recognize supervisor elsbernd. good afternoon, and welcome to beautiful and sunny san francisco. i would also like to single out and think my friend and colleague and recent father, supervisors mirkarimi, who is over there with his son, for all he has done. there are a few more things that i would like to offer. we are going to hear from one of the two directors of the laguna hospital foundation, and i would like to single out the volunteers who are also here. thank you to the volunteers. [applause] for more than 50 years of service to laguna hospital, thank you to the volunteers. we recognize the architect, but also recognize turner construction. they are the federal contractor who have been on site since the beginning. thank you for all you have done. the two city employees who served as project managers one i know is here, the current project manager, joe connors. thank you and john predecessor stole away from us, michael lane. thank you, michael, wherever you are. las
that better person. thank you very much and god bless all of you. [applause] we are so blessed in our elected leaders in san francisco. senator mark leno has helped us on a bill to make sure that people who need help in a community and want to stay in the community can do so. we are very proud of this new building. at the same time, we want to make sure that people who want to stay in their homes will be able to do so. and so the senator has carried a bill that will enable us, if someone has medicaid, to use those medicaid dollars to increase the number of in-home hours that person has so that we can use those federal dollars instead of hospitalization, instead of long-term care here, in the home. our goal is that the person always has the choice as to what is the best setting for them. with that, should we do it all together? i have a resolution. this is my district. senator leno is an interloper. it is ok, because he is going to bring us a lot of money. together, we wan
bond past. and it is great to celebrate with everyone today. [applause] i also remember that we brought all the stakeholders to the table, those representing the health-care workers, and our building trade friends. we needed to make sure everybody was on board. with the boat threshold as high as it is, a very small percentage could stop this important project. but we did bring everyone together and we did prevail. i want to not overlook something that really is critical, because unfortunately the polar ice caps are melting faster than al gore suggested a few years ago. climate change is upon us. it is happening fast. those of us who live in coastal areas will fill the affect of that first. we want to recognize the mayor s leadership in not just the opportunity of building such an important structure this is the first leed certified hospital in the state of california, and what that means is the rebuilding of the entire campus is to provide respect, dignity, and validation f
interests, despite all of the political machinations you can imagine, which came together as a city and we passed that bond. in the history now is how do we move forward to provide the very, very best services for all those individuals here and those individuals who come? how do we honor the paths of those individuals who understood the importance of linguistic and cultural competence and all of those attitudes and values back there permeate into the halls and the rooms and all the offices and the ground here of the new laguna honda? i will tell you that i am confident that there are going to be new things. there are going to be new ways of dealing with patients, a more humane and sensitive caring way. and it will come out of laguna honda. all of us should be proud. all of us should be grateful that we have had a small piece of that particular history. because that history helps me bear a lot of responsibility, to be a husband, to be a father. this institution will always be
one of the big reasons we are here was the ingenious legislation that she appropriately and wisely introduced on behalf of not just this city but cities and counties large and small up and down the state, and allowed us to leverage federal dollars. it is appropriate now she is in the federal legislature. that is state senator and current congress woman jockey spears j jockeyackie jackie spiers. the contributions, large and small, the current members of the board of supervisors, previous president of the board, all of those that contributed so much down at city hall, we are glad you are here, ed lee at the department of public works did, the principal lead agency in the government, thank you for your stewardship of this project. you did a great job. to louise cansell, who put out a press release acknowledging over 100 meters at that now adorn this extraordinary building. there is not $1 wasted in the commitment of public art. it was 2% set aside. if any of you have been insi