Statement of our agencys values and it determines how we use our very, very limited resources in order to uphold the public good. Public transportation plays a Critical Role in the unfolding of this Health Crisis and in the unfolding of what will be likely a long economic crisis. Our job is to figure out how to steward our declining resources in order to therefore the services that essential workers need to have to get to work and in order to poise San Francisco for recovery, thats what were here for. Everything we do, whether its muni, parking is connected with the health and safety of budget of San Francisco. I want to introduce my colleague, victoria wise, who will facilitate this meeting. Do you want to go over what were doing today. Thank you, jeff. Good morning, everybody and almost afternoon. While we cant meet inperson were grateful you are joining us today online and really appreciate that you are taking the time to provide input on our budget. Its especially important that we have public input and continue to have public input as we move our budget through the approval process. So, just a couple of logistical issues and housekeeping kind of stuff. This conversation is being broadcast live on our website, on our twitter page at sfmta underscore muni. On our Facebook Page and youtube channel. And all the links are posted on our website at sfmta. Com budget. The way things will go, for this conversation, were going to get to watch at 13minute pre recorded video where jeff shares with you some of the challenges that we face in our budget and talks about what some of our proposals are taking a deeper dive no some of the issues that weve heard frankly quite a lot about like our muni fares. Now, i want to tell you that this video is pre recorded three weeks ago before we had the Health Crisis that were having now a lifetime ago. It feels like a lifetime ago, in deed. Of course, needless to say, our agencys financial circumstances have changed significantly since that time. Nevertheless, the video is still relevant because it talks about some of the challenges the agency is facing and some of our priorities and so, we will play that video for you and it will be informative to the discussion and to some of the questions that we hope to get to you in the rest of the hour. Speaking of questions, i wanted to share with you that there are different ways that you can interact with us. First of all, leave us au revoir mala voicemail or tweet us. And if you can, please hashtag that with sfmtas budget. Definitely please send us an email and leave a comment on youtube or Facebook Page. All those channels are being monitored and jeff and i will be seeing your questions and taking them and hopefully answering as many of them as we can and as time allows. I want to share with you that if you wanted to submit questions in chinese or spanish, feel free to do that. We have translators standing by. So they will translate the questions for jeff and i. We cant quite answer them in chinese or spanish but staff will be providing you answers in followup after this conversation. So, again, thank you for joining us and without further adieu, if we can view the video, that would be great. Welcome to the sfmta online budget open house. To provide your input or ask a question about the key transportation decisions to be made for fiscal years 20212022, please email sfmtabudgte sfmta. Com call 415646222 or tweet at sfmta muni. [ speaking Foreign Language ] [ speaking Foreign Language ] [ speaking Foreign Language ] [ speaking Foreign Language ] im jeff tumlin. Our agency is working on our next twoyear budget, which is the yo ultimate reflex of our values. Running a safe, equitable Transportation System, reducing our Carbon Footprint and creating a welcoming workplace with excellence service. The goals are important were making progress on operationalizing the values but i also want to acknowledge that were coming up short on several key issues. These include street safety, muni reliabilit reliability and. We will address these issues in our next twoyear budget but we have tough choices to make. We recognize that were in an extraordinary time without question, it will impact our budget outcomes. We must continue to plan and discuss the trade offs that we want to see reflected in the budget we passed within the next month. Im going inform go over the details of the budget. If you want to see this content clearly or in another language, you can see it at sfmta. Com budget. We need to get back to basics. I ride transit in my bike everyday in San Francisco and i see these issues daily. Especially i experience the most common frustration that muni is unreliable. Muni service covers the city and is scheduled to run frequently it doesnt always show up when we expect. Now that ive been on the job almost 100 days, i am seeing the roots of these problems. It includes the fact that we have a thousand Job Vacancies which means less Transit Service on the street to meet current demands, traffic fatalities are not decreasing fast enough and effect our most vulnerable populations the most. Auto speeds have declined 20 over the last decade and while our investments and transit have helped some lines, our buses and trains have slowed by about 6 . I believe because of all these things, were seeing a decline in our most efficient modes and an increase in driving. All of this means that few are people can move through our streets and grown house gas emissions continue to grow. We also have challenges with our budget. Our costs, like yours, rise with the cost of living but our revenues have not kept pace. Our costs reflect the need to pay our workforce a living wage, which is particularly challenging given the housing shortage. As a result, as our budget grows, so does our structural deficit. In the next fiscal year, were projected to have an operating gap of 66 million. We will need to close that gap in order to have a balanced budget. A lot of our revenue comes from transit fares and parking and traffic fees and fines. A significant portion, 35 , comes from the general fund. Over time, we have become more and more dependent on the citys general fund. Which ties service to the state of the economy. The agency structural funding deficit and the need for on going sources of funds is not new. In the last five years, there have been multiple task forces that have identified significant funding gaps in our Transportation System moving into the future. Together, were going to need to solve for that because our city has been growing and expected to continue to grow adding 73,000 Housing Units and 275,000 new jobs in the next 20 years and increasing the number of daily trips by 36 to almost 6 million in 2050. Before we talk about the future and striving for higher standard of service, i need to focus on the nuts and bolts that keep San Francisco running more reliably. The proposed budget reflects this by making Strategic Investments into the existing system as a down payment for the future while being fiscally part during these uncertain Economic Times. Last year the city neighborhood the muni reLiability Working Group. A team of experts and Transit Service who detailed where muni must invest to deliver the service they promised. They districted us to stabilize the Current Service and develop and fund plans for growth to move towards a higher standard. This budget focuses on stabilizing the Current Service and this means, firstly, fixing our Human Resources department and getting more drivers on the road. Second, increasing maintenance staff and car cleaners. Third, increasing enforcement to keep transit and traffic flowing and fourth investing in reducing fatalities. These are strategic and critical investments to set the foundation for the future. That means implementing the rest of the muni row Liability Working Group recommendations like increasing service by 6. 5 and a variety of initiatives. Making improvements based on the Muni Service Equity strategy but ill be honest, these will require new on going Revenue Streams. Its that simple. Before we can talk about additional funding for transportation, you might be wondering can we deliver on our existing proposals . While this agency has had its struggles, we are at a turning point because we can demonstrate where weve invested we have seen results. Where weve made target investments in transit, weve seen ridership grow by 60 . Where weve made safety Em Improvements weve had reduced injuries to zero. Our plan is to continue delivering the kind of projects that have shown results that are reflected in our capital plan. As you know, the streets quickbuild projects have been wildly successful, just look at our success in market street. Following that success we have implement transit quickville projects and we have others in the works to improve transit, do state of good repair and implement vision zero. Were grateful to the voters for passing drop d to fund quick build projects and signal Hardware Upgrades like new and more visible traffic lights. In this current budget were proposing onetime funds for vision zero education which is important in order to capitalized on the vision zero Construction Projects but to make a meaningful longterm change, well need sustained revenue for non capital vision zero work. Now lets talk about fares. We know this is so important to so many of you. We have a current policy called indexing where fares go up and small amounts index to inflation and to the cost of living every year and in order to avoid huge sporadic increases. As a regular part of the budgeting process, we would have simply indexed all of our fares up at the same percentage. But, based on community feedback, particularly around the goal of equity, weve developed a number of new fares that requires some trade offs. All of these fares scenarios need to be what we called revenueneutral. They cannot increase the budget gap, i talks about earlier, or force us to make Transit Service cuts. So thats where the trade offs come in. I know this slide is complicated so let me walk you through it. The gray box are todays fares. The blue box is what would happen under our existing indexing policy where all fares increase by a percentage. The green and pink boxes show two different equity scenarios that result in free muni for all youth and there are full fare single riders are low income and 65 are minority. 37 of our single riders are low income and 66 are minority but to fund these equity options requires trade offs. In the green box were paying through an increase in monthly passes at a rate higher an indexing but matches other urban transit agencies. In the pink box, were paying through eliminating most of the discount to clipper users. People who use clipper would pay almost the same fare as those paying in cash. Our customers feedback about equity included a call for free muni, not just for youth but for all transit riders. While the desire for that is not understandable, it will actually make our system less equitable and this sounds counter innu innutive, they constitute 20 of our budget. If we do not collect fares well eliminate 20 of our service with less service on our streets and more crowding, people that can afford it might switch to other modes like driving or taking uber or lyft. Individuals who rely on muni and dont have access to alternatives will be stuck with transit that is much worse. Lets talk about fines. Fine adjustments are guided by our safety values. Behavior that is unsafe should carry a higher penalty than nuisances. Certain safetyrelated violations were increased to the maximum amount allowed by state law. Parking in a bike lane is going up 14 . Riding a scooter on a sidewalk is going up by 39 . In addition to adjusting fines were responding to widespread requests by increasing office and they can help manage and improved transit reliable to intersections and making sure cars arent blocking blocking the transit vehicles. Lets talk about parking demands. It used to ensure availability and manage demand not to maximize revenue but any revenue collected from parking goes back into the Transportation System specifically to fund transit. Our policies state if theres high demand during a certain time period, we should raise prices to ensure one or two spaces are available when you want to go to your favorite restaurant or store. When demand is low, we lower parking meter prices. We recently looked at our parking policies and realized they were little outdated when it comes to evening metering and sunday metering. We know that the demand for parking in many commercial corridors is high in the evenings. Thats why were proposing extending the time that meeters are enforced to ensure that evening visitors can still find a space where they need one. We wont do this city wide or immediately. Wore going to partner with local merchants associations to determine where the hours make the most sense and see how it works. Were also proposing enforcing parking meeters on sundays where we follow a similar community and datadriven process to make sure it works for our residents, visitors and faith communities. So, back to the big budget picture. In order to stabilize Current Service, and make the critical investments to set the foundation for the future. We are proposing tim implement e working groups recommendations. Along with other targeted investments. However, as i mentioned at the beginning, we have a structural deficit. A funding gap. In order to pay for these targeted investments, we will need to use some of our fund balance. A onetime source of money. This approach carries with it some amount of risk because it draws down our fund balance and in a recession, new Services Without new on going revenues or a fund balance would lead to service cuts. Mormore over we have economic ts as a result of the coronavirus. But, we are at a moment in time where not making these Strategic Investments would be a missed opportunity. Because they are a down payment on the future of our Transportation System and they support our values of a safe and equitable system. A reduction of our Carbon Footprint and creating a workculture with excellent customer service. It is up to all of us to get to the reliable and equitable system we need. For us at mta this means making the system we have better and showing you that with specific measurable improvements proposed in this budget. Your travel will be easier and more reliable. And now i invite you to jin me fojoin mefor a discussion of ou. We have opened up the phone lines and monitoring all of our social media channels. Please, share your comments and questions with us. Thank you. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining us and i want to take this time to a apologize for the delay that we had in starting this chat about our budget. We ran about 15 minutes late. So our sincere apologies as we worked out some technical difficulties and got our arms around how to hold these public engagements in virtual reality. So again, our apologies and thank you for sticking with us during the delay. We will be extending, of course, how much time we spent with all of you by 15 minutes to make sure we have a full hour to cover all of your questions. So with that, i want to begin by saying clearly, jeff, the reality has completely changed for our budget in the last three weeks as a result of the pandemic. Our sources of revenue, whether its our fares or from our parking operations, are completely depleted and disappeared and we actually are not sure when well see them come back. So, given our current reality that were facing, what is the agency doing about it . Yeah, so this is the thing that keeps me up late at night every night trying to figure out how we get through the ways in which the Health Crisis is turning into an unprecedented financial crisis for our agency . In addition to the Revenue Sources that we control, which fund the bulk of our budget, the citys general fund is also taking a huge hit. Hotel taxes are down nearly to zero, retail sales are down significantly, business transfer taxes. So we know the city is in for tough Economic Times and we are doing everything that we can in order to really do two things, one, is preserve our workforce, make sure that we dont lose our people. Because we need our people to do the second thing we need to do which is to maintain Critical Services for the public. That said, we are trimming everywhere we can. We are dramatically reducing contracts and procurement and were cutting every time everywhere except for the most essential workers like our car cleaners. The other thing that were doing, which is a little eye chronic, is continuing our budget process. The one we start inside a very different economy just a couple of months ago. And that is the previous discussion about our budget were rooted in a conversation about what our agencies values are. So that we can make decisions about how to spend our expected increase in revenues in order to improve services. Ironically, all of the work that weve done around clarifying our values and understanding how to deal with tensions and trade offs. All of that work applies in a time of cuts as it does in a time of expansion. So, were wanting to move forward in these uncertain bud