to the city and for a modest investment for the city as a host will reap benefits to the bottom line of the citys bottom line as well. I attached something it should be no surprise that you have to for the superbowl. In 1994, San Francisco for the 1999 superbowl and attached to that letter is something we called enticements. I was cochair of this effort for mayor jordan in 1994 and youll see a list of enenticements even greater than i think the city was asked to do for this superbowl. And we got that superbowl for 1999, just like we got the superbowl when diane was mayor for 1985. We never lost a. We gave up the 1999 superbowl because of a decision to build a new stadium and not pour additional money into Candlestick Park that would have been necessary to host the superbowl in that 1999 facility. We know for 2016 that superbowls are net economic engines for the cities that they are hosted in and San Francisco investing 4 to 5 Million Dollars will more than recoup that tax revenue to the general fund. Just an approximate on the hotel tax, if we have an 80 percent occupancy and you go to 95 percent occupancy and you have a 231 average daily rate in february last year and you take that rate to around 400, you are going to bring between 4 and 5 Million Dollars of incremental growth that you wouldnt otherwise have in the hotel tax alone, not counting san sales tax, business taxes, parking taxes, et cetera. This is a good deal for San Francisco, its a good deal for residents, and we urge you to adopt the resolution before you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is dawn ackerman, i am the president of out smart office solutions, a local Office Design and if furniture installation company. Im also on the board of the golden gate business association. I was one of several lgbt businesses for the First Time Ever to within an opportunity from the Superbowl Committee and this has been an amazing opportunity for my business, not just in the money that they spent with us, but the publicity that has gone along with it. Weve been interviewed by several newspapers, the go for the gold, count down to gold show, and just today fox news. And i think that what weve done here in San Francisco is not only help our Small Businesses and the city in areas like the castro but weve set a precedent for future inclusion of lgbt businesses in superbowls from here on out. So i want to thank you for making this decision. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is andre decosta, im a minorityowned Small Business own, i work with spark ship, ive been running my business since 2002. Im in full support of this resolution in terms of the time that ive been here ive never had a quarter in the sense that weve been looking forward to as much as this. This event alone has brought up a lot of interest in the community and im not only fully supportive of what you have put together here, but also in terms of whats to come. Like you mentioned, cities and for superbowl and ive seen it first hand, i used to work in new york, specifically around parking for superbowl and first hand just seen what happened over there and i know the commission did a lot of studies into those superbowls and looked at those superbowls very closely. Im really looking forward to seeing what transpires in the next two weeks because i think we can see a lot of benefits to come for future generations. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners, my name is nick baloni, have him the vpo of the planings association of the rich mupbld, i am from the Richmond District and i know how those deal with the Small Businesses there and i dont see the excitement in february that i have with some of my Small Businesses, some of the small restaurants, that i have in my restaurant that i have this year. I was at tommys last week on week and julio and i were talking about how much extra the superbowl was bringing to them. Its their 50th year, and the superbowl 50th year. He was excited about that as well and its kind of nice. I know how these large events mean to the local xhuepbtds. Communities. Im not going to talk a lot about anything other than this and how much these mean to the small communities. I have one restaurant called gaspars, a little italian place. Gaspar is a nice guy, ive known him for years. He came up to me a couple years ago when outsidelines first started, i ran out of food. I cant believe i ran out of food. The look on his face was, like, wow. Thats what these big events bring. They bring Economic Growth to these Small Businesses. And ive worked to keep outsidelines in the richmond. He put his arm around me and said thank you and thats what were doing today to bring the superbowl here. We want to bring all the Small Businesses in the area that same kind of joy that gaspar had when he told me about the lack of food. Also being part of the Richmond District he was talking about the golf. Ive seen that golf program personal, ive gone down there and watched it and i think its great, the superbowl giving them some money, because i think that is something great to bring communities to our parks who might not have the chance. So i am in full support of this resolution, i think its very important that we have the superbowl here. So thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners, my name is earl shaddocks, i am the chair of the recently formed Economic Development association for bayview. I have to call out rufo and torez for reaching out to us in the bayview, trying to make we were at the table when the entire superbowl discussion began. I noticed on my way in from mariann from shop dine 49 began with her. She approached us, sat down with us just before the holidays and toll us some Great Stories of her own experience in bayview including a relative who worked with or knew sam sdwroer jordan and it kind of morphed from there. I just came from a press conference at southern sweets. The contract is so large that its larger than any other piece of business shes ever been given. Her social media account has gone viral, its a fun kind of crazy. We also came up with a program called supersoul 50, kind of a riff on superbowl, and tried to include all the businesses on the bayview that are open serving food including old school, radio africa, frisco fried. We have again out of their way to help us including a banner, another large poster fear us to give out, they have put our supersoul on their web sites, they have gone out of their way to really plug our local businesses. We really appreciate it. We thank them and encourage you to support this resolution and i hope to see you all in the bayview for supersoul week. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is lisa lidsky and im the managing director of inaudible offer her support but she is out of town. We are super grateful to the superbowl 50 fund for the grant that we received recently. Were also being featured as a possible organization to receive an additional 10,000 through their ultimate fan favorite, which highlights our presence not only as a nonprofit here in the city thats taking advantage of all the opportunities, but also as social enterprise. Our youth, if you are not familiar with Old School Cafe, run every aspect of the business. We serve at risk youth ages 18 to 22. They learn everything from serving to Business Management to cooking and then actually run the restaurant, which taps into the amazing Tourism Industry here, the Hospitality Industry in San Francisco. So their future is going to look bright, we hope, as they continue to participate in events like this. Were also super grateful to earl and the office of economic Work Force Development for putting on supersoul 50. Were going to go ahead and take saturday, february 6, and highlight Old School Cafe and our qui seen. We have a fantastic gumbo, we have 4 off gumbo and we encourage everyone to come in and try us that night. Since downtown is going to be busy and lots of excitement, they can come discover some of the hidden gems in our city. So we offer our support and appreciate all that Small Business does for us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, my name is john hornstadt, director of sales and marketing at the Hyatt Regency of San Francisco. To work with the Superbowl Committee, they have done a phenomenal job in educating me over whats going to be taking place over the next two weeks. One thing that we look at is providing a really unique experience for our customers and were going to have 804 customers in guest rooms the next few weeks. Yes, its a phenomenal event over the next few weeks, however longterm, and our job is to provide unique experiences for all the businesses in the city of San Francisco and thats what our goal is to support everybody to make sure were sending our customers all over the town because we know longterm they are going to come back with a great experience. So thats our goal over the next two wex, 2 weeks, as it is every day of the year. This group is paying a fairly high rate and the expectation is fairly high, we are there the next couple weeks to make sure they are supporting all of our businesses. So thank you very much. Thank you. Provide housing and employment to the most vulnerable population, which is the youth that we serve. We are very thankful for the generous grant, 10,000 that we received through the 50 fund and this funding went to create a studio, a music studio, within larkin street youth services. Most of the youth we work with are very much involved in the arts and they love creating music so we put that funding towards creating, putting together a studio where they can come and record their music and share their passion for arts within the agency. We are now competing for another 10,000 grant that we are hoping to double that investment through leveraged funding through stub hub. The Superbowl Committee has followed through on its promise to make this the most philanthropic superbowl ever and the invest thes that have been put forward will have a big impact on the lives of San Franciscos most vulnerable population. Larkin street is grateful for this commitment and hope we can be the model for future investment through largescale events in San Francisco, so we are really thankful. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Denise Rasmussen and i am the director of sales and marketing for Alcatraz Cruises and also hornblower cruises. We want to thank the city of San Francisco in its wisdom of bringing the superbowl here, im sure its the first of many. I know were talking big numbers and millions and billions and tax revenue, but im really wanting to just thank you for the extra 70 people, most of them San Franciscoans, most of them younger people from outlying neighborhoods, some from some of the also im from the excelsior so i want to thank you for reaching out to my little burg at the southern part of San Francisco. A lot of the people we were able to bring back to work six weeks early for our Summer Season because of the superbowl and those are all local San Francisco residents. So big, big money for everybody but important incremental money for all of the employees that i know that the hotels have had to hire, the Transportation Companies have had to hire, its incredibly unusual to be staffing up in february. Its one of the only really full months that alcatraz dos doesnt sell out but were finding that our numbers for february have already significantly increased for after the superbowl and we think that that is certainly because of the promotion of San Francisco and all of the attention that has been brought to us because of the superbowl. So thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners, my name is wilma pang, im sure some of you know me, but i dont know most of you, i know only irene riley because we have been friends long time in chinatown. Thank you for terry because i wouldnt have known about this event, superbowl. This is an independent planet, nobody knows whats going on because mono Language Society so im glad that david invite me to speak because chinatown really needs a lot of help and i think hopefully superbowl p help chinatowns business. Business in khiepb that town for the last 20 years, i would say, has been declining and declining and declining. Lots of the restaurants in north beach and chinatown are closed. So chinatown needs some holding hands. I hope the commissioners understand that its a mono Language Society so in order to reach them, you have to have something to be able to hook up with them. I am not a business person, i am an artist and i have come up with activities to promote mono language. Im not saying im a cultural expert but in the 80s i went to australia to plan their National Ethnic arts festivals. So i hope that even though i dont want a job but i hope that ill be able to connect you with chinatown to help them because chinatown is a no. 1 tourist industry in the map. When i mentioned that on my campaign, nobody pays attention. Sorry to say that its been overshadowed by other severe problems such as housing. Please, please do recognize chinatown and ill be very happy to help out but i do not need a job. Thank you. Thank you. All right, do we have any other members of the public who would like to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Commissioners, are there any questions . Commissioner ortizcartagena. I dont have any questions but i want to reiterate and what everybody here mentioned and thank you for your time, but this is obviously a nobrainer. This is the biggest event in northern america. My hospitality background knows this is slow season and you have quantified all the value this brings but exponentially you cant quantify the profits made in this two weeks, people invest in capital improvements, hiring staff, house keeping, well have jobs now. This is a nobrainer. I thank you for your time and sharing the impact this will have on your businesses and communities. Thank you. Commissioners, any other comments . Commissioner adams . Id like to go ahead and make a resolution and this is superbowl 50 resolution from the Small Business commission and its three pages here weve written, so whereas San Francisco bay area competed against miami and houston for the opportunity to host superbowl 50 and whereas superbowl 50 Host Committee is compromised of business, community, sports, philanthropic leaders from San Francisco and throughout the San Francisco bay area, and whereas in 2012 the board of supervisors unanimously endorsed and declared support for the to host the superbowl in 2016 or 2017 for the economic, cultural, philanthropic benefits it would bring to San Francisco, and whereas superbowl 50 Host Committee has pledged to be the most philanthropic superbowl in history, committing 25 percent of the sponsorship moneys raised in San Francisco and the bay area Nonprofit Community serving organizations, including Community Youth center, juma ventures and the San Francisco Lgbt Community center, and whereas superbowl 50 is specifically supporting local businesses through massive increase in local spending through direct contracts with large Small Businesses and through the Business Connect Program created by the nfl and the Host Committee wlipked to bay area Small Businesses with contracting opportunities related to superbowl 50, whereas business connect increase opportunities for historically underrepresented businesses to conduct superbowl business as well as to support these businesses growth through Networking Events and educational programs, whereas business connect was open to business located in the 9 county San Francisco bay area region that are certified as minority owned, women owned, disabled veteran owned and lgbt owned businesses, whereas superbowl 50 is Ground Breaking and reflects San Francisco values as the Host Committee made sure it would be the first time that an lgbt business has been included in such programs, whereas many local mue sises, cultural and performing entertainers as well as dozens of local entertaining artists will be showcased in downtown San Francisco and at superbowl city, a free public event celebrating superbowl 50 and the best the bay area has to offer, and whereas the superbowl resulted in a positive Economic Impact as measured after the events that all recent cities have hosted including 719 for me fix, 480 million for new orleans, and 277 million for indianapolis and whereas every city thats ever hosted the superbowl has been eager to host again, including new york, new jersey, phoenix, miami, new orleans, indianapolis and many others and whereas San Francisco will reap millions of dollars in additional direct revenue from hosting superbowl city, the nfl experience and many other events throughout the city through the increased hotel tax, states sales tax, bars, hotels, restaurant spaces and whereas thousands of workers in the private sector in building and construction trades members will benefit from increased wages, overtime pay and work related to superbowl 50 and whereas the International Television exposure of our city and the bay area through the broadcast of superbowl 50 is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising for the city and county of San Francisco and provides an enormous boost in our tourism Hospitality Industry which is responsible for 87,000 jobs and more than 10 billion in revenue in San Francisco, whereas the city has applied the same approach and general principles towards providing basic Public Services like public safety, emergency response, Public Transportation as it does for other large major events including the lgbtq pride parade, Chinese New Year parade, fleet week, the world series championship parade and others and whereas city departments have pledged that provisions of hub services during the period of superbowl activities will occur within budgeted funds for the fiscal year as approved unanimously by the board of supervisors in 2015, whereas these general funds cost more than offset by direct tax revenues to the general fund and whereas hundreds of local businesses, thousands of local workers, tens of thousands of bay area youth will be true beneficiaries of the superbowl 50, therefore it be resolved that the San Francisco Small Business commission strongly supports hosting superbowl 50 and superbowl city in San Francisco and the bay area for the Enormous Economic and charitable benefits that it has already provided to San Francisco Small Businesses, workers, nonprofit organizations and it be further resolved that the San Francisco Small Business Commission Urges the board of supervisors to reject any proposal that would restrict, impair the citys ability to recruit and host major events in the future, including an all festivals, parades, special events like the superbowl or the world series championship celebrations and parade. Thank you. All right, we have a resolution, do we have a motion . I second the motion. We need a first. We need a motion. Motion to accept this resolution. I make a motion to accept this resolution. Second . I second. Okay, vote. Commissioner adams, aye. Commissioner dwight, aye. Commissioner dooley, aye. Commissioner ortizcartagena, yes. Commissioner toursarkissian, right. Commissioner riley, aye. Commissioner zouzounis, aye. It passes unanimously. I want to thank everyone for coming out today. This has been fantastic. Im so impressed with all the Innovative Marketing programs going on in the neighborhoods im going to recommend when we come around to recommending new Business Today that we convene a meeting later on after this vepbtd so we can all learn from the best practices and apply them to smaller events in the years to come. This has really cattlized because of the huge nature of this event, its really pushed everybody to come up with some really Innovative Solutions and i think those can be applied to all kinds of events and i think its fantastic and i think our different merchant corridors and different merchant groups with really benefit from the key learnings in this. I look forward to seeing you all again to telling me Great Stories of success and how we can keep doing it. Thank you very much. Next item is item no. 4, presentation and update on the business tax annual return, 2015 filing period. This is a presentation of the 2015 annual return due february 29, 2016 and you will receive an update from greg kato who is gross receipts tax director from the office of economic and Work Force Development. Good afternoon, commissioners, thanks for having me this afternoon. We are in the annual tax Filing Season so wanted to give you an update on how thats been going and what were doing this year. So the annual return is due on february 29th for all businesses that have a filing requirement, thats any business with over 150,000 of payroll expense or 500,000 in gross receipts here in the city or if they are a Residential Landlord or pay rent for 4 or more units in a building. What im going to do is walk you through what the filing looks like for businesses so that when you are out in the Community Talking to your constituents you can have an understanding what theyre talking about if they say theyve been in the form and you can have a little more information about that. Of course im always happy to take any questions and if any questions come up later on, always happy to converse with you about them. For now im going to go ahead and log in and use the laptop here to log in and show you how the filing works. Sfgov tv, if we could have the computer. So the first thing that happens is we direct taxpayers to go to the treasury and taxpayers web site on the notice they receive from our office to file. And then they are told to go to file online gross receipts tax and payroll expense tax. They are directed to the return page and we do remind them before they log in just one last time, are they exempt om filing. So if they are they can go ahead and exit. If they need to file a 60 day extension we have a link for that, they can do that online this year, so they just need to make a payment of at least 90 percent of their Tax Obligation and then they can extend their filing deadline until april 29th, rather than february 29th. So if they need a little extra time to get their paperwork together ill go ahead and enter the filing here. This is our filing page. Im going to go ahead and try to zoom out so we can see all of this. So they are reminded of the deadlines and the information that they need in order to log in is their 7digit business account number. The last 4 numbers of their tax Identification Number if they are a sole proprietor, that will be their Social Security number, if they are any other business it will be their ein, their employer Identification Number. They also need their 8digit pin which is provided by our office, both their business account number and their pin is provided on the notice that they receive from our office. So i will go ahead and log in with a test account that we use in our office to demonstrate. And it does take a moment to load up because were pulling all the information for this account. I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. Is this the only way of filing . You have to file it online . Yes, you do need to file online. For those taxpayers unable to file online they can request a paper form but that form can be quite lengthy and processing time is 4 to 6 weeks on that so if theres a mistake and you have to go back and forth with our office you might end up late. Fastest, easiest way, do it online. Ill show you how it works, it takes about 10 minutes for most businesses to get through this. First question here, i know its a little small on the screens here, just a couple survey questions that we ask all businesses about if they have business personal property in the city or if and how many employees they have on average. What i want to do is walk through some of the Customer Service enhancements we have made this last year. The first is that we have instructions embedded on every single page so they can click this instruction link and it pops up a window that shows them the entire instructions for how to get through the filing. So they can always access that, that page. We also have a technical page so in case they are having technical difficulties they can click on that. Any reported technical issues or bugs we will update that and post that as those arrive. Also we have an exit button so if you make it halfway through your filing, gosh, i dont have this piece of information but i want to so i need to leave this session, go get that information and come back, you can hit exit, it will take you out of the form, it will save everything that you have saved toup that point in the form so when you log in again you will be able to click right through. Saved for how long . For the entire filing period. Its all saved for you. Then toe bottom we have this green button that says continue so you can move forward. We have a progress bar so you get a sense of where you are in the filing and you also have a ability to go back one screen, if you click continue and realize you answered that wrong you can go back one screen. Overall there are 5 major sections to the form, the business identification survey then your payroll expense tax filing then the gross receipts tax filing then we summarize all the information then you sign, print and pay. You can move forward sequentially in the form but if you want to jump back an entire section you can do so. The current page that you are on is always highlighted in blue and any sections that you have completed are highlighted in green. What i also wanted to do is show that if you have a, if you or your constituents have questions about a particular question in the form, gosh, i dont know quite how to answer that question, if they click on the hyperlink for those questions then it takes them directly to the spot in the instruction booklet where that question is and has extended instructions for them and also Additional Resources in case they need them. So lots of selfhelp. Of course they can always contact us by filing a Service Request through our web site or calling 311 but we did really want to enhance the selfhelp so that taxpayers dont have to go to those resources and they can help themselves as they do their filing. So im going to go through and answer yes, that this business has business personal property and it doesnt have any employees, say its a sole proprietor, so i will click save and continue. When someone first enters this form they will see this first question here which asks them are they filing as a Residential Land loer. If they are a Residential Landlord and thats their only business, they have a very simplified filing. They answer yes, tell us their payroll expenses, tell us what their groet receipts were, how many units they rent out and they are done. A combination of all the assets they have in the city . No, Residential Land lords are held separately. Its per building. When you talk about 4 units and more, you mean per building . In one building, yes. Every building is registered separately with the city. inaudible . No, they have to register with our office and get a business account number. Yes, thats what i meant. Im going to answer no for this, were not filing we will do an example like a small retailer who is only in San Francisco. Then the next question is do you qualify for a tax credit, payroll extension collusion, thats like the enterprise zone tax credit or biotechnology. Ill go ahead and answer no, theres only a couple hundred businesses out of all hundred thousand businesses in San Francisco that qualify for that so we have a couple extra pages for them that they need to fill out in order to correctly declare those exemptions or exclusions. Finally the third question in this questionnaire is do you want to use online easy, which is a simplified filing for if you are wholly within San Francisco, you just do one Business Activity and you are not going to be taking any business deductions, we have online easy for those businesses, help them go quickly from the form. If they are both inside and outside business, since most Small Businesses will qualify for this online easy, i will answer yes. We have a question we have of all of our businesses which is to determine if they qualify for a tax on Administrative Office activities. Thats generally businesses, large, Large Businesses that are headquartered in San Francisco. In order to qualify for this you need to have over a thousand employees and you have to have over a billion dollars in u. S. Receipts in the last fiscal year. So its not a lot of businesses qualify for this, but we do ask this of all businesses in case they need to do that. Its a new tax of the gross receipts tax, so well answer no for the Small Business. Then we have the payroll expense tax filing where they enter how many employees they have, lets say they have 10, and how much payroll expense was, lets say a Million Dollars, click save and continue, it kag collates their payroll expense tax showing back to them what they have entered, if they qualify for any exclusions. By far the most common exclusion is the net new payroll dmruetion, a few thousand businesses qualify for that, those are businesses with 500,000 or less in payroll expense, they have growth thats added either work hours or employees in the last year so that was passed by the board of supervisors a few years ago so they dont have to apply for that, they just automatically get that in their filing so thats probably the most common thing that Small Businesses might see. It also calculates the tax rate at the current payroll expense tax rate of 1. 162 percent. Then they click save and continue and it takes them to the gross receipts tax portion of their filing. While its loading up im happy to take any questions. Were in. And its going to load up and were doing the online easy and so what it will display in a moment is a dropdown menu where they can select their Business Activities and then declare their gross receipts. So theres a dropdown menu where you select your Business Activity amid the 20 different Business Activities that are provided for under the law. So lets say they are a retailer, i will go ahead and click on retail trade, then they would enter their gross receipts here, so lets say they have 5 million in gross receipts. Then the form will actually calculate for them their tax that is due for their gross receipts and since this is a progressive tax in that it gets higher as you have more gross receipts, we split out the taxes at the different tiers, one million, 2. 5 million, 5 million, 25 million and over 25 million, it sums all those up and applies the 25 percent adjustment for 2015 so we arrive at about 1400 for this taxpayers , then we click save and continue. Then it displays an obligation summary where it shows their payroll tax as well as gross receipts tax. The last item they have to enter into their return is how ch they made in quarterly installment payments throughout the year. Lets say they are looking through their paperwork and they dont remember that amongst everything. In the notice they receive from the office we state to them, this is how much we have for you for payroll expense tax and gross receipt tax installment payments just in case they need that so that can be helpful to them. Of course if they have made a payment and as of january 1 if they made a payment since then then they can go ahead and add that and put in the amount they wish to pay or that they have in their records for the quarterly installment. If in some case you miss placed what you sent, is there someplace to look it up . Theres no place online to look it up. The best place to look is to look at your checkbook, your credit card register, your debit account, and look at what your payments to the city were over the course of the year. So what ill show you is lets say this taxpayer made a number of payments and exceeded their obligation throughout the year. So now they are showing a negative amount due there on their total obligation and you will see that a new paragraph popped up and it is a box that says, leave are this box checked if you want your money refunded. If you uncheck this box then you are saying you dont want a refund. I dont know of anyone who doesnt want a refund, so please do leave that box checked and that way we can process getting your money back. We need this in order to kick off that process and make sure that folks get their money back in a timely method. The other thing that taxpayers can do is they can check a box to designate 2. 6 percent of their Tax Obligation to the Community Challenge grant fund. Thats an up to amount. It doesnt change their Tax Obligation, it just directs the city where to send the money. They are allowed by law to actually dough tonight an amount less than 2. 6 percent so we have a box where they can say i only want to move over x amount of dollars instead and thats directing the city how to spend the money, it doesnt change their obligation. What im going to do now is zero this out so we have an obligation due at the end so we can process through and you can see what the payment coupon looks like. So if you are taking advantage of enterprise tax fund you have to fill out a different path here. You would answer yes i had credit and you are taken to a screen where you input how much your credit amount is, theres a location on our web site where folks can download a spreadsheet to calculate their enterprise zone tax credit, they calculate it, enter the amount calculated in that form and then upload a copy of the form so we can double check and they are all done. Then they complete the process through this . Yes, they do. So after you have submitted, after you have everything filled out you can go ahead and go to the taxpayer statement page. Most times a tax preparer or someone, a book keeper will get to this. And they may want to say, gosh, i want to make sure my client agrees with this before i hit submit. So what you can do is hit view filing data, theres a popup window so we will go ahead and allow that. It will pop up a note that will have all of this data so before you submit it, you can go ahead and save a copy of this, you can send it off to your client so they can verify it or the client can log in, click through and click submit if thats how the tax preparer is handling that. Then they click submit, it does take a couple minutes to post to our system and then you are all done. So i would clock this as about 60 to 90 seconds to go through so i can answer any questions in the moment while its submitting. If you do not save the form can you retreat it at a later date. Every time you move on to the next screen, you are saving it. In order to access the next screen you have to save it. At a late roar date you filed it, you got your receipt, you want to go back and get a copy of your return, so to speak, how do you do that . You are gooing to get a copy of your return a couple ways. First, the email address i listed there on the taxpayer statement, a copy of the return is sent there to that email address. In addition on this next screen here once it posts we are going to hear about the opportunity to download your return, you can aupls email it to another person. Maybe im the Vice President or the cfo and i fill out everything and i want to make sure the ceo knows about it, i can go ahead and send it along to them. Now were done and so if sfgov tv can switch over to the tv, we have this confirmation window, this is how you know your filing has been submitted and you are shown 3 buttons here. The first is your Payment Options and that takes you through how to pay then you can download, that allows you to download a copy for your records or you can email it to somebody else, an email window, put in the email address you want to send it to and it sends it along. I will go ahead and go through, theres a payment portal right now so we can have a, show you what happens when you go through here. Once you enter the payment portal you are going to see all of the obligations that are set up for this account. Now, this is a test account so ive got a number of obligations set up here. What you do is you verify that you are in the right spot for your account and then you collect on the left which obligations you wish to pay, im going to inaudible the gross receipts tax, that then populates the amount to pay on the right and sums it up at the bottom. Lets say, and this can happen where a taxpayer has, they disagree with the amount we have on file with them and they say, no, i think i paid more than that so i dont have as much due. What they can do is adjust that number down to a Different Number so that they can adjust how much they want to pay. And then what ill do is uncheck this and put it back. When you do at the bottom of the page you have 3 opyou can do credit or debit online, credit or debit does have fees associated with it, about 2 1 2 percent for credit cards and most debit cards as well. Electronic check is free, you just put in your routing number and account number, or you can print out a payment stub and you will get a coupon stub that you can make in with a check. I will go ahead and print a payment stub so you can see that and just go ahead and print this out and then mail it in with your check and you are all set to go. After you filed and you want to amend your application how do you do that . You log back in again and then it will pop up a window saying you already have a filing smitded, submitted, do you want to view your filing or amend it . And you can amend it. Commissioner adams. Thank you and cunninging on your Good Governmental work. I wanted to let you know that. The outreach this year as in the past year is really good. I attended a few of the meetings last year with a lot of the cpas and stuff and i keep running into a lot of them. A lot of people feel more comfortable because its 2575 . Thats right. Im hearing a lot of this lately from all these cpas. When they know whats going on, i know the outreach has been very good with the city so i wanted to say congratulations on that. Thats probably why you got that Good Government award is for a change. The city is actually working with these people and im hearing that from a lot of different groups but especially from the cpas that i deal with, they are really on top of that. Thank you, thank you, mary ann, i know you are here today. Absolutely right to acknowledge the team behind this because success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. There were a lot of people involved with this so i do want to thank Mary Ann Thompson who has been do ago great th us in addition to her job at the office of Work Force Development. Jade is an nalyst at our office, we also have another management assistant named jared who has been working on this project for a couple years and he is actually an alumni of our great fellows program. Of course the office of tax collector, jose sisneros. In 2020 is when its going to be 100 percent gross receipts. Were going to be phasing in. The plan is for the payroll expense to fade out and the gross receipts tax to fade in and by tax year 2018 it should be complete. However, every year the Controllers Office does a tax rate calculation and makes adjustments based on whats actually come in for the tax rate so they can be doing that calculation throughout and then the adjusting itself, the city is still writing in as much revenue as it would have had the revenue not changed. But youre right, it will be complete by 2018. Great work by your whole team. One final question. This presentation was excellent, thank you. Do you think that we could maybe include that in our side to your side to have it, now that it is part of the, so to speak, record and its such a good helpful and could facilitate comprehension of the form, do you see any benefit to that . We have a web site sfbis dwofl and we have a you tube channel. We have recorded 3 scenarios how to get through the form which is exactly the presentation that you saw, you saw a version of that which is a small retailer in San Francisco using the online easy. We also do a demonstration for the landlords and did a demonstration thats both inside and outside San Francisco. So those cover the vast majority of scenarios for particularly Small Businesses that maybe arent able to access Tax Consultants or Something Like that and also for those cpas or bookkeepers that support those Small Businesses rk we have those Resources Available on our web site which is sfbiz tax. Org. Or if you go on you tube and type in sf tax that pops up as well and we have them recorded already. Excellent idea, great minds think alike and we wlr have that for you. Are you the as star of the videos . Unfortunately i am, just introduce it and then we walk through. Thank you very much. All right, do we have any members of the public who would like to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed and you are welcome to carry on. Thank you so much. All right, on to item no. 5. Item no. 5 is discussion and possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors on file no. 150326, a hearing on the Economic Impacts of Small Business during Major Construction and streetscaping projects, requesting the office of economic and Work Force Development, the Small Business commission, the municipal transportation agency, the public ue filts commission and public works to report. So, commissioners, i presented this referral to Commission President dwight and he asked to angendize it. The hearing has not been scheduled so i dont have a date, but wanted to assure the commissions feedback and we might be able to have this meeting and next meeting if you need it so that your feedback, your input, is part of that report that gets presented at the hearing. Yeah, i would like to hear that just because they are losing a lot more folk and that scares me. Neighborhood by neighborhood, wherever its going on theres all kinds of impact to be are can you remembered and i think we ought to be making recommendations on behalf of our constituents. So, commissioners, maybe to just sort of give a little bit of structure so what can be done is in the report while we are not able to qualify what those amounts are in terms of absolute dlars, but in terms of feedback and information from the business community, you can identify certain things that transpire around Construction Projects and so what leads to that, the Economic Impact. I know that as the commission both in the Planning Session and with the subway master plan the commission has also talked about some, you know, looking ahead and making recommendations that the city can engage in and do to help minimize those Economic Impacts. And so i dont know if you want to think about providing some, you know, examples and i did in my email provide a few lists of things that weve heard from the business community. Also with supervisor farrells recommendation you made a recommendation for better management for construction workers and equipment to be included and while those amendments ultimately did not make it in, this is another opportunity to reintroduce those, you know, those recommendations. So rather than having a brain storming session here about recommendations i think we ought to take it up outside of this meeting to compile a list of recommendations. Anybody have an objection to that . I would support that. So then what would be terrific is that commissioners either through a phone conversation, if you want me to set up a phone conversation and begin to debrief with each of you, or if you want to send written recommendations, that way i can start soliciting input. If theres any other, if you would like for me to talk to specific business groups, merchant areas, im happy to do so as well. Well, to the extent weve received any recommendations we have a letter with some recommendations here from Lower Polk Community district. If theres any others it would be useful to distribute those to the commissioners and have them vet them and add or comment on them. And so when is the expected hearing on this . I do not have a date. Okay, we have some time. Maybe. I have just a question about the letter. Are we going to be soliciting or contacting the neighborhood associations to get their feedback or. No, i said to the extent we have already received some. Okay. I only see the one we have here. That was unsolicited in terms of just a response to observing what was on the agenda, providing the commission we did not solicit any specific feedback. If anybody knows of anybody else who would like. I definitely know over in west port they are up in arms because there was that much outreach before that construction started over there. Any constructive recommendations would be welcome. North beach would be happy to weigh in at their meeting next week. Yeah, why dont you put out the call. Its not an airing of grievances, its a recommendation of recommendations for the future. They can air grievances if they want, but this exercise is to make recommendations for improving future situations. Great. So can we move on from this item . I think just to make sure, then, for the next meeting i will have that list for you and then if theres additional information, additional items that you would like to add, then we can do so. Okay, go ahead. I would ask if maybe we can get a soft copy of that example Merchant Organization and their recommendations, a soft copy so i can forward it to other Merchant Organizations that i talk with to show them the rubric of what recommendations might look like. Absolutely. Those came in and also a soft copy from the previous item too, those came in today and i will forward them on to you. I suppose the legislation as well if you want to read it. Theres no legislation. What you have in your binding, that is a hearing request. So hearing requests get a file number similar to legislation but it just is scheduled as a hearing item. Good. All right, well talk about these whenever you all right, move on to the next item. 6 and 7, we have election of officers today. So, commissioners, before we, i read into the record item no. 7 and no. 8, under no. 7 i did not make duplicate copies but you have the rules of order in case you have the rules of order in terms of the nomination process. 6 and 7. Election of officers, not 7 and 8. Excuse me, 6 and 7. Im sorry. Im looking at the wrong 6 and 7. So under item no. 6 is the rules of order. So in case you would like to, you need to refresh the commission you just amended the rules of order a couple meetings ago to add appendix a which just elaborates the procedures. And im happy to reread that to you unless you would need to take a moment, its up to you. So just for the public, to clarify the procedures are for each office the executive secretary will call for nominations, which are required to be seconded. After the nominee statements other commissioners can provide comments of support and then following that we will then open it up to Public Comment and then once Public Comment has closed then the Commission Secretary will conduct a roll call on each nomination in order of the order in which the nomination was made. Shall we proceed . Anyone have any questions about the rules of order . Let me read item 6 into the record, please. So item no. 6 is the election of officers Small Business Commission President. In accordance to the commissions rules of order, article 2, section 3, an election of the president must occur at the regular meeting of the commission in january of each year. The President Shall serve a term of one year and shall be elected upon a vote of the commission. All right, nominations for Small Business Commission President. Commissioner adams. I would like to renominate president mark dwight as president. Mark, this last year i believe you have done a stellar job in being president. I have learned a tremendous amount from you and you really have the pulse as a lot of us do in each one of our neighborhoods of what goes on. I think you have actually brought this commission up to a level that im very proud of. Thank you. Thank you very much. I support that and i second that. Thank you. Any other nominations for president . Seeing none we can open it up to Public Comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed, time for a vote. Commissioner adams, yes. Commissioner dwight, yes. Commissioner dooley, yes. Commissioner ortizcartagena, yes. Commissioner toursarkissian, yes. Commissioner riley, yes. And commissioner zouzounis, yes. So we have a new election or we have a new confirmed election of Commission President and you will be serving your second term as Commission President. Congratulations, commissioner dwight. New old president. New old. So well move on to item no. 7, election of the Vice President. Want to read that into the record . Yes, election of officers, Small Business commission Vice President. In accordance to the Commission Rules of order, article 3, section 3, an election of the Vice President must occur at the regular meeting of the commission in january of the of each year. So the Vice President shall serve a term of one year and shall be elected upon a vote of the commission. Okay, were open for nominations for Vice President. I nominate mr. Adams as the Vice President for his wonderful work hes done as past president , as acting Vice President. Do we have a second . I second. Do we have any other nominations for Vice President . Seeing none, we will open it up for Public Comment. Do we have any members of the public who would like to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed and were ready for a vote. Commissioner adams, yes. Commissioner dooley commission dwight, excuse me, yes. Commissioner dooley, yes. Commissioner ortizcartagena, yes. Commission. We are on to item no. 8ing. Item no. 8 is the review of the review of the december 18th Planning Session strategy. I just reangendized this just in case there was any updates that the commission wanted to provide. I know that there was comments that you provided me that i was not able to get into a written talk for you. If you would like we can forward it to the february meeting. I think thats good. We had a nice presentation how to go about filing your business tax, we have started our Public Service announcement about start here and also bringing new business to the commission, encouraging the public to show up and present new business items for us. I think important for us to revisit that list of things we want to do this year and setting the tone for things we want to do in the future. So unless anyone wants to review the list today . I will say i really like the fact that we are announcing that this is the first inaudible business in San Francisco. Evidently people do watch us because i hear about that and our last meeting when the announcement was made somebody made a comment to me on