Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20171204

Card and hand it to me and i will hand it to the president and they will have folk who is will be called in the order that they are received. You also have an opportunity to speak anonymously. So with that, well start item one and roll call. President bermejo. Here. Vice president wald. Here. A commissioner ahn. Here. A commissioner hoyos. Here. A commissioner stephenson. Here. Commission commission wan is on her way. There is a quorum. The next item is item two, president s welcome. This item is for discussion. Good evening, everyone. And hope you all had a very nice thanksgiving. And welcome to the meeting of the San Francisco commission on the environment. I was not able to be at the last meeting, so i want to thank commissioner stephenson profusely for stepping in at the last moment and a calendar malfunction. And let me start by personally welcoming the newest mission of the commission, commissioner eddie ahn who has already been to a commission meeting, a Committee Meeting of the operations committee, and at this point i think you are now an expert on the goings on of the commission, so welcome. I know, its still a learning process, especially all of the things that we can and cannot do as public members representing our great city. This evening we will be hearing from the San Francisco Transportation Committee about their collaboration with the city departments to get San Franciscoians out of their cars and into more sustainable forms of transportation like walking, biking, and Public Transportation. Last november we approved the Draft Department of the environment Strategic Plan, a document that explains the departments vision and goals through the year 2020. The next step was for the department to hold a series of Community Meetings to listen to what San Franciscoc residents should be hearing from the department. We look forward to hearing that presentation. I had the privilege i of alending one of the Community Meetings. And we will be going into closed session to discuss the performance and the appraisal report of director debbie raphael. We do have a packed egg a, and is there any we do have a packed agenda, and is there any Public Comment on the beginning of the meeting . Okay. Hearing none, then next item, anthony . A the next item is item 3, approval of minutes of october 10, 2017, commission on the environment special meeting. The explanatory documents is the october 10, 2017, draft amendments. This i item is up for discussion. Welcome, commissioner wan, who has now joined us. Moved by commissioner wald. Thank you. And second. Commissioner stephenson . All in favor . An any discussion . And discussion and Public Comment. I will abstain, correct, because i wasnt here at the meeting. The only president , the only time the commissioner can abstain is if there is a conflict of interest. Even if they were not at the meeting, the commissioners are pledged to vote for the minutes. Okay. Discussion . Hearing none, all in favor . Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Next item is four, general Public Comment. Members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the jurisdiction and are not on todays agenda. And we have a card from dave warner. Please come forward. Welcome. Thank you very much. I am dave warner, a resident of palo alto and a former resident of San Francisco and a consumer of water. And it is truly an honor to be speaking to all of you today. Your backgrounds that you bring to the commission are remarkable, and the commission you serve is more important than ever. I understand i have a question and context to go with it, but i understand from anthony you cant answer it, but i will still ask it and send it to anthony in an email to route it to get an answer. I am here to ask if the supuc are under your jurisdiction. As you likely know, 85 of the water supply comes from the sierras, and as you likely know, there is severe environmental damage on the river including salmon at risk of extinction. The situation has gotten so bad that the state water board has intervened and so far the sopuc have opposed. Others and i would like to provide more information to determine if you would like to take any action. So the question is if they are under your jurisdiction. I will send a note to anthony, and again, it is an honor to be speaking to you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers . Thank you. Next item. Item 5, presentation and vote on supporting the San Francisco Transportation Demand Management Plan. The speakers are Deborah Raphael and Donnie Oliveira, liore milgromgartner, and john knox, planning and programmers manager for sustainable streets at the San Francisco municipal transportation agency. The explanatory document is the staff memo resolution filed 201708coe and the San Francisco Transportation Demand Management Plan for 20162020. This item is for discussion and action. What is wonderful about the Transportation Department and the municipal agency, the county authority and our Department Working together to do the potentially herbing herbing Herculean Task of getting people out of the cars. And just like there is reduce, reuse, recycle, there is a hierarchy and thegetting people. And just like there is reduce, reuse, recycle, there is a hierarchy and the transit of walking and biking is the collaborative effort to put the best thinking together and reach out to the community and effect behavior change. As you also know, that is no small task. With that, i will hand it over to Donnie Oliveira who will introduce not only himself but our speaks. But our speakers. Thank you, director. Good evening, commissioners. A true honor to be here this everybo evening to set the stage for the thoughtful collaboration that the department has been engaging for several years with the ta, m. T. A. , and Planning Department and how to craft a strategy to reach a vision of San Francisco that treats the car as the exception to transportation mode and really focuses on the alternative to make it convenient and fun and safe in San Francisco. So tonight youre going to hear from john knox, our colleague from the m. T. A. Spearheading this effort, as well as our colleague liore milgromgartner who will share specific details about what the department is doing to achieve that tedious plan today. With that, turn it over to John Knox White to run through our programs. Can we have the power point please . Good evening. Im John Knox White, the programs planning manager at mta. Thank you for having all of us here. Its a real pleasure. The team from the department of the environment is a real pleasure to work with. Were all excited to be here finally. So really quickly, just wanted to provide a quick overview of kind of how this document came to be and what this document is. Not going to get too deep into it, but happy to discuss anything that is in it. Essentially this document provides an overview of the work that we as the city and not just mta or the Planning Department or whatnot or the city feel we need to engage or continue or start engaging in in order to maintain a consistent travel time in the city on the city streets across all modes. And really the only way were going to be able to do that as we continue to deal with the constraints we have in terms of the Roadway Network that we have is that as we have more bus lanes and as we try to accommodate people on bicycles, etc. , were going to have these tradeoffs that are required for us to make between space for cars and space for other modes. So tdm really is the place where those policies start to come out in order to ensure that people have the options that work for them. And then also identify the services and the programs and the support that we provide to make sure that people have access and mobility within that system, so that as we are making the tradeoffs, between how we use our streets, people are able still to get around in a timely manner. So this document really comes out of 2012 effort where mtc funded some work, the climate protection programs. We formed an interagency Transportation Demand Management Partnership that really started from the very bare bones of what is the city doing with Transportation Demand management. And one of the key findings in that review was that San Francisco is doing a whole host of things, but they are being done in a very siloed manner. We had four actually, more than four, but four main agencies that were doing Transportation Demand management work, but that we werent really communicating or working together in a very effective way. So we started and developed 2014 interagency tdm strategy, interviewing 21 kind of experts from cities that are known to have really solid tdm programs, consultants, academics, etc. , and they identified a whole host of strategies that we really need to follow. Essentially, we need to be comprehensive. We need to speak with a unified voice. It is really important that the people that were working with in the city really not it doesnt matter to them what agency they are talking to. We want them to feel they are being supported by the city, and it could be mta or some things and the department of the environment on others, and as long as they feel that San Francisco has their back and is helping support them in the choices they are making, we are agnostic and not wearing too much and not worrying too much about our own agencies being the front and center on every single, individual thing. We need a combination of strong policies and also be based, our work needs to be based on having really good, usable options. It is not okay to go out and tell people they should be bicycling if there is no bicycling infrastructure for them to use. So out of this came our 2017 to 2020tdm program. And we identified essentially the vision for highlighting how our efforts should be prioritized and identifying who is responsible for the outcomes and to prioritizing where we are spending the plan that is not just where we should put our efforts and also fundraising efforts. Where should we target the efforts so we are getting the biggest bang for the buck. Our vision and goals are to main tan an average travel to main tan an average travel time across the streets and managing the tradeoffs between how we use our rightofway and this is really relying on Transportation Demand management is one piece. It is not the solution, but part of a comprehensive solution that includes increasing Transit Service and includes enforcement of the rules and includes engineering our streets to support the decisions that the transportation outcomes that we are looking for. We really want people to feel that it is easy to get around the city by transit, walking, biking, and using shared rides. Shared rides, we are not shared rides are multiple people going to different destinations in a single vehicle. Not necessarily one person being driven in a Single Person automobile with a private driver. It has four goals, 11 objectives, and 87 tactics. And i actually know that you have a long meeting, so i am not going to walk through the 87 tactics tonight, but liore will be here in a few seconds to walk through a few of those that the department of the environment are tackling. Then also we have 10 principles that guide our decision making, so within that, within this, its not just that were identifying the work we want to do, but also the way in which we want to do that work which is multicultural and making sure there is equity built very strongly through this, that is really making sure that we are talking to people in all the places that they interact with the city of San Francisco or with their communities. So its schools, work, play, and etc. We dont want to just have a mo mono, a singular program that says were going to talk to everybody and were done. In order to build the culture of multimodal transportation in San Francisco, we need to talk to people a lot of places. This side before i turn it over, just highlights some of the kind of priority projects that each of the four agencies that were mentioned earlier, the Planning Department, department of the environment, mta and the ta, the county transportation authority. These are some of the some, but not all of the things that we are currently prioritizing right now, either working on or about to start working on. And i will introduce liore to talk more specifically. Thank you. Okay. Hi, everybody. Liore milgromgartner with the department of the environment, a pleasure to be here. So as was suggested, i am here to talk a little bit about what weve done and what were doing at the department of the environment in the tdm spectrum of the city family. These are examples of what we have been doing, and a little bit of a taste of what we are responsible for doing moving forward. San francisco is a regional employment hub, and with that comes thousands of individuals who are coming into our city every day. Back in 2009 the city passed a commuter benefit ordinance that required that employers provide incentives to encourage employees to basically get on the bus, to take Public Transportation or get to work sustainbly. Most of the companies this means offering employees a pretax program that allows them savings on their Public Transportation expenses or even offering financial subsidies and giving employees money specifically to be used in Public Transportation. Over the years San Francisco department of the environment has provided over 1,000 consultations and resources from email newsletters to flyers that the businesses can use to implement this program and communicate the options to their employees. We also administer this program on behalf of city departments, and so with that, that means that City Employees have the option of taking money from their paycheck pretax to use towards Public Transportation. To give you a sense of what this means for an employer like the city of San Francisco, we have over 5,000 active employees participating saving over 2 million a year on their transportation costs. We also have programs that encourage biking. One such program is city cycle, and that has provided City Employees bicycles for their workrelated trips. With over 250 bikes in circulation, city cycle has provided employees easy access to sustainable, convenient, and often fun travel options as you can see here. Through this program, we also provide in classroom training courses and on street training as well, which is, again, what you see here. Knowing that we couldnt meet the demand from all City Employees, we created a video that is Available Online to provide our City Employees and also the general public on biking 101, how to manage the rules of the road and navigate our San Francisco streets. City cycle bikes are used for traditional purposes, for site visits and meetings, and sometimes not so traditional. A few years ago the puc was using the bikes as they were dealing with fires up in yosemite, so we never quite know how our work is going to be implemented. If you have lived in San Francisco long enough, you may notice what these are. These are tokens that can be used on our muni system. One of the most sustainable and important options that we have for trips in San Francisco. There are not readily available to the public, so they are available to City Employees and departments, so it is the greatest way that we have at the city to make our Public Transportation easy and accessible to city departments and City Employees. Part of our work is actually is to participate and engage city departments on a suite of options and primarily is getting the City Employees on to the muni system as they conduct their business. So as the tdm plan shows, there is no one solution that fits everybody, right, so we have Public Transportation programs, commuter programs, and getting people on bike and cities are just a small taste of the types of initiatives that we have coming from the department. With that, i think thank you, liore and thank you, john. Commissioner, before you is a resolution that the tdm working group has prepared that we hope you will take action on to really put our weight behind this great work because what the department is continually focused on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions and especially with the transportation sector now representing the the prime source of emissions, we still want to balance that out with our need for insuring that San Francisco residents have access to reliable, thoughtful, convenient Transportation Options so that we have a lovable city that people want to explore and be happy in. That is why this plan is so value to believe us because it sets the stage for strategies that help us reach our emissions goals and provide San Francisco transportation platform that allows everybody to get around, and as we found out recently that low income families spend about 15 of their annual resources on transportation, so we want to ensure there is an equity lens here to ensure that good Transportation Options are available to everybody. There is an important step in that direction and achieving the objectives in this plan. And i could havent done this work without our colleagues at mta and we certainly couldnt have achieved this without the partnership from Planning Department and a few other colleagues i want to acknowledge. Warren logan from the ta is in the audience. Thank you, logan, for your efforts. And cody hix from the mta is also here. A last but not least, the Transportation Team has grown and we brought on Margaret Mccarthy to the team and she is in the audience as well. Welcome to the department of the environment. With that, commissioner, i will leave you with the option of action. Thank you. An i didnt have my mic on. Thank you. John or donnie, you both mention that equity is an important overlay to all the elements of the plan, and i am just wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on that. How does putting an equity lens shift this plan . How is it influenceed . How is some of the experiences that youve had in the past year shaped your thinking around tdm and equity . I was just wondering if you could elaborate a bit. One of the problems when you live with a document for so long, it can be hard to find the specific things you are thinking about when you get asked a question. There we go. So i think there is two ways to answer that. First off is, i think i mentioned equity is related to the principles. I think its really important for us to step back and ensure as donnie mentioned, transportation costs. This can be very easy to Start Talking about adding cost to change behavior or to provide services that are available at a cost whether it be bike share, car share, and adding tolls, etc. , like that. I think what this what the principles of this document suggest is that we really need to be mindful of those decisions and ensure that there are a part of the conversation that is happening is a conversation around equityrelated to financial equity and ability to p pay. But additionally one of the 11 strategies, strategy 10 specifically, is our equity strategy. So it does have some specifics looking at some of the solutions that are out there right now, ensuring that we have pass and fair programs that are making sure that biking, walking well, not walking, but biking and Transit Solutions are easily available and readily available to people regardless of cost. I think equity also gets into service areas. And there are it would come as no surprise that there are some areas better served with transit and bike lanes and insuring that as we are working with our partners, that we are looking to make sure that were not just serving, i would say, the most connected or the most vocal, the people with the greatest access to city hall, with solutions because they are coming to us and asking for help. We should be working with those people because they need help, but also be more proactively going out and identifying neighborhoods, which we do. We have some programs in bayview that have come out of a communitybased Transportation Planning process and looking at how do we provide better transit and Shuttle Services down there. I think our agencies in general have gotten a lot better over the last few years in really proactively reaching out to different populations. And then i think from equity also there is just multicultural ensuring that were communicating to people in the way that they can hear what were trying to communicate and not assuming that we can just quick quickly translate something into 13 different languages because that is what we meant in english and hoping that will reach people. We need to go the extra mile to engage people in a meaningful way, something that the department of environment has always done very, very well. Thank you. Commissioner hoyos. Hi there. Thank you so much for sharing this report with us. I had a question that we talked about in the policy committee, and i guess i am just wondering i think the definition used here is ride Hail Services. I know that some of the data that was provided at the policy meeting wasnt updated in terms of the most recent influence in the uptick of uber and lyft, and i just wanted to hear more about plans to i know its regulated by the puc, and there is limits in what can be done, but certainly is a huge, huge cause of the congestion. And i dont even know if theres a downturn in transit due to peoples easy access to those services, but i wonneder if you can comment on that issue more. Sure, so i am going to answer that two ways. I think in this document, this document does not suppose that we are going to be encouraging people to use those. It does not also say we are going to discourage them. It tries to reduce vehicle trips wrand the trips are a Single Person with somebody driving them somewhere, we would count that as a single occupancy trip and doing what we could to use a different option in those situations. But i think the broader question is, what is the city looking to do this . And there is a partnership right now with the mta and the ta specifically along with other City Partners that is developing a whole host of pncrelated reports. One is out the tnc came out that did address those and raised a lot of the congestion information and that has recently come up. Next up will be the Regulatory Framework document. And then there are i dont remember the exact number, but it is not an insignificant number of reports that are going to be quickly following dealing with accessibility for people with disabilities, safety, effect on transit, etc. , and from those documents as those documents are coming out on policies, policy prescriptions where we have that ability, will fill in, to hopefully where we can regulate issues that are identified and regulate those issues. Just a quick followup. So when the data is updated, will we have a sense of the emissions impact of those services here . Warren, do you know im sorry, warren from the ta is one of the people heading up the work for the transportation. Is that one of the i am warren logan from the transportation authority. Just like john said, we have a coordinated series of studies to address a lot of the issues that you are bringing up. Some of them are literally being scoped right now, so we are welcoming the feedback in that arena. I will take a note of that. I would like to when that data is available, it would be great if you could come visit us again. Well make sure we pass that back to the team that is working on that. Thank you. Commissioner stephenson. Thank you for the report and bravo am i not on . Hello. Better . All right. Bravo on the interdepartmental nature of this. I think especially in the department of the environment a lot of times our best work comes out of the collaborative efforts that are across departments. And i think that is really fantastic that this started in that way. Often with the teeth of it and that you mention that parts of this are unfunded. Is this a hopeful document that this is what we want to be able to do and that we hope we can go out and secure funding for all the different pieces . Is this a plan that we are setting out to implement and expecting that the money is going to show up . I am interested in the actual sort of nuts and bolts of how this is going to come to pass. Sure. I used the word aspirational, but hopeful. And i think what we wanted to do is what should we be doing if we want to reach the goals we want to reach . We put together that document. As you read through it, you will see there are some things that are highlighted. Those are things we know are funded and either able to start or are underway. There are also things in here that we know we will have funding for that we just havent had the Staff Resources. One of the tensions is that. I wish as somebody who gets to write grants to fund some of this work that i could stand before you and say i am confident were going to fund all of this. I think the aspiration is if we can put it on paper and say this is what we want to do, this provides that road map and that conversation. I didnt mention, but the ta board, the mta, and Planning Commission have offered their support. As you know, we are hoping you will support the document as well. With that, we feel that is a powerful message as we go out for additional funding out there, we can say San Francisco is this isnt just two staff member who is came up with a weird idea and hey, fund us, but something the city said we are behind this and this is important. And in my experience that kind of statement can be really effective. I wish i could say by 2020 i am 100 certain we will have funded all of this. I think we will have funded a lot of things that are currently not funded here because of this document, but its aspirational and going to give us a stretch goal. We didnt want to say here is what we can do and were happy with that. That is great. A couple of other questions. What cities do it right . You did a lot of looking into other places. What are the cities you think get this right . A when i talk of the Gold Standard which i would like to see San Francisco become the platinum standard, arlington, virginia, the county of arlington is definitely the place that is comprehensive and they have been doing this for 30 years. I cant remember the specific number, but they have increased their jobs and not a huge city, but 30,000 jobs in the last 30 years with no increase in traffic. So seattle is another one that is really starting to come up. And again, they have had 30 or 40,000 new jobs in the last 10 years, no increase in traffic. And so there are cities that are doing it. I think that the other one cambrid cambridge, massachusetts, is another one with a pretty robust program. And i think this is this is definitely arlington level. I think weve determined that if we were going to fund our program at the level that arlington did based on population, it would be about a 10 million a year program. And right now we are probably in the 1. 5 to 2 million range. So again, stretch goals. But i think those are the ones and lots of cities that are doing lots of individual things well, but i think those would be the three cities that i would look at. Portland is another one that is doing some really interesting stuff as well. Thank you. And then i had one nuts and bolts question. I remember back in the day when i first heard the presentation on the commuter benefits program, there is a number of employees that a company has to have before its mandated that they have to have the benefits program in place. What is that number . Does anyone know . For the San Francisco commuter benefits ordinance, it is 20 employees nationwide. And then it becomes mandated. Since we implemented ordinance, there is a regional ordinance where 50 or more employees in the bay area is kicked up to the regional body. Thank you. Im done. I just have one followup question regarding funding. Is some of the funding that were going after state funding . What percentage is federal funding . And then the challenges that come with that. And i would say so far the work that is a hard question to answer that way. I would say most of it is local funding. Propa is probably the biggest and number two after that is the Transportation Fund for clean air which is the regional bay area air Quality Management districts annual funding program. Thats where a good chunk of that comes from. And there are some state program s some of the hurdles are safety and perception and real. And as part of the vision zero efforts, we have really decided to tackle rather than we have run programs and do a lot of bicycle education and think its important to work with people who want to bike and bike safely and properly, and keep themselves safe as well. But we also know were not going to be able to go out and there and encourage people to bike because it is fun and healthy and a great way to get around, even though everybody who bike wills tell you that is true, because it is going to be hard to get people on bikes if they are not feeling safe. We do Education Programs around bike safety and Pedestrian Safety and it stops here stopping for people in the crosswalk program. And those are both federally funded. But those are right now the federal funding is really more on the safety side of things as opposed to the Transportation Demand management. But i dont want to undersell the important connection between those. That is very helpful. Thank you. Any other questions, commissioners . Yes. Commissioner ahn. Quick question. That partially answers a question i had, but is there any connection to cap and trade funding as well from the state level . So there i think there is the possibility of that. Right now the state, all of its active Transportation Funding, so biking, walking, funding through the active transportation program, and i have to say i am not clear on how or if any of the cap and trade funding is going to be funding there. We havent we have a whole grants team and i am sure they could answer that for me. But i ament not sure where that but i am not sure where that money is plugging in here. I am not sure the vehicle for doing that. Thank you. Commissioner wald. Just a brief observation and followup to commissioner hoyos and the point she was raising about the ride hail. What did you call it . Ride hail vehicles. Okay. Granted, we do not have the information yet about their numbers, but i would just like to observe, if it turns out their numbers are as significant as many of us who spend time on the streets of San Francisco think theyve got to be, is that you all should consider expanding your partnership, your inner City Partnership to include the puc because i think they do regulate those services. That its really important to get them on board in terms of what your joint goals are, assuming that the data show that there is a problem. I think just one point is the puc that regulates the ride Hail Services is the state puc, not the citys puc. Its not the city. An i can guarantee you that not just our agency but many agencies including the City Attorneys Office and are very engaged with the California Public Utilities Commission on this issue. Oh good. And working to and with other cities as well absolutely. Thats good. A big cities have a strong interest in how this plays out, and we are all working to get to a place where we feel that the needs of our cities are being met. So maybe as part of your coming back to us and talking about what the data show, it would be interesting to know the nature of that sort of multijurisdictional effort. Who is involved, what the goals are, and how its working. I wont be giving that presentation, i will not be able to commit that, but gladly take that back. You can come, john. The other thing i think we can commit to is as the documents are developed, because the tnc today and that the ta put together actually does identify numbers of tncs on the streets and that is a public document. We would be happy to send it to the department of the environment staff, and they can send it to you tomorrow. Its out there and as they come it o, we would be happy to make sure you all get them as well. So you are reading along with everybody else. Great. Thank you. Thank you. If there are no other questions for the commissioner, we will have a motion to approve the resolution supporting Transportation Demand Management Plan or tdm. Should we do that before or after we hear Public Comment . Should we possibly have Public Comment on this item before we vote on the resolution . Absolutely can. Public comment should certainly come before the vote on the resolution. Motion and second and then open for discussion. Moved. Commissioner wald, seconded by commissioner ahn. Discussion. Public comment. Seeing none, Public Comment. Im sorry. Public comment. Good evening, commissioners. Eric brooks, San Francisco green party and local grass roots and first, i want to take this opportunity to say how cool it is to see commissioner ahn sitting on this body when i had no idea that that had happened. Commissioner ahn was instrumental back in the day in the 2000s of getting rid of the last fossil fuel power plant in San Francisco, aened key to getting local hiring laws, which are not only important for Economic Justice which leads to better environmental conditions, but also just the basic issue of drivers, workers having to drive from out of town to get to a work site. The fact that we now have local hiring mandates, greatly decreases the amount of commuter traffic that is coming in from out of town and the emissions that come from that. And that kind of leads to what i want to say about this report. On the ride hail vehicles, its not good to hear that were not pushing these nor are we saying dont use them because we know that there are thousands more vehicles on the streets. We know that thats creating grid lock. We know that creates higher emissions even if we dont have the exact numbers. We know that possibility a majority of the drivers are coming from out of town. So all the gains that commissioner ahn achieved with the local hiring ordinance on Greenhouse Gas emissions are being overturned, and on local hiring are being overturned by letting the out of town drivers come into the city. One thing we might do even though the California Public utilities Public Commission does rule over these drivers is maybe put a tax on out of town drivers that is so high they dont want to do it. That would solve part of the problem. It wont solve all of it, but that kind of thing is the way we should be thinking, and i think my point is that the folks in this department and in the Transportation Department that are working on this policy need to be anticipatory and need to be proactively working toward policies that are going to limit or hopefully even eliminate these ride hail vehicles, which are putting our taxi drivers out of work, which means putting local workers out of work even further. And really having a massive impact on Traffic Congestion and on global warming, global warming, Climate Crisis impacts from vehicle emissions. This stuff is pretty obvious. You dont have to be a Rocket Scientist to understand this. And so the last thing i would say about transportation policy is that we also need to be proactive about heading toward an essentially car free city where we only have car shares and universal mass transit that is free to all riders no matter what their income is 24 hours, seven days a week. If we set that kind of policy, it would totally revolutionalize our energy in San Francisco. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Hi. My name is alex, and i read that San Francisco had a Peak Oil Task force that came out with a report. And so i am wondering how that fit in with this report, and also wondering if there were other followup steps. I know that is slightly off topic. Apologize for arriving late. Those are my questions. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Director raphael, clarification. This is a Public Comment for you to talk about the item on the agenda. And we give people the opportunity to speak, but we do not engage and directly answer an i got it. If you have a question about the peak oil, it would be good like you werent here when we opened the Public Comment, but to just send us an email and get back to you with more accurate information. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . And then i think commissioner wald had something you wanted to add . No . Okay. Any further discussion on this item . Before we vote. Its been moved by commissioner wald and seconded by commissioner ahn to vote on make sure i get. The resolution supporting the Transportation Demand Management Plan. All in favor . Any opposed . Any abstentions . Motion carries. Thank you very much. Anthony. Commissioners is there any objection to taking a group photo right now . An updated group photo for our website and annual report . Everybody is here tonight. For once. When is the next opportunity . January. Better do it right now. An i would be looking better. I am getting my hair done tomorrow. You cant be on the website until then. We should do it. It is the proper way to welcome commissioner ahn. Were going to take a couple of minute break. Probably in front of the flag. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, members of the audience for your patience. We do want to reflect that he is a member of our commission on the website, so thank you. All right. The next item is item six, presentation on the results of the 20162020 department of the environment central Strategic Plan Community Meetings. Sponsor is Deborah Raphael, and speakers Donnie Oliveira, asia meshack, and Doug Streblow and Anthony Valdez. I am so excited for this agenda item because i have not heard this material either. As you know, this was actually at your request that you have a more indepth role in helping the department understand its value out in the community as well as ensuring that our Strategic Plan is anchored in the needs of our various partners and stakeholders throughout the city. So we embarked on quite an extensive process, and were going to hear tonight the start of what weve heard, and you will probably hear more as we go deeper, but with that, i will turn it over to donnie once more. All right. Monitor please. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. Great to be back. Weve missed you. This is the second item that i cant stress enough how fabulous it was to be a part of a partnership and a team working towards very clear and important goal in this case, hearing the challenge you gave us last year to really reach out to the community and listen to concerns, hopes, opportunities that we may have missed in our first draft of the departments Strategic Plan. So just to set the stage so my colleagues can fill you in on the ed tails of outcome, last the details of outcome, last year we proposed the draft for fiveryear Strategic Plan based on input from the department and Key Stakeholders that helped shaped our departments funding and partnership and collaboration, as well as we did Public Opinion polling and interviews with key elected partners throughout the city to get a sense of where we were at and where we should go. That led to a Strategic Plan that rested on five pillars or five goals, if you will, targeting promoting Healthy Communities and ecosystem, achieving a carbon free future, eliminating waste, and amplifying community action. Under the five goals we targeted 35 objectives of which we believe are going to el help us achieve said goals. We paused there and said lets take this to the community and insure that we are on the right track and actually meeting the needs of San Francisco. That took the shape of community dialogues. And they were truly dialogues that we set them up to really listen and converse with people who we dont always hear from. I think that is something you will hear throughout the presentation Going Forward is these werent the usual suspects of who dwgives us feedback and residents and businesses of San Francisco who have an interest but maybe needed a nudge to get involved. With that, im going to turn it over to your very own Anthony Valdez to set the stage for this evening. Thank you, donnie. Good evening, commissioners. Anthony valdez, commission secretary. Over the past year i had the pleasure of working with the team on developing and implementing the Community Meetings, so i will discuss briefly the Workshop Design and how we got to the Workshop Design. So one of the first question that we had in developing the Workshop Design is how many individuals should participate in each workshop . And we arrived at 15 to 20 for a few reasons. One, it was the recommendation of the expert consultant. Two, we wanted folks to feel comfortable in a Small Group Setting to be able to share the information that they wanted to give us. But also we wanted the ability to allow people to provide meaningful feedback in the twohourtyne frame. We are we were limited on time and wanted to respect the time of the folks that came out. We wanted to target those of average knowledge of the department and not the usual suspects. The challenge was how to make sure that the participants know enough about the department to ensure there is a meaningful conversation about our programming . So it was decided that we would give participants a brief primer about the work of the department. Each meeting as you will recall, started with a 10minute presentation on the citys goals and the departments programming in language to the audiences. We were careful to make sure all the programs had equal air time in the description of the department so we werent influencing the information we got back. This is a photo of jen from the Outreach Team describing the work of the department in language. And also we wanted to make sure that with the exception of one workshop that each table was facilitated by a staff member from the department. So staff facilitation ensured that if somebody wanted to talk about something outside of the jurisdiction of the department, say, if they wanted to have a long conversation about sewers, a staff member who knew the jurisdiction of the department could kind of reel the conversation back in to content that would be helpful to us as we looked at the Strategic Plan. And the final and best ingredient of our workshop, commissioner participation. So thank you to all of our commissioners for coming out to the workshops. You were very helpful with, one, helping us choose the audiences and the nonusual suspects that we reached out to, but also all of the commissioners started the workshops by welcoming the participants and explaining the importance of the feedback that we were getting. So thank you for coming out and all of our commissioners stayed and sat at the tables and listened to the participants. So the department wanted to make sure that we heard from a diverse Cross Section of San Francisco based on affinity and geography. We started with the feedback that we got from the commission in november 2016 when we came to the commission with the Strategic Plan. We used that and then there was an internal conversation about what the Staff Resources were in order to have Community Meetings, and we landed at having seven Community Meetings. And those were the seniors, the Small Business community, families, and chinese. And so that was that workshop was completely in chinese. The integrated community in the south of the market area, families in the mission district, totally in spanish, and young adults which we defined as age 16 to 23. For recruitment, we turned to a nonprofit and Community Partners who proved to be fruitful. All the workshops were either close to capacity or over capacity. So we want to thank our nonprofit and Community Partners. In terms of some other quick logistics, we selected safe spaces that were we selected safe spaces that were nongovernmental. Each workshop had an average of 20 participants broken into tables of four to five participants. And we had food. And snacks. Which was popular. Good food. And we were also very aware to collect the information that we were hearing, and there were a number of ways that we did this. First, participants were encouraged to write down their thoughts to the extent possible on the worksheets which we collected and throughout the meeting we encouraged them to write stuff. Each small table had a note taker, and each table had a designated notetaker whose sole responsibility was to take notes. So we ended up with a lot of information and we took no chances in making sure that we were collecting what we were hearing. So i want to now introduce Doug Streblow who is the engagement coordinator to talk about the workshop objectives, but i should point out first that doug and the environment now team spent hours and hours and hours. We had stacks of data from the notes that were taken as well as the sheets that participants wrote on, and the environment now team and doug spent hours putting that into a spread sheet and coding it to analyze the data. Just want to recognize that. Thank you, anthony. I am Doug Streblow and eam an engagement coordinator on the Outreach Team. I am here to share our approach to putting together and designing the workshops and the activities that participants and you saw participated in. So as you see in this photograph up here, there are a couple of tools we used to engage participants right there on the table and around that table. You see worksheets on the table. Participants were prompted through writing to start each of two activities that made up the bulk of our workshops. They were to write individually to answer questions and be prompted, and i will get into some of those details. What followed that was small discussions. Each individual would share what they wrote. The ideas of what was coming up for them. And after that, as anthony described, we collectively shared out what was said and described at those small tables and discussed to the larger group. We wrote it on the wall so we could see what was coming up in these dialogues. So we kept iterating from the individual to the small group to the larger whole, and that was a hall mark of all the workshop activities that we did. That was there on purpose by design. Our objectives for these workshops were to listen more than we speak, and to prompt meaningful dialogue through thoughtful questions and Workshop Design adapted to each community. We wanted to engage individuals to better understand their needs personally and as a community. We wanted to learn how the San Francisco department of the environment can better serve our citizens. So we achieved these objectives through two activities, as i mentioned. Activity one was designed to gauge environmental value designed to engage environmental values, and we did that through a worksheet where we asked a series of prompting questions, kind of a fill in the blank. We gave them the beginning of the question, and the first one was, i care about and this is all couched under this idea of environmental values. I care about. What are your personal and environmental values . We then went on to ask what my Community Cares about. What are the environmental values of the community . And finally a bit different phrasing and different question, what are the citys priorities . The citys priorities are. And then participants chose from a series of 16 images that we provided for them. They were stickers and that is an actual image of the worksheet that we used for activity one. And they would choose an image to place in the center, and that was used for a couple of different reasons. One, it was a visual for folks who maybe werent as linguistic and it gave an option to participate in this in this question and prompt and activity with a visual, and also gave a chance to tie together all the concepts and see where we could connect dots between the personal, the community, and the citys environmental priorities. After that, of course, we shared out in small group, and in the whole. And that was activity one. Great thing about this activity was it was repeated verbatim at every single workshop, so in language, in chinese, in spanish, as well as the other five workshops and everyone went through the same one. We have a really rich set of comparative data that we can look at to see where key themes would pop up and asia will discuss that when i am through. So for activity two, it was designed to build off of activity one, off of this environmental values as a great starting point. And we wanted to go deeper. We wanted to have a deeper discussion about what barriers these individuals and communities had to participate in our programs. And maybe more importantly, what recommendations they had. We wanted to hear what their challenges were but also where they could come to the table and help us achieve those goals, fill in the gaps. And we did this with questions that were specifically designed for each group. Activity two was more qualitative. It was about adapting to Small Business or seniors and understanding who that community was and trying to really get at both understanding deeper but the value in how we can meet the needs of the group. And that really led us and gave us that deeper understanding of these groups as donnie said, that are often times not at the table for our public process. Our overarching goal for this activity two was to ask people to connect their environmental values to our programs, and think critically about where we could improve and overlap. And now i would like to introduce my colleague asia meshack, our senior strategist, and outreach and communications. Shell be talking about key themes, our takeaways from this. Thank