Life dedicate today bringing this to the residents of San Francisco and we shall all be incredibly thankful. The benefits of free wifi in San Francisco are many. Not only will it further open up our parks and our city to innovation, to education, and includetionthv i. For all San Francisco residents, but its also as i mentioned before a significant step towards bridging our Digital Divide in our city. It provides local groups and Community Residents access to the internet they might not have had before, as well for our rec and Park Department as phil knows all too well many rec centers still use dial up service. When we think about registering our children for camps and play grounds, what we need to do in our daily lives, but also our government on a daily basis to use technology, this will be an incredible boone to our rec and Park Department and something we should all be very excited about. In terms of the details of the gift, google is providing a 600,000 financial gift to our city
Touched a lot of desks and had a lot of approvals and in particular want to thank Veronika Bell who is here from google for stepping p. Up. Google is providing a financial gift of 600,000 to turn this into a reality. This is with the recreation and Park Department. I want to thank Phil Ginsberg, katy, so many people from the rec and park team that really brought this project forward. We selected locations throughout San Francisco on a number of levels. First of all, we wanted to make sure that we continue to bridge our Digital Divide that exists not only throughout our country, but here in San Francisco, to place Free Wifi Networks in under served communities and across different parts of San Francisco. But also to make sure that we provide wifi access in some of the most heavily trafficked parks and plazas in our city so we can have the greatest impact throughout our great city. I want to thank sf city for their Strong Partnership in this project. We started working together a little
Street with the challenges of the both the bart and the muni station. But it is all about our neighborhoods. And i go back to what supervisor farrell said, and i want to again thank and appreciate supervisor farrell, his staff margo kelly, another great effort. This is what innovation does in the city. It gets everybody to actually work at even higher levels in government in a Publicprivate Partnership with Companies Like google and all the rest of the wonderful members of sf city to do what we can do and to do more than we think we can. In order to bring benefits, bring equity, bridge not only the Digital Divide, but perhaps bring the whole innovative spirit to every community in San Francisco. This is what i think this wifi effort of our 31 parks is saying. And the nice thing about it is that when you study what were going to do here and accomplish with the 31 parks, and that we along with our Technology Partners, our communications partners, our department leaders, new ones as well
Investor heritage and i appreciate that that heritage is being kept and that but i would also encourage you to get rid of that wharf that might be gone and i dont think that you need it and will help as well with the budget. And i would encourage you to simplify that perk i have a couple of comments as well. It is just stunning and there has got to be one of the only shipyards that you have turned into a park i dont know. Obviously this will be an example for the nation as well as honestly probably anywhere in the world. And one thing that i already have the port folks here is that i would love to make my pitch and i made it to ram before and it is not just in seattle, they have a pocket park and a beach. And you get away from the traffic and you hear the water on the beach and it is fantastic and so i love seeing the water meeting this park. But i would love to promote it in more spots along the wharf downtown and stuff so you can drop in and where that new park is down at brannen and
And i like what mark said. Not only are there no strings attached. Really the benefits are targeted at our residents and our visitors, but that the only thing were going to see is wireless connected to our fiber. Were learning that. Were learning that our fine and some of the backbones that weve always had to depend on can be improved on. I have to admit, the new director will also tell you we are behind. I call our selfthe Innovation Capital of the world, but were behind in many ways and we need to catch up. We need to do more, but sometimes the funding wasnt there and it costs more than we think and were trying to figure things out and trying to get as modern as fast as we can. And this is where i think that relationship with the private sector, particularly with our technology and Innovative Companies in San Francisco is so important to us, that we gain a knowledge and a confidence that we can improve City Government services, and also at the same time when we get wifi here, not onl