Im just going to read a few sentences i cobbled together from your book. As i lead into my first question. You might in the book innovation is the most important fact of the modern world but one of the least well understood. It is the reason most people today live lives of prosperity and wisdom area and the main ingredient in the secret sauce and indeed innovation is freedom and freedom to exchange, experiments, imagine, investment fail. Liberals have argued since the 18th century that freedom needs prosperity but i would argue that they have never persuasively found a mechanism that drives change in which one causes the other. Innovation is that drives change, that missing link. Innovation is the child of freedom and apparent prosperity. Matt, do you think youve written a contrary and book your in 2020 because there seems to be a growing belief we havent innovated since the apollo space program. Living standards have been stagnant for decades and growth only help the elites, growth ki
Not joining us and i know shes on the call and id like to open it up to directors and ill start with brinkman. Thank you, very much, chair board and its going to be hard for me not to always call you director rubke and thank you for all the hard work you put into this and were a thoughtful and careful director and you have such empathy and i appreciated serving with you on the board and getting to know you as a friend and now we can talk and travel as long as we want and we wont have to sensor ourselves at all. Thank you so much for your years of service and i will miss you very, very much on the board. Director eakin. Thank you. Christina, director rubke, its been such an honour and privilege to serve with you. You bring an important perspective i hope you will stay in touch with us and weigh in on board items. You are always welcome to call and share your perspectives. Ive learned so much from you and i really join director borden to be sad that this will lose perspective and your in
Were sad to have the director not joining us and i know shes on the call and id like to open it up to directors and ill start with brinkman. Thank you, very much, chair board and its going to be hard for me not to always call you director rubke and thank you for all the hard work you put into this and were a thoughtful and careful director and you have such empathy and i appreciated serving with you on the board and getting to know you as a friend and now we can talk and travel as long as we want and we wont have to sensor ourselves at all. Thank you so much for your years of service and i will miss you very, very much on the board. Director eakin. Thank you. Christina, director rubke, its been such an honour and privilege to serve with you. You bring an important perspective i hope you will stay in touch with us and weigh in on board items. You are always welcome to call and share your perspectives. Ive learned so much from you and i really join director borden to be sad that this wil
This is a different world were facing. The pandemic has taken tens of thousands of americans and infected more than 1. 5 million and infected every single one. It focuses early on the security to the past few months. Including the nominee [inaudible] it is very different than my time in chairman. Those of you that are there in person and we do not we have previously provided guidance to reiterate care. The recommended social distancing. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] before he turned to the intervention i appreciate [inaudible] in the role with Energy Innovation including nuclear and Energy Efficiency renewable. We help create. That experience with the responsibilities and the decisions. Having full view of the department and everyone during this covert pandemic. [inaudible] non[inaudible] there will be situations that are uniquely situated during this pandemic. We thank you for that thank you, madam chairman and we want to thank you for holding this hearing and mr. Menendez nomin
Were watching up on some of that work as well as completing the westportal cross over that the former director advocated for. We should be able to complete the westportal cross over in time for the restorative rail service allowing us to be able to potentially offer threecar shuttles in the subway between westportal and embarcadero stations. Were also moving forward rapidly on the van ness Improvement Projects and the lack of transportation on van ness avenue and it has been able to allow the crews to accelerate the sewer and water work thats been the source of so much of the disruption on that street and that work is continuing quickly and it means that well be able to start the sfmta portion of that project and the transit portion starting this spring. Ill remind you all, that while the sfmta is in the lead of the brt project, none of our work has started yet. The work for creating the bus Rapid Transit line so were very much looking forward to that work getting moving and many of yo