Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Govt Audits And Oversight Committe

Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Govt Audits And Oversight Committee 20240713

So moved. Second. Thank you for seconding and thank you everyone. Again, shereen, remarkable work by the department and as far as this meeting is concerned, thank you to all those who participated in setting it up and if i got through it, it means anybody can get through it. [ laughter ] thank you. Thank you, stay safe everyone. Until next month. Welcome to the thursday, may 7th, meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. Im gordon mar, the chair of the committee joined by vice chair aaron peskin and matt hainey. Thank you to john carroll and i would like to thank sf gov tv. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements . Yes, thank you, mr. Chair. Due to the covid19 Health Emergency and to protect City Employee expose ths, the chambed Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely at the same extent as if they were present. Public comment will be available on this agenda and both channel 26 and sfgovtv. Org are streaming on your screen. Each speaker will be allowed to two minutes to speak. Comments to speak during the Public Comment period are available via phone by calling 888 2045984 and entering an access code for our meeting, and thats 350. 3501008. Then press the pound symbol twice. When you are connected dial 1 and 0 to be added to the cue to speak. You will be lined up in the system in the order in which you dial 10. While youre waiting the system will be silent. The callin will notify you. All callers remain on mute until the line is open for comment. Everyone must account for time delays and speaking discrepancies that we may encounter between the live coverage is the streaming. And best practises for callers are to call from a quiet location and speak clearly and slowly to turn down your radio and your television or your streaming device you may be using to listen to the proceedings. Alternatively, you may submit Public Comment in either of the following ways. You can email me. Im john carroll, the clerk of the oversight committee. My email is john. Carroll sfgov. Org. Our office is room 244, city hall, one dr. Carlton b. Goodlet place, San Francisco, california. And items acted upon will appear on the board of supervisors agenda of may 19th, 2020 unless otherwise stated. Thank you so much, mr. Clerk, for all of that and can you please call item number one . Its ordinance amending the planning and building codes to grant legal status to existing dwelling units constructed without required permits and extending the waiver through december 31st, 2024, requiring annual reports on the Fee Waiver Program and making findings of consistency with the plan, the priority policies and finds for necessity under 302. Colleagues, i would like to continue this item to work on amendments to the reporting requirements this legislation. This is a part of my greater focus on expanding greater housing and supporting homeowners and tenants and i would like to ensure this program fits well with our larger housing policy goals. To before we go to Public Comment, are there any further comments or questions from my colleagues . Seeing none, mr. Clerk, are there any callers on the line . Mr. Chair, operations is checking to see if there are any callers in the cue. Please let us know if there are callers ready. For those connected via phone press 10 to be added to the cue to speak for this agenda item. For those already on hold in the cue, please continue to wait until you are prompted to begin at the beep. For those who are watching our meeting on San Francisco cable channel 26 or via streaming link on sfgov tv, please call in by following the instructions on your screen. Enter the access code 35010008, press the pound symbol twice and 10 to enter the cue to speak. Operations, any callers in the cue. No callers wishing to speak. So thank you so much, mr. Clerk. Seeing no the callers on the line, Public Comment is now closed. And colleagues, i move that we continue with this item to the call of the chair. Mr. Clerk, please call role. rolon the motion to continue role call . Mr. Chair, there are three ay session. Es. An ordinance amending the municipal election case code to require the department of elections to expand use of vote by mail ballots at the november 3, 2020, election and to report to the board of supervisors regarding planning for that election and to report to the board regarding implementation of the voters choice be abilit act. Members who wish to provide Public Comment on this ordinance should call the Public Comment number 888 2045984 and interact cess code of 35008 and press the pound symbol price and then press one and zero to enter the cue to speak. Mr. Chair. I would like to call mr. Binart. Thank you so much for hearing this item today. Im the aid to supervisor rone networks p. N. Could you speak up . We can hear you but could be a little better. Iif you could just speak a little loudly and slowly, well be able to hear you. Thanks so much. The legislation before you today is intended to ensure a fair, safe, accessible and secure november 2020 election and a path for future elections. Right now, only 70 of San Francisco voters are currently registered at the votebymail. We cant predict the course of this pandemic but its entirely likely people will not be congregating in groups, especially not in tight spaces and we will be maintaining safe distances measures and we cannot expect voters will stand in line and drop into their neighbors garage to volt. Vote. Im confident no one wants to be faced with their vote and casting a ballot and we need an emergency plan for november and there has to be a transparent process for the board and public to weigh in on the plan. What the legislation does is straightforward and it directs the San Francisco department of elections to mail a ballot to every registered voter for the november election. It highlights the roles of the office of Racial Equity and communitybased organizations in outreach, information and engagement with communities with historically low turnout. It directs the department of elections to present a plan to the board of supervisors by junt will be elected whether San Francisco is under shelterinorder and by directing the department of elections to bring to the board of supervisors of implementing the california voters choice act in the future and we want to pros somintroduce some amendmeny that were submitted to you. There is page 5, line 10 to 13 includes inperson voting options and early voting opportunities, and page 6, line 24 improves the language describing the outreach engages and page 6, line 1320 adds details to the expected components of the department of elections report to the board on the november election plan and page 7, line 3, at the directors request, it extends the report to the board on the voter choice acts to february 28th, 2021. Theres an additional amendment to establish inline voting but we were able to complete the necessary legal view to get the wording right and were asking if the committee adopt amendments presented to you that were submitted, duplicate the file so we can move on to the full board while our office works with the City Attorney to see if we can address the outstanding questions. We couldnt have done this without the input and expertise, including Chinese Progressive Association and just cause and aclu and Asian Americans advancing justice through the asian caucus and im grateful for their guidance and on behalf of supervisor ronen, thank you to the cosponsors and we hope youll support thi in this and e it forward. Thank you so much. There would be other costs to implement the Public Health protections and Disability Access and we did not have that at the time of the ordinance. We do recommend this Committee Requests the director of elections to submit any additional cost information to the may 19th, board of supervisors meeting. We also further recommend the board of supervisors consider amending the ordinance to have more information on costs included in the report backed by the department as specified by this ordinance. Otherwise, we consider approval of the proposed ordinance to be a policy matter for the board. And im available for any questions may have. Great. Thank you so much, mrs. Campbell. And i just want to mention or i understand that we have our director of the department of elections, john arnst, here with us today and mr. Arnst, miss campbells recommendation, will you be able to submit a memorandum to the may 1 19, boad of supervisors costs to implement this . Yes, we can provide more information. May 19th. It may not be a complete scaling of costs but were waiting for the governors executive order and how the november election will be conducted, which will inform us more on how to develop the cost and also to develop a plan around this ordinance. Thank you for that mr. Arnst. Before we go to Public Comment, colleagues, any questions . This is supervisor peskin. And through the chair, mr. Arnst or binart from supervisor ronens office, what im trying to ascertain is how many ontheground polling sites elections would consider even if everybody received a vote by mail ballot. Supervisor peskin, i cant answer that question yet because theyre still waiting for the governors executive order, which will provide input on how the inperson voting will occur. Were looking at the polling place in the recent elections, trying to get a sense if we could use those locations in relation to social distancing and we could move people through the voting process to maintain the sixfoot distance. Right now, we would have the same number as we had in march because the law hasnt changed. But once the governor issued an executive order, the laws will be modified or relaxed and we might have less polling places and we could have more voting centers. I just dont know yet. Now we have one polling place per thousand, is that right . Correct. I think while vca is intended on whether they opt in or not a ballot by mail is a fine thing, but for many, many reason, as we all know, people show up on election day and theyve lost their ballots and they want to drop them off in person because they dont like to put them in mailboxes, a whole host of reasons maintaining ontheground polling places is important and i would continue to check in as we hear from the governor and as you formulate your plan. Obviously, it has to be socially distanced and presumably, youll need a lot of ta staff to do itd it may be harder to obtain this cycle. Thank you. Thank you, chair mar. Thank you. Thank you, supervisor peskin. I had a followup question, when do you expect the executive order from the governor providing more guidance on inperson voting . We expect it this month and we were hoping for it to be issued this week and i dont know if thats going to happen because time is running short and so hopefully, in the next week, if not this week but next week, but were all in the same situation, waiting for this executive issue so we can start planning. Great, thank you. Supervisor hainey. Thank you, chair mar. I just wanted to thank amy and supervisor ronen and former supervisor who cosponsored this. I think this is the right thing to ensure access to voting and thank you to director arnst, as well, for your leadership. I know in is a shifting landscape in many ways, including what the state will put forward but these are critical steps that we can take right now and i saw the letter from some of the Committee Organizations and i appreciate the amendments being brought forward and i think that sending a ballot out to everyone is the right thic thing to do and maintaining some level of inperson access that is safe is essential. I know that will be both things will be critical for the district that i represent. So thank you, amy, for your work on this and, supervisor ronen. Thank you, supervisor hainey. Amy binart, do you have a response or some additional comments . Yeah, i just wanted to say that weve heard from many, many of the advocate groups can you hear me yes. About the need for inperson voting and obviously would certainly agree with that and figuring it out this year is going to be just exceptionally challenging and we want to supervisor ronen, certainly signed on to the resolution that president yee put forward earlier last week and it was voted on this week, that established a range of inperson voting ratios as a baseline, somewhere between the one for every one thousand voters that currently exist to the one for every ten thousand voters that the vca would require. But we also wanted to tie in the potential offset for if there are lots of inperson vote locations that we want to emphasize the need for early voting. And so we want to keep that the conversation and look forward to getting more of the advocatess thoughts and working with the director to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you so much, miss binart. Mr. Clerk, think callers on the line . Mr. Chair, operations is checking to see if there are any callers in the cue. Please let us know if there are callers that are ready. For those that are already connected to our meeting via phone, press 10 to be added to the cue to speak for this item. For those already on hold in the cue, please continue to wait until youre prompted to begin at the beep. For those watching our meeting on cable channel 26 or via streaming link or sfgov tv, if you wish to speak call in by following the instructions on your screen and that would be to dial 888 2045984 and when prompted, enter the access code 3501008. And press the pound symbol twice and then press 10 to enter the cue to speak. Do we have any callers on the line for this agenda item . I do have one caller in the cue. Just give me one second, please. Thank you. Operator you have one question remaining. Welcome, caller, you have two minutes. Good morning. This is david compose and im calling in my capacity as chair of the San Francisco democratic party. I want to thank the chair, chair mar, vice chair peskin and supervisor hainey and supervisor ronen as well as preston and walton. And i think that a lot of the points that have been made and i appreciate the questions from the supervisors. While we wait for the governor to issue some guidance here, i hope that ultimately, we do what we believe is needed at San Francisco, that they can be helpful, but at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we address our needs. And what i would say about what we are asking and i think supervisor ronen is trying to do is, one, make sure everybody gets a ballot, which is critical and two, that contrary to any understanding that some may have, we actually do want to have the option of inperson voting. Having everyone get a ballot doesnt mean were against that, to the contrary. The question on that is how do we have the most inclusive inperson voting process and what i would say is that as we have that conversation that we remember that its not just a number of voting places, but its actually how long people have to vote inperson. The vca provides interesting opportunities to increase voting by certain communities including communities of color because they may have fewer places to vote and they may end up voting more often because theyll have more time to vote, as long day days, in some cases and that can be a game changer for many of the communities that historically have not been voting, as much. I think this is a great opportunity and ironically covid presents the opportunity for us to really transform how we vote in the city and county of San Francisco so that we especially concentrate on communities color and other disenfranchised communities for whom the voting process has been so cumbersome, but i think it requires a local conversation and a broader understanding of how people actually vote. And that having the largest number of precincts is not necessarily the best way to maximize community of color and others. If you do the right combination and number of days theyre allowed to vote that you, in fact, have the potential to have unprecedented engagement in San Francisco. So thank you very much for the consideration and i look forward to working with the board of supervisors, the mayor and anyone housing voter participation, especially in the disenfranchised communities. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments. Operator you have zero questions remaining. That completes the cue. Thank you, operation and thank you mr. Clerk and hearing no further callers, Public Comment is closed. So i just want to thank supervisor ronen, amy binart, democratic party, chair david compost and for all of your work. The path to the future is through a stronger democracy and increasing voting is one of the most important steps to strengthen our democracy locally. We need to ensure everybody in the face of a pandemic has the ability to vote, vote early and safely and i appreciate the amendments presented today, particularly the emphasis on voter education. This is an important reform for Ballot Access and it does lead to some increases in overvoting and undervoting behaviours in improvinandwe need to ensure vor expansion is a success and i would like to add myself as a cosponsor for this item. Thank you. Thank you. Ive heard amy binart request that we nee need to duplicate ae and i would like to make a motion we duplicate a file. The file is duplicated. Thank you. And then i would move that we accept the amendment as presented. Mr. Clerk, please call the role. For my clarity, mr. Chair, are we hearing a motion to amend both versions . Or just a motion to amend the original version, leaving the duplicated version as it is right now . The motion is to amend both versions. Ok, thank you. And so on a motion to amend as offered by chair mar, to both versions of the agenda item, vice chair peskin. Aye. Member hainey. Aye. Chair mar. Aye. Mr. Chair, im hearing three ayes. Thank you, mr. Clerk and then i would further move that we send this item as amended to the full board with positive recommendation. And mr. Clerk, please call the role. On the motion to send the original agenda item as amended

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