[roll call] please be advised that director torres will not be at todays meeting. Item three, announcement of prohibition of soundproducing devices during the meeting. Please be advised that the ringing and use of cell phones, pagers and other similar soundproducing Electronic Devices are prohibited at the meeting. Any person responsible for one going off may be asked to leave the room. And cell phones set on vibrate do cause microphone interference so the board respectfully ask they that be turned off. Item four, approval of the minutes from the december 5 regular meeting. Welcome back, everyone. Happy holidays and happy new year. Any Public Comments on the minutes . Any Public Comment on the minutes from december 5 . Oh, oh. Sorry. Ok. Thank you. This is just for the minutes. A motion to approve. A second . Second. Item six, introduction of new or Unfinished Business by Board Members . Item 6. 1 is the election of the m. T. A. Board chairman and vice chairman purchase saounlts to your rules of order. Thanks. Ok. So i will take over this item as the vice chair, assuming that our beloved chair wants to continue in her role or at least consider it for the next few moments. So, as were on the nominations for consideration for people for chair of the commission, i would entertain nominations for the chair position at that time at this time. Ill nominate Cheryl Brinkman. Ok. Would you be so good as to continue in this role . I would be happy and honoured to continue in this role. There a second for the nomination of chair brinkman . Second. Very good. Are there any other nominations . Ok. Seeing none, well close the nominations. Do we call for Public Comment on this . Yes, mr. Chairman. Mr. Vice chairman. [laughter] dig yourself out of that one. [laughter] is there any Public Comment on the nomination for chair . Seeing none, well proceed to the election. All those in favour of Cheryl Brinkman as chair of the commission, please say aye . Any opposed . Very good. Congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you very much. [applause] you can clap for her. Shes worked very hard. [applause] thank you, vice chairman. Theres a reason no one else want this is jofnls ill tell you that. Happy and honoured to continue to serve in that xas activity. Ill ask for nominations in the position of vice chair. If i could nominate our esteemed colleague vice chair director heineke as vice chair. Excellent. Thank you. I do not need a second on this nomination. Are there any other nominations for vice chair . No . Thank you for joining us. Glad to see you. Any comment on the vice chairman nomination . Oh, yes. We do have one Public Comment. On the nomination of Malcolm Heineke for vice chair. Directors, im a taxi driver. Very much involved in whatever youre doing here. The thing is mr. Heineke here for a long time and hes expert to be called of the taxis. What happened with the taxi is a complete ruin. A miserable situation. And he come here, just give a smile. Dont do the thing which is need to be done. On Public Outreach in his own area, on safeway, on 17th avenue, the public came here to give you 400 signatures not to remove the bus stop over there of your l line and that was removed. So, whats the benefit of that kind of 400 signature and outreach . What is going on here with the taxi driverser fund . Hes sitting here and he listened to everything and its going on for six months. It was delayed from september to october. Ok. One time objection from the objection on him. Can i not do that . Yes. So im doing it. Then october to november. Ok. Two time. Excused december, now theres january. Now theres february. What kind of taxi department he holding and is in charge and not supervising and watching and other people here. It is a terrible situation. Everybody come here and say yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir, no its a no, sir mr. Heineke, you ruined to have a future. Theyve gone from 300 a day to 50, 80 a day. Many of them had heart attack due to the 77 medallion which sold for 250,000, they returned back as default. You should not be here totally not here this sfmt must be broken. I am going to go to supervisor from now on and demand all of you are incapable people sitting here and destroying our lives terribly destroying our lives and you come here, what for, this board . What board think about 5,000 waiting for money which was approved in december and its not delivered to them. You should not be sitting on the vice chairman seat. You should just resign and go home tonight. Thank you thank you, mr. Mahmoud. [applause] anymore public excuse me. No applause, please. We need to keep this meeting moving along. Applause is simply disruptive. It doesnt help anything. Thank you for being here. But please, no applause. Thank you. All right. So, weve got a nominee for the vice chair. Do i have anymore Public Comment . Nope. Seeing none, all in favour of our esteemed colleague vice chair heineke continuing to serve. Aye. No . Hearing none, you are the vice chairman. We appreciate the talent that you bring to this board. Thank you. And let the any other other new or Unfinished Business by Board Members . Seeing none, thank you very much. Well move on. Item seven, directors report. Director erskine. Good morning, madame chair. Members of the public and staff. I want to start out by asking our director of finance and Information Technology to come forward to recognize one of her outstanding employees. Thank you. Good to see you. Good afternoon, everybody. Its with great pleasure were giving this award to Julie Rosenberg who is a manager of our hearing section. She actually began work for the d. P. T. In 1998, a year before prop e. So im sure she was surprised at what happened the rest of her career. She conducted public hearings for engineering and she is a existing attorney. In december of 2005, she became the head of the management of the hearing section. That section actually conducts over 18,000 hearings a year. And during her tenure, the scope of the hearing section has increased dramatically. Now she she and her team hear protest, taxi disciplinary hearings, taxi and medallionrelated hearings, a. D. A. Accessibility hearings from patrons, spot hearings. And hearing from contractors cited for traffic restriction violations as well as the [inaudible] operations. You can see she has her hands full. She does some of the hearings herself, particularly the more complicated ones and the ones that are with the person whos pretty upset. She gets she is really involved in the booted or impounded vehicles so you can imagine how pleasant that hearing might be. Shes also our representive at the California PublicParking Association and shes now the legislative chair so she gets updated on all the parking sthaouz happen around the state. She just got an award from them for doing exemplary work. She is an incredible, careful reader of all the statutes and will focus on one word, and if there is any greyness in that area, julie will bring it to our attention. She is a handson manager. And if i can get her team to stand up, who are here, to show their support for julie, there is you can see she has one of the toughest jobs in the agency. Much tougher than most of us can imagine and she presents the agency with a sensitivity, firmness and she is extremely responsive and very professional in her communication. So, julie, thank you for the incredible work you do. And it is a pleasure to have you as part of the team. So, thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much. As she said, i started in the late 1990s for d. P. T. Because i was starting a family. I had 1yearold. I remember working on the city contract about two weeks before i had my third child. This was obviously before city tow settled with the city for 5 million. So, i just ive seen a lot change since i started. D. P. T. Is now sffta, im the manager and two of my kids will be in college this year. So it is quite amazing. I feel like sfmta is my family and has been through a lot with me. Or anyways. I think the agency has made tremendous strides under eds leadership and im grateful to work here and proud of the agencys many accomplishments. But first and foremost, id like to thank my team of highly competent hearing officers and my assistant manager. Many of them started in the early 190s when hearings were conducted from the windows of the hall of justice. They deal with difficult customers and situations on a daily basis. Theyre professional, hardworking and they make my job much easier. They also take the initiative to improve the system. Id also like to thank Carol Alexander my tow hearing coordinator and my analyst who do tremendous work for the section. Next id like to thank the other groups that contribute to the success of the hearing section. Primarily the groups in sustainable streets. We work very closely with enforcement and the engineering groups. As you know, the hearing officers are in a unique position to identify problems and these groups are highly responsive and dedicated to fixing the system and improving the system. We also work closely with Diana Hammonds group, citation and permits and they do a tremendous job. Lastly, i would like to thank sonali. She is really the best boss ive had here and she provides direction [laughter] support and holds us accountable so that we can do a better job for the agency. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, ms. Rosenberg. Thank you for your years of service to the agency, which indeed are service to the entire city and all the citizens. S on behalf of this entire board t agency and the city, thank you so much and thank you for being here and thank you to all the other hearing officers who came to support your colleague. We appreciate all of your work. [applause] thank you. Thank you, madame chairs. And congratulations, by the way, to you both. For your reelection. All elections around the globe should take note of the smooth transition of power. [laughter] so, just a few updates. I did want to give you as we do each months f not each meeting, a vision zero update. As you know, kind of the big recent news was that the preliminary data that we have from 2017 showed that year to have the lowest number of fatalities in San Francisco since we started recording traffic fatalities in 1915. So, in more than 100 years, the lowest number weve had, there were 20 people who were killed in 2017 on our streets. 14 of whom were pedestrians. And while both of those numbers have been successively coming down in recent xwraoers and again this was the total number was an alltime low, and while that is encouraging in terms of all of the work that weve all been doing, not just within this agency, but across the city and with our partners, we are certainly not celebrating. The fact remains that 20 people died on our streets. Every one of those deaths was tragic and preventable. Surrounding every one of those deaths are family and friends and colleagues and loved ones who were coping still with that loss. But the numbers do, i think, suggest that we, despite the fact that around the region and around the country, the numbers are generally going in the wrong direction. The fact that there are many more trips taken in our city now than there were a few years ago. Many more cars on the street. Many driven professionally, but not by professional drivers. It suggests that something were doing seems to be happening in the right direction. And it gives us encouragement to redouble our efforts, to recommit to vision zero so we can get to that goal of zero by 2020. We see this as a big part of ed lees legacy. It was under his leadership that vision zero was established first here in this room by this board in if he can of 2014. But mayor lee really made it not just an m. T. A. Effort and not even just a city effort, but a whole San Francisco effort and that, i think, is part of why hopefully were seeing numbers trend in the right direction and more importantly, will continue to see them trend in the right direction towards zero in 2024. We we we do have there are a number of things that weve been doing, that we cant, i think, fully attribute to the direction of this trend. But hopefully it is making a difference. 77 miles of engineering improvements in 2017. More than half of which or nearly half of which are on the citys High Injury Network which, as you know, is the 13 of streets that account for 75 of the serious and fatal collisions. Weve been doing a lot supporting the Police Department on enforcement and then a lot on education and outreach because and the mayor, as was his commitment and legacy, vision zero requires everybody to Work Together. Its not just about redesigning our streets or enforcing the laws. On that note, last thursday,s the m. T. A. Working together with the San FranciscoPolice Department and department of Public Health launched the first of five high vizability enforcement targeting distracted driving in San Francisco. These events will occur at various locations throughout the vision zero highinjury network over the next couple of months, running through march of 2018 and we are doing this based on data that we know that suggests that 80 of collisions in california involve some type of distraction, be it texting while driving, which is the most common, but doing that increases the likelihood of a collision by more than 20 times. So, weve chosen, based on that data, and corridors where that behaviour has been more prevalent, thats where were focusing the enhancement efforts. So, to be smart about how were targeting our resources. And this is part of our larger vision through our effort to stop distracted driving which launched last november, using both education and enforcement to raise enforcement of this issue. Previously we did a speed focus. This is a distracted driving focus. Well continue to focus on speed as one of the leading causes. But wanted you to know that were bringing those streams together. And then finally in terms of communications, regarding vision zero, last year our campaigns combined for over 130s million impressions and onetoone street team outreach. More than 10,000 people at 41 event in many different languages were touched by our outreach staff. The campaign aids in a 40 increase in awareness of vision zero in San Francisco with 28 surveyed saying they had heard of vision zero, which was up from 20 the year before and when we launched vision zero, it had 17 awareness by 2018 so we already surpassed that goal and will continue. Awareness is one of the most important elements of this. There were a number of different outreach campaigns and ad campaigns, including what was called the heartbreak campaign that folks probably got the most attention, which was pictures of family members who had lost loved ones with a silhouette of the lost loved one crossing the street where the loved one was killed or thats a thorough partnership with San Francisco bayarea partnership for safe street which is has been a powerful voice and also gets the credit for whatever success weve had. Well keep on reporting to you and on that well cover it a little bit at our meeting next week. But encouraging is still unacceptable data from 2017. I wanted to give you updates from the state and federal level since it has been more than a month since weve met. I wanted to update you on things that have happened. Starting with the state, were in a the state operates in twoyear legislative sessions and this is the second year. So, they just started that session, the deadline for introduction of new legislation is mid february. So, we are, as we always do, in line with our state and federal legislative agenda that we shared with you back in december, tracking and monitoring all of the relevant legislation and potential legislation very closely. As you know, and relating back to vision zero, our top priority in the legislative agenda was automated Speed Enforcement, which was introduced last year as Assembly Bill 342 which would have authorized a medic as a pilot in San Francisco and san jose. Im happy to report that, due to continued, strong opposition from unions representing the california Highway Patrol and some local Law Enforcement, not necessarily Law Enforcement here in San Francisco, the bill was not put up to a vote at the Assembly Transportation committee in january, commenteded its chance of being advanced as a carry over bill from within the current legislative session from last year to this year. It does remain still our top legislative priority. Theres still a potential path within this twoyear legislative session that ends this calendar year. So were exploring the options for a possible bill this year within this legislative session. So it will remain our top priority. Well keep you informed of any progress that we make. The preliminary budget released last week which highlights to some extent the work to implement s. B. One which is the landmark transportation funding bill last year. Talked a lot about work of various state agencies in 2017 to get it ramped up and provided a look ahead in 2018 with some high level funding estimates for various programmes. Youll see that theres certainly direct positive impacts from sb1 in our budget. And well be talking about that as part of our budget process. There are no surprises in the budgets. Just really reinforcing and emphasizing the Forward Movement on sb1. And finally at the state level, late, breaking news. California sec