i would like to start the program. i just want to welcome everybody here at the circle. the new home of the contractor assistance center. my name is kelly. i'm the general manager of the san francisco public utilities commission. i have been with the city for 32 years. one of the themes that i had a passion was to provide opportunities to san franciscans in participating in city contracts. so for 16 years, i have been working closely with the now mayor on how we can get that done. so, there has been a series of events that we've been able to accomplish together. i think that this is really one of the major events to open up a center in this community to help local businesses to get opportunities on city projects. one of the things that i wanted to say about the center is that one of the themes when we are were looking for a spot for the center is available parking. you notice that you can actually park. the other thing is that given the fact that, the 49ers are leaving, we thought this would be an adequate replacement for the stadium. so one of the things that we wanted to focus is how can we provide opportunities to local businesses, businesses that are doing work in san francisco and also hiring local residents. we models this conversation we had with a lot of businesses through the years. we wanted to have a plan room. you will notice in the center in the back there is actual plans. there will be physical plans and specifications and also we have digital plans and specifications so we can hopefully get the old veterans from paper to non-paper. that is one of the goals we are working on. the other thing is that doing business in san francisco requires a lot of understanding, regulation and bureaucratic process and the center is there to help guide not only local businesses but all businesses to get city contracts. he gave a sports analogy is that it's not going to guarantee coming here that you will get more work, it just gives you more appearances where you get more opportunities to swing the bat and get a hit. so, that's what this center also does. the other thing we were able to do is that we are the only utility that has a community benefit policy that we put in our contracts. basically what that is is that at the time we solicit from professional services contracts, how can you help the puc with a mission with no impact to our projects or to the cost of the services that you are providing. what can you actually give. a lot of times they will offer training. so what we are doing is we are leveraging all that training and provide it in a center to really help. the other thing that is really special about the center is that we now are working with a lot of businesses. so a lot of small businesses are really advocating for us to break contracts down. so now, you know, believe it or not we try to break the contracts down but now we can break them down and align them to businesses that has the capability and ability to receive them. so i'm really excited about this opportunity to work with the local businesses. we work with quite a few businesses out this that really shaped the organization and the model of the center. so, i would like to have this great honor to really introduce the mayor. now, the mayor, i'm telling you this mayor has experienced everything from hrc where he was really focused on local businesses and went to purchasing about providing opportunities to local businesses and i worked closely with him because he was my boss at the department of public works and now the city administrator and now the mayor. it's a great honor to look at all the things we've been able to accomplish, the micro set aside program and job contracting and we look at ways to invest in local businesses, san francisco businesses because we feel with that will really help employee citizens of san francisco. with that i would like to introduce mayor ed lee. [ applause ] >> thank you, har land. happy holidays! it's good to be in the bayview in san francisco during the holidays. we have not been able to say that for a long time. but i want to thank har lynn and his staff and commissioner courtney and commissioner moran and puc staff commission and also department of public works, dbi is here tonight, the mta, the ports, treasure islands, they are involved with hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts that will take advantage of this center. it's been a long time coming. to use another sports analogy. you know you practice and practice, you have routes that you practice everyday, contractors practice those routes, the bidders practice that route and then you kind of say, when am i going to get a real pass? then i think the contractors assistance center is like kaepernick tossing a 50-yard bomb to davis and you get it in the end zone and you score. i know that's what mr. birch is trying to do is to get scores. you can get to the plate and eventually the percentages will help you. i'm all about getting to the touchdown, getting to the end zone because that's what makes our families feel a little bit more confident about the city. that's why we have spent hours with people like ma sud and everyone trying to figure out with our contractors. we've talked about this for quite some years. we talked about this with many of you in the community for many years without a lot of progress. now it's not about you go and try to figure out the bidding process and you are on your own. it's about us bringing that process right here to this community and exposing it and breaking it down and getting the modern tools like all that you see in the modern way of getting to properly not only bid but get yourself prepared to communicate with the contractors of these jobs. we are acting and throwing the passes down the path so people can actually catch and score with these contracts because we need better performance. we need people to be able to take care of their families and then they turn around like mr. and mrs. birch and they start hiring people in the community and start reflecting the kinds of things we've always wanted to do. harl in and others have tried to get more in the bayview and south sector of the city. we have now the highest concentration of contractors and vendors that are able to do a lot of good work. we need you to be more successful. and this is the right time to do it because guess what? the city is on an economic recovery. it's our job to extend that recovery to everybody in the city. we are about to put out some serious $20-25 billion of contracts in the city. airport is hot, munis is hot, puc obviously has hopefully not raise rates too much but they get some money for ideas, we have many ideas churning in the public sector and the private sector. we are encouraging pg & e and other utilities do their infrastructure with us and then we multiply the opportunities. so the things that happen in this assistance center it's not just you are on your own. you are going to have ben's focus to get people here to help you, assist you, training. i think there is going to be a lot of prebid conferences right here and we are going to have the large contractors come here and say, if you don't have the bid, put your quotes here in the center so people get the feeling this is the end zone for folks. this is where things happen. and you don't have to be on your own. when you get to the modern tools that this center has to offer, you are going to see that this is the way the real world is operating today. so getting yourselves in the serious high level of not only the bids but understanding the specs and getting into the business and important contracts is really important. you are going to see a lot of projects. and, by the way, down here, this is where all of the plans are going to be freely accessible. you are not going to be paying some other place to access. the barriers are being eliminated because we are in the community and this is where the contracts should be. this is where the employment should be. we are reducing all the barriers and doing a better job at it and continuing to improving so that more and more people can get in the end zone. thank you very much for being here. [ applause ] >> as you know, the puc, water improvement program was several billion dollars. we have many participating in that program. another significant project was our headquarters building where we had over 40 percent local participation on that. so it's just a great opportunity for me to lead the public utilities commission, but i would like to introduce you my boss. he's the president of the commission. he's a labor guy, he really understands construction. he has been working closely with me when i have any issues about the building trades or any other unions he's been working closely with us with the puc and in fact he's been helping mohammed and i on other issues. he's been a great asset. i would like to bring him up here. [ applause ] >> i won't take up too much time. good evening, everybody. thank you for having me. i'm excited to be here for a number of reasons. i did want to touch on a few. no. 1, what i saw when i came in is i saw more evidence of government working for people in delivering and making opportunities for folks that we represent to make plays. it's critically important that you have all the opportunities in every community that are perceived to be under served, but every community. i'm excited to be standing here with clift on birch, a man that i went to college with. that's what san francisco is about is to make sure that people who grew up here do have an opportunity to participate in the process. i'm proud of what this mayor is doing. i'm proud to be part of this administration because i see a lot of things getting done. it's not just talking about it but making it happen. delivering wireless today on market street, things like this is what brings power to the people. that's what labor union is about and that's why i'm proud to be here. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> so one of the things that we've been working on while we were getting the center together, we've been working with a lot of local businesses and we asked clifton to come up and tell us his story. [ applause ] >> good evening, everyone. my name is clift on birch. we are here to face all the diversities and challenges in our community. as a high school graduate and college drop out, my father was in construction union. i was thinking i wanted to be the best laborer. i showed up everyday and ready to work and eager to learn. these methods put me ahead of the game. after work is close to 20 years on labor on many different projects, one can say i was well-rounded. i excelled in in craft and moved up the food chain. i heard a co-workers said he should have gotten his contractors license and a light came on. i sought my contractors license. i was one of the key employees. i thought i finally made it when there wasn't many black foremans and superintendant. that same year i obtained my contractors license. [ applause ] i had no idea i would be doing business. this was in fact a personal accomplishment of mine of a college degree. i continued to work for that company for two more years. it was not until 2007 when i quit my $100,000 job to my multimillion dollar business. who would guess i would excel in this as well. i invested countless numbers of hours and i obtained help through the bayview renaissance center through business development skills and i learned how to grow smart and create a business plan and how to read financial reports and even obtain my first small business loan. my first business was with mary weather williams who showed me the key components of empire engineering to be most successful. she taught me how to utilize the quick financial quick books and now i'm close to $10 million bonding capacity. [ applause ] >> i'm a graduate from both programs and to them i'm forever grateful. since our inception we have been listed on numerous projects within the city and county of san francisco. thank you, mayor. i have been fortunate to have developed good working relationships with large firms as well as the city agencies to build the confidence that they needed to show case our talents on specific projects as a contractor. recently empire has been awarded the following contracts. san francisco puc project $2.1 million. san francisco puc job 45, hetch hetchy, $1 million prime contractor. dpw asked me to sign $1.7 million contractor, dpw, sidewalk contractor. $1 million, prime contractor and 10s of thousands and hundreds of thousands. these have allowed people from our community, the bayview, back to work an opportunity to do business. you should clap right there. [ applause ] >> i am able to list frank oliver for over $750,000 for work. frank and my dad used to hang out when i was a kid. yolanda for traffic control, $25,000. local firms within the bayview. in closing, i would like to thank the honorable mayor lee for believing in us and san francisco is one of the beautiful tourists -- in the country. thank you. i would like to thank mr. harvey kelly for taking time out and listening to me. and making a change in contracts. well done. c'mon, this is for small businesses. mohammed for believing in business and creating new projects and putting in the effort for creating equal opportunity, thank you. last and definitely not least, to my lord and savior jesus christ for this is the reason it's possible. god bless you. thank you. >> i didn't know you were actually building an empire. can i get a loan? so, i just wanted to thank a few people that help put this together. first of all emilio cruz, where is he? he's back there somewhere. also i would like to thank ma sood. ben, where is ben? here he is in the back. leman abram who is a consultant that works with us on the sewer improvement program. martin lopez who is helping us, tyrone. i just wanted to thank everyone. the success of the center is not only with the city. it's with partnerships, the contractors and consultants and the community. we are going to make sure we have plenty of food. food will be in the back. so stick around. there is food all over the place. enjoy yourself and have a wonderful day. one last shout out, if you see the lights on third street which is other than investment, something that we worked closely with the power and department of public works, we are really trying to do our best to make the bayview a great place to be. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> >> >> >> >> we are approving as many parks as we can, you have a value garden and not too many can claim that and you have an historic building that has been redone in a beautiful fashion and you have that beautiful outdoor ping-pong table and you have got the art commission involved and if you look at them, and we can particularly the gate as you came in, and that is extraordinary. and so these tiles, i am going to recommend that every park come and look at this park, because i think that the way that you have acknowledged donor iss really first class. >> it is nice to come and play and we have been driving by for literally a year. >> it is kind of nice. >> all of the people that are here. ♪ i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america. on that have billion. mr. president, i'd like to call roll please. please do >> commissioner turman. . vice president marshall a excused. sx

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