Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Govt Audits And Oversight Committe

>> good morning and welcome to government audit and oversight meeting of april 21, 2016. >>supervisor aaron peskin: and joined by supervisor london breed: and we'll be joined by >>supervisor norman yee:. i would like to thank sf govtv for streaming us live. >> madam clerk any announcements? >> yes, please silence and electronic devices. >>supervisor aaron peskin: please read items 1 and 2 together. >> >>clerk: items 150672 home detention electronic monitoring program rules and regulations and program administrators evidence of financial responsibility. >>supervisor aaron peskin: captain paulsen. >> good morning. my name is captain paulsen. i have been asked to make a presentation today with regards to electronic monitoring. the reason for today's presentation is the california penal code requires that the board of supervisors review and approve the data regarding electronic monitoring. currently we have made no changes to the electronic monitoring rules since in the past 2 years. in addition, the contracting agency which provides electronic monitoring service for the department is responsible for approving financial responsibility and that proof has been included in the package. a review of the electronic monitoring program by the san francisco sheriff's department is this was designed to be an alternative to incarceration for low risk offenders. the participating electronic monitoring are reviewed by the court and reviewed by the san francisco sheriff's department. a program reviews each person for electronic monitoring reviewing their criminal history, current charges and the police report. when we put a person on electronic monitoring we provide them a schedule of activities, which is referred to as home detention because they are required to be at their home. we develop inclusion and exclusion zone agenda depending on the crime. for instance, if a person is accused of shoplifting at a location, that is an exclusion zone. they maybe required to be at their residence for some time. the electronic monitoring is a provided as a tool of safety. it also reduces the cost of incarceration by providing a meaningful alternative to securing incarceration and allows the individual who is accused of the crime or who is serving a sentence for the crime to maintain community ties to and many times keep a job, to go to programmatic activity and most important to be with their family during the time that they are serving either serving pretrial or time assigned by a judge. >> we use two different types of electronic monitoring which is most widely used as anklet with gps device to let us know where that person is at all times. the gps tracking device transmits the signal actively which is picked up by us and it is light and does not interfere with any activity that the person is involved in. at times we add a beacon and that amplifies a signal if a person is living for example, in a basement, and improves the signal. the second type of monitoring is monitoring of a person's alcohol level. we do that through 2 devices. the first is a portable breathalyzer, a small device with a camera on it and we require the person participating to breathe into the the device, it takes their picture as they breathe into the device and tells us that person's blood alcohol level. the other device we use is ankle monitoring that measures the blood alcohol level by perspiration level and tells us whether or not that person has consumed alcohol. so, in conclusion, we are presenting this information to the board to state that we require your approval and authorization for the program. we have fundamentally not changed the rules and regulations of the program and the monitoring agency, the contract service provider has provided proof of financial responsibility. >>supervisor aaron peskin: thank you, captain. just out of curiosity, how many individual on this program. >> on average 53 people per month on the case load. we signed up 187 people in 2015. >> and in terms of what is in the report referred to absent without leave, awol. the leaders have to report to you with how many awols? >> we have been very successful. last year we had 34 people who in one way or another did not comply on a major basis. the advantage is we get reported to us in realtime. the more significant fact is that 93% of the people who complete the program, by our calculation and the numbers we report to the mayor, 93% do not recidivate within 12 months of completion of the program. >> batteries, what about dead batteries? >> we get alerts when a person's battery is dying. so when it goes below a certain percentage, we actually have the ability to buzz the person, which is send a person an alert to say it's time to recharge your battery. >> thank you, supervisor breed, any questions for captain paulsen? >>supervisor london breed: is there more funding needed to put in to more women's programs. based on the program it seems that you have done a good job in putting as many individuals as many as possible. it looks like there might be room to do more. i would like to have a clear understanding about some of the inmates that you have housed if there is a possibility to add more to this program? >> for every single person considered for electronic monitoring we do a risk assessment for them. the court is our partner in the risk assessment. when a court says, this person should be on electronic monitoring, we do our best to defer to the court order about it. currently, with regards to the people who are currently incarcerated, we can do more and we can and have gotten as many people out as have been presented to us. we are currently reviewing the case loads of people in the jail to see whether or not we can get even more people out. >> thank you. >>supervisor aaron peskin: are there any members who would like to testify to items 1 or 2? seeing none, public comment is closed. could we excuse supervisor yee from these votes. >>supervisor london breed: so moved. >> that motion passes. can we send to the full board with positive recommendations? >> so moved. >> we have general manager here who has to go to his recreation and parks committee at 10:00. we wanted him here for a closed session litigation item. i don't want to give the financial report a short trip. what i was going to propose if it's acceptable to supervisor breed is that we take item 4 out of order which will require us to empty this room because that is a closed session litigation item. if that is okay. we will take item four4 out of order. thank you for your cooperation. we'll come get you as soon as we dispose with this item. you can call them all, but we'll go back into closed session to address them. >> yes don't we call items 4, 5, 6 together. >> >>clerk: item no. 4, a settle of lawsuit with lisa owen for $2250,000. and item 5, settlement of lawsuit for ying zhang for $175,000 item 6, kai yuan for 175. >>supervisor aaron peskin: thank you, we will convene in closed session. are there any members of the public who would like to testify on items 4, 5, 6? is there any additional public comment? seeing none, >> >> >> this is that committee and it gives us five tasks. we shall maintain a direct a separate line of communication between the board of supervisors and the city and county's independent auditor. we immediate with the independent auditor and the auditor's financial statement as well as management and compliance. recommend appropriate action be taken by the board for recommendations contained in the audit report and follow the necessary report is implemented. welcome, good morning. mr. rosen field. >> good morning. that was a perfect introduction. i will turn it to our auditors. as you are aware our office each year discloses a financial report and working with the department and you as the board of supervisors retain the audits and retain our work and come back to you regarding our findings and the city's compliance to federal rules. that's what we are here for today. i will turn it to the external auditors from >>supervisor aaron peskin: i understand we will not discuss this current fiscal year? >> correct. we are covering last year. we'll be back for the board of supervisors regarding those. with your permission. we will bring the audit plans back to this committee in a month or so when they are prepared. >> great. we look forward to that. on behalf of macias, gini and o'connel. ms. louie? good morning. presenter: good morning, supervisors. my name is annie louie from gini and o'connel. i bring you the audit results for fiscal year 14-15. first i would like to go over the scope of the audit that is performed by our firm. we cover the city's general financial statements known as the cafr. we report on the single audits and the retirement system and successor agency and the redevelopment agency and the general hospital and required communication. and current year assessment. we did issue an unmodified opinion which is a higher level of assurance you can receive through the audit and the financial reporting as well as over compliance. the second report which is the report to the government audit and oversight commute is to authorize the communication to the board regarding communication on the audit. with that, there are two types of required communications that we report to the board at the beginning of the audit. so we presented in the fiscal year 14-15 audit service plan on our responsibility under u.s. generally accepted editing standards and planned scope and timing of the audit. there were no changes on the planned scope or the timing of the audit. in the report there are a series of items that under government audit and oversight we have to report to you. these are typical items. without going into too much detail. the one i would like to highlight of qualitative aspects. we pointed to the audit themselves and the estimates used and how they were derived. the audit you receive in the financial statement is the implementation of gatsby 68 which is the new standard on pension benefits are being reported in the financial statement. that is one of the biggest changes with that i'm going into the audit and recommendations. the first one relates to information technology governance. this is from information we have from the previous audit and policies and procedures related to government it for the city as a whole. the reason why this is still in continuing comment because we believe the condition has not been fully corrected mainly due to the turnover at the department of technology. the second comment that we have relates to the year-end closing process. during the year-end closing process each department has to make estimates ora cruel of their liabilities. we found that certain departments did not have their own fiscal staff. they rely on the agency to record those transactions and the communication can be improved to account for the transaction in that period. >>supervisor aaron peskin: ms. louis, give me an example of those? >> i cannot remember off the top of my head. let me go back into detail. >> good morning, deputy county administrator. these are facilities in treasure island. there are three other departments that rely on the department. >> there is ti and other facilities use gsa? >> right. conventional facilities is their management agreement so they have their own internal financial staff and review the material and statements. treasure island, completely relies on gsa for all of their accounting back in process and po's. >> treasure island was a subdivision of the state of california until recently, right? it was not a city agency per say, it was kind of a second redevelopment agency until -- >> it did have a separate status, yes, now it falls under the umbrella of the city administrators office under the gsa. with that we fall under the gsa and accountable for all the finances. >> thank you. >> if you would like the details of the transactions that we have found and corrected is on page 10 of the report. >> so moving on, there are two informational type comments. these are not deficiencies in the financial reporting process but we believe have significant changes or impact on the financial statement or for the city as a whole. the first item related to the uniform guidance for federal awards. what happened in the office of management and budget issued new requirements for all federal awards and it became effective december 26, 2016. , -- 2014. that will impact how the city manages oversee any funding received including cost procurement monitoring. this will be the significant change in the effecting of awards. >> the second comment relates to the new accounting standards issued for other employment benefits o opeb for short. one of the most significant change is the presentation of an opeb liability on the financial statements. so you will have basically it will hit your bottom line. currently the information is measure differently and also only disclosed in the note for the financial statement. the implementation year is 15-17-18 for the city. going forward the findings for the year for compliance awards. the first one related to the procurement for the port security grant program. that program was administered by the port of san francisco. during our test of procurement procedures we found that proper documentation was not maintained for one of the contracts. we found the department to be in compliance based on other types of testing, but we believe that document retention is important. in terms of management response, you will see the response in the report but it was addressed august 2015 to address the issue. >>supervisor aaron peskin: what's the difference between a significant deficiency and material deficiency? >> okay. there are basically three types of deficiencies you can have in internal control and the most familiar is the material witness which will be a likely chance to lead to the material of the financial statement or material non-compliance in terms of federal awards. that will be a material weakness in control. that doesn't mean you have to have a material misstatement or non-compliance, but one would be such a finding. the next level is is the deficiency in the process that we warrant to management as well as the board. the lowest level would be a control of deficiency that may not raise to the level of significant deficiency. >> thank you. >> the second and last finding of this audit is the program. as part of the claiming process reimbursement for the program will be to do time studies for the workers time. we found that during the time study process sick leave and vacations were not classified properly and we have the information for the department to visit that process and corrected. in terms of a management response, the full response is in the report itself, but they are communicating. we are emphasizing the proper time of the hours and looking into enhancing the process. >> the last section of this presentation i would like to go over the prior year of the recommendations we have for the single audit. we have three findings in the slide and they were corrected by year 14-15. with that, i will take any questions you may have. >>supervisor aaron peskin: colleagues, any questions from ms. louie? >> no. can we hear from kpmg? >> good morning, supervisors, my name is lisa avis with kpmg. i will here to discuss the three departments we audit. the san francisco international airport which is included the single audit. we audit mta, and we audit hsf and puc for water, wastewater, hetch hetchy water. the financial statements resulted in an unmodified opinion. that's the clean bill of health. basically the financial statements did properly state their financial health at the end of the year. single audit we had no findings. all received unmodified opinions. when we were here last year and frd audit results we did report a material witness for the san francisco international airport in the process of capitalizing their fixed assets. there was an approximate $45 million audit adjustment to be booked and there was a material issue. happy to report it was reminded in that t -- reimmediated that finding and took the appropriate steps to remediate that finding. they have a clean bill of health. no reports this year. management did well in that result and no management issues to report in that timeline. any questions? >>supervisor aaron peskin: colleagues? thank you, ms. avis. and now we may hear from the a fore mentioned significant deficiencies. maybe we start with someone from the department of technology. i don't see mr. -- here. >> i'm the new securities information officer. boya. we concur with the findings. this is something that's been known for a while and we are working on solutions for that. there is an established architectural policy review board in place which is currently working on five separate policies. the one addressing this main issue around privilege access to management policy. i cochair with my colleague out at the airport, tom borden. we are working on that standard now to be able to codify a centralized password identity management program for the city and county. >> hopefully you will stay here for a while so they don't find this as a turnover. >> i hope so. >> controller? >> briefly, i wanted to add that joe's presence in itself and description of his job is one that is repeated. joe is filling the job that is the scope for security citywide. as we had a chief security officer responsible for this, joe's scope is larger. so we are looking for and pushing through this finding. >> great, we would love to see it go away in its currently fiscal year. >> if you want to reiterate what gsa is with communicating with treasure island and convention facilities and anybody else about this significant issue is stressing. >> thank you. deputy city administrator. we've already started implementation and recommendation in terms of increasing the level of communications with both of those two organizations convention facilities as well as treasure island development authority. we have instituted monthly meetings with our budget and finance staff with the staff members for the organizations. we've also increased regular meetings with the controllers office and we are working with the controllers office to establish the year-end close timeline working with the departments to identify any of those similar kind of issues early in the process. >> thank you. any questions? >> who do we have here on behalf of the port of san francisco. good morning, mr. wu. >> good morning, john wu, office of port of san francisco. as to port security grant program, i guess the good news is there are no cost and our contractor was in fact not suspended or debarked. as to the procedural matter, this came up as part of a monitoring report as to compliance and we turned around immediately in august 2015, documented new procedures to make sure that we followed the steps of documenting a review for obtaining certification for regulation that we document and report that procedure. that is now clear in our internal procedures and we'll be in compliance from this point on. >> excellent. thank you, mr. wu. any questions for mr. wu? seeing none. who do we have here from juvenile probation? >> good morning, very new to the scene. just a month and 2 weeks. >> tell us your name. >> my name is eric gribde. >> i understand there are changes to rectify our recording mechanism. so i think it's three fold at this point. so there is retraining of probation supervisors. also the second piece is changing the procedures. i think our procedures are to be enhanced further and i think for me the key to all this is open up the channel of communication between all stakeholders. so i think with all three being implemented, i won't be repeating this and i won't be in front of the members. >> it's all good and this is the lowest level of deficiencies. we wish you all the best in remediating that problem and the coming fiscal year. mr. rosenfeld, is there anything you would like to snad >> we appreciate the work and appreciate the process between the audit committee and we are pleased they are relieved the material deficiency and we will work with the departments today to be sure that is not repeated next year. >> not bad for a project of these millions of dollars. thank you, ms. avis, supervisor. >>supervisor norman yee: i was going to say for the things of our budget. that is a positive mark for the city. >> are there any members of the public who would like to testify on the consolidated annual financial report. public speaker: hello. it's great to see you back here at city hall. it is a time to have new balance. what i'm here for seems that this was the oversight committee. here i'm here celebrating years of working as an advocate in the western edition. as i'm here before queen bee. none of this is reflected on her because we were both little kids. i was much older than her. i'm requesting as the fillmore corridor ambassador. it was granted back when ambassador was here. the planning commission, the departments that are related to the western edition. currently i know you are about the addition efforts, the western edition to fillmore and redevelopment had nothing to do with it. no departments. here all of a sudden there is bankruptcies and the city owes the state millions of dollars. i want an audit to show corruption, miss guidance and all the things that i don't have time to say. i will do it respectively. i know > >> i'm thinking of sending them around again when they usually we have issues -- for the full board. thinking about sending them again to the full board. a month, 3 months later. >> >>supervisor aaron peskin: we will reconvene in open session. deputy city attorney gibner. city attorney: 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12 to the board for full recommendation and items 7 to be tabled and 10 to the full board. >>supervisor aaron peskin: we need a motion not to disclose, second by supervisor yee without objection. seeing no more business before this body, we are adjourned. [ meeting is adjourned ] >> >> the office of controllers whistle blower program is how city employees and recipient sound the alarm an fraud address wait in city government charitable complaints results in investigation that improves the efficiency of city government that. >> you can below the what if anything, by assess though the club program website arrest call 4147 or 311 and stating you wishing to file and complaint point controller's office the charitable program also accepts complaints by e-mail or 0 folk you can file a complaint or provide contact information seen by whistle blower investigates some examples of issues to be recorded to the whistle blower program face of misuse of city government money equipment supplies or materials exposure activities by city clez deficiencies the quality and delivery of city government services waste and inefficient government practices when you submit a complaint to the charitable online complaint form you'll receive a unique tracking number that inturgz to detector or determine in investigators need additional information by law the city employee that provide information to the whistle blower program are protected and an employer may not retaliate against an employee that is a whistle blower any employee that retaliates against another that employee is subjected up to including submittal employees that retaliate will personal be liable please visit the sf ethics.org and information on reporting retaliation that when fraud is loudly to continue it jeopardizes the level of service that city government can provide in you hear or see any dishelicopter behavior boy an employee please report it to say whistle blower program more information and the whistle blower protections please seek www. . >> this is a regular meeting of the small business commission held on monday, april 25, 2016. this meeting is being called to order at 2.07pm tonight's meeting is being televietzd live and the small business commission thanks media services and stgov staff for televising and airing the meeting. the meetings can be viewed on channel 78 or click on watch tvgov tv2. members of the public please take this opportunity to silence your phones and other electronic devices. public comment during the meeting is limited to 3 minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the officer of the meeting. completion of a speaker card, while ouptional, will help ensure proper spelling of speakers' names in the minutes of the meet. additionally there is a sign-in sheet for those who would like to be added to our mailing list. stgovtv, can you please show the slide? >> and there it is. as is our new custom we begin and end each small business commission with a reminder that the office of small business is the only place to start your new business if san francisco and the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco. the office of small business is the city's central point of information, assistance and referrals for entrepreneurs and small businesses in san francisco. we provide free one on one assistance to help each client achieve their business goals and needs. our services include a checklist of required registration, license and zoning requirements. we can connect you with resource partners who can connect you to access to legal, finance and technical support and other forms of assistance. the office of small business is here to support you through the many stages of your business. you can stop by our office here at city hall on the ground floor, room 110, monday through friday 8:00 to 5:00, call or better yet visit us online at business portal.sfgov.org. we provide services in english, chinese and spanish. so if you need assistance with small business, start here. all right, here we go. >> okay, item no. 1, call to order and roll call. commissioner steven adams, here. commissioner kathleen dooley, here. commissioner mark dwight, here, commissioner william cartagena, here. commissioner tour-sarkissian, here. commissioner irene riley, here. commissioner zouzounis, here. mr. president, you have a quorum. >> great, item no. 2, general public comment. at this point we open it up for general public comment on anything that is not on our agenda today, if anybody has any comments on anything that's not on our ayen today please let us know. scott. >> scott, halpin insurance, i don't think this is directly on the agenda but you are going to be talking about mission street, the problems for the mer xhapbts extend well beyond mission street as you well know. be it north street, be it geary, i think the time has come that i would like to see the commission advocate to get a small business neighborhood person on the mta and we've been talking about this and i think the time has come. >> okay, thank you for that. are there any other members of the public who would like to comment on anything not on our agenda today? hello, welcome. >> eileen bogan, resident of park district, i am requesting there be a informational hearing here at the commission by muni forward management on the proposed taravel rapid project. i'll stop there. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other members of the public? henry. >> good afternoon, commissioners, henry canavitch, member of the merchant coalition. eileen bogan there's been a lot of work done by mta including caravel, geary, columbus, polk, van ness, lombard, just all over the place. this has quite an impact on small business. one thing the mta seems to have neglected to do is an economic study on how it's affecting small business. i think we need to bring them over here and listen to what they are planning to do because from what we can see from other folks here from mission will be telling you more about it, but it deficient flitly is affecting small business negatively. i think we should have somebody from small business on the mta commission, so i would urge you to please tell them that we need to have someone from small business to be on their committee. if we're going to -- small business is affected by public transport. so once again will you please ask if we can have the small business speak for us small business. thank you. >> do we have any other members of the public who wish to speak on anything that is not on our agenda today? hello. >> good afternoon, commissioners, i actually just wanted to bring up one matter. i don't believe i brought it up to this board yet, i brought it up a couple of times to the mta board, but we have a real problem with lack of notice before any work is done, not only by the mta but dpw, planning is also -- they are also kind of wear of this. i just want to have it on the public record that i brought it up because it's really negatively affecting the businesses. i have no way of knowing or preparing ahead of time when all of a sudden they come to work and, wow, there's no parking, they are taking down trees, you know, what happened here is what we're getting. i walked up and down van ness pretty much the entire length on saturday and i talked to businesses on van ness and i noticed no notice whatsoever about all these major plans that are happening for van ness. so it just made me realize once again that this needs to be brought up before all the boards and all the commissions. we really need to be concerned about the lack of notice. thank you. >> okay, thank you. do we have any other member s of the public that would like to comment on anything that's not on our agenda today? seeing none, public comment is closed. on to the next item 3, please. >> item no. 3, approval of the april 11, 2016 regular meeting minutes. >> we have a motion? >> i motion to approve the minutes from april 11. >> second? >> i second. >> all right. all in favor? aye. any opposed? okay, we're good. on to item no. 4. >> item no. 4, presentation and update on the san francisco small business portal. the presenter will be jason hemerling, senior manager at sf business portal. >> hi, jean. >> good afternoon, commissioners, president dwight. i will just be doing a quick introduce and jason hemerling who has been working tirelessly on the business portal project in the last two years with me will do the rest of the presentation. so it's been a while since we've been here to give you an update. the business portal is alive and well and we are very close to launching the next phase of new functionality on the business portal. so today we will take you back a little bit and remind you where we came from, show you a little bit about some of the new functionality, unfortunately we don't have a live demo so we're going to show you some screen shots of what's to come and also tell you a little more about the next steps, where we are going within the next fiscal year and our eventual plans. i do want to quickly introduce jason. he's been with the city for the last two years and again we call ourselves a very small team, we often work as if we were a start up within government because we have to wear so many hats. so over the last two years, we did have a third member of our team but we've been short staffed over the last 11 months so it's just been the two of us and jason has really gone above and beyond and out of his way to produce and deliver this amazing product for small businesses. so he often doesn't get enough credit and i get to go out there and do all these fun and glamourous presentations so i wanted to bring him today to introduce him to all of you so you know he's the other face behind the business portal. without further ado, jason will take over from here. >> welcome, jason, welcome to the glamour of presentations. >> thank you, thank you, glad to be here. sfgtv, could you please queue up the presentation? i am of course jason hemerling and i'm going to go going over the things jane mentioned. this is sort of what tasked us for the business portal. all of these lines represent the crisscross lines and processes that go on within the city for registering your business and getting your license. so it's important to look back on that and look and remind us it's not just the technology we're adding to this, it's also solving the processes in the meantime. here is a prior version of that. this actually came out of the research we had done with tomorrow partners and this sort of showed the journey of a business owner when starting a business or continuing with additional licenses. this customer's journey you can see in the beginning and the end is very easy, very pleasant, those are the fun times when you are building your idea, but in the middle you hit that loop, that's where the difficulty really lies. showcasing here, this is our home page. we have that on the carousel for those of you who have not been on the business portal. that's casa sanchez and their delicious chips behind them. we have created a number of steps, even though this is a very non-linear process we've bun everything we can to show the incremental steps required for most businesses. this here applies to roughly all businesses in san francisco and the number of steps if you don't have to complete you still want to take a look at and see if they apply to your business. we have also set up treasurer and tax collector recently so you can register your business aupb lane and here is one of the more visited pages on the san francisco business portal currently, i am sure it will stay that way in the future when the next releases. this is the permit locator. there are roughly 428 forms affiliated with this permit locator. as you can see on the left side there are a number of filters that apply to different business types so you can click those off and they will return the permits you need for specific business parts. if you scroll down you can see it's also broken down by agency, as well as whether it's city, state or federal. there are multiple ways to locate that through our permit locator here. so moving on i'd like to show what we're going to be launching here in the very near feature. we're in the testing phase right now. once that's completed if there are no changes we will be launching with the next couple slides i'm showing. the biggest change is the user authenticated profiles. these will allow you to come to the business portal, create a permit, access those at any time as well as submit those permits online. so the online permit form submission has been very minimal within most cities in america thus far and this is a huge step toward that so business owners won't have to go in the actual business, they can begin this process online at home. i'd like to add too we are using salesforce dot com as the back end of this. it's a local company so you are likely familiar with that. this here shows what the my folder feature is. once you have logged in you can see it says welcome, of course that's jane's account right there for her future small business. there is the my folder where you can store the permits and licenses, as well as my files where you can store additional information that's required to go with the permits and licenses when they are submitted such as copies of a driver's license, your business registration certificate, perhaps plans you have drawn up for your business and just below that is the my checklist function. in this profile there are already two permits that are saved and the icons on the right show whether or not you can view them or delete them or upload them, aka submit online. moving on to the next stage you can see there is actually a permit for housing submitted online. everything was done on that page. they were able to upline the file then submit and it will tell you once it's submited so you don't have duplicate submissions and you know when it was due to an email sent directly to your email address. here is a really nice feature we thought through and got some feedback from users and this is where you can create your own checklist for starting your own small business. there are two ways to do this, either add additional line items or go back to uer starter kits which apply and import all the items from that and they come across as shorter and more usable lines. so you can actually keep track of the status for each one of those tasks. moving into our analytics, we have almost 18,000 pages viewed per month and 4,000 users. we still are primarily a web application. i know that a lot of them are moving to mobile, but given the sort of important nature and how time-intensive it is to actually complete these activities it's primarily done online. and the number of tablets is even smaller than that. i'd like to point out down at the bottom the number of 465 for the office of small business. those are the number of cases that have been established. one of the reasons we went with salesforce as the back end is so we can use crn as a functionality. this is augments an in-person portal. you can submit it and it immediately hits the salesforce account. these are some of the present awards. we were nominated for a webbie last year, we were recently entered in the white house start up in a day competition, which came with a $50,000 prize, of course including the harvard community school center award. so the next steps. we of course are going to continue with profit streamlining as that's going to be what will allow us to realize greater efficiencies, not just stacking technologies that are broken. technology enhancements we have coming up will be web forms, where you can fill out a limited amount of information and that information will populate all your online forms, as well as docusign and optimizing and maintaining the portal after the next fiscal year. some other projects we are working on or advising on include the mayor's office of housing portal which has very similar technology, the oebw portal, the films portal and advising on other projects within the city that are related. here's a list of our supporters and with that i'd like to answer any questions. >> that is great. commissioner adams. >> what a great job, jane, yourself, this is, we've seen this from the beginning here and i know a few of us kathleen and irene and william were all here at the very beginning of this. this is something that came out of this commission and it's doing very well. jane, i couldn't be more proud of you for what you've done here and your team. this is great. especially the new online permits through the city treasurer's office, people love that. that's why it's popular. it's their deadline now. great job on that. great job. so i gather now you will be going through a process of bringing a lot of these forms online and so how do you get the various departments to do that? >> that was a little bit of a challenge or more of a concern. because we've been working with them for the process mapping for the controller's ofrs it's been easier than we anticipated it was going to be because we already established that relationship. we are very plaintiff's exhibitible in exactly how that permit form, if they have some strict requirement about the signature, if it's digital or wet, it can do either of those things. there are still a number of forms that cannot but we're well over half. >> how many forms total do you think you have to get online to complete the process. >> two hundred for the city. >> and how many have you done? >> 1 fortd. >> commissioners, any other questions? we'll open this up for public comment. do we have any members of the public who would like to comment on this item? >> scott howe, i want to he applaud you for doing this. i was on the commission about 30 years ago and that's when we started work on this project. it's good to see things are developing, it took00 while. >> they had to invent the internet, scott. anyone else from the public? henry. >> hi, folks, henry. i think it's marvelous what you are doing. we do have access to do the forms online. one for housing, apendages and so forth, you can also fill out online. some forms from planning you can fill out online. this makes it so much more easy, the problem is you can't save them. you can print them but once you try to save them, it disappears. not all of them, but otherwise it's fabulous, let's get all of them done like that including building per mitds. >> thanks, henry. any other members of the public like to comment on this item? one more coming up. >> i just had one question for you. one of the issues that a lot of small businesses are dealing with is zoning and use issues and we're particularly concerned with a lot of pdr's and -- at least explain what the use is in the zoning. >> just as a point of clarification, your comments need to be addressed to the commission. >> oh, i'm sorry. >> that's okay. follow up with a question to jason. >> that was my only question was whether or not there was any consideration of zoning or use changes. we're losing a lot of spaces. >> thank you very much. any other member s of the public like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners, any other comments or questions? >> yeah, i had a question about timeline of due dates for different permits or submitals, if he just search for what's relevant to your business will come up when they are due or if there's kind of a standard timeline for each permit when each thing is due. >> that actually varies by department. we have a section on the home page of the business portal that shows important dates and announcements and if you were to go to the individual permit page you would be able to see the timeline for that. we've listed that on each individual permit page. in terms of it, we don't currently have anything that lets everyone know exactly what permits have those dates and timelines. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> i guess while we're at it, if there is a change of use, would that be your purview or that's really something the planning department is going to --. >> we started off, of course, by getting the low hanging fruit and getting those permits online first and then moved on to the more difficult ones to map out the process and making sure it does in fact save time for the applicant. the planning forms you are talking about are the end, those are the most complex and those are the ones we'll likely be tackling as we get the last few online. >> commissioner dooley. >> i kind of wanted to tag on to that too. i certainly see on a daily basis one of the biggest question marks for people wanting to start businesses is, is it allowed zoning wise or use wise. certainly i would have that as a priority moving forward certainly that it can be referred immediately. time after time we see folks who want to open something and it's not allowed and we'd like to direct them in the right direction for finding an appropriate space. >> absolutely. jane is pointing out that it is listed in the zoning section and we reinforce that in planning and a number of other directions including the starter kits for the businesses and we're also working with the departments and they are do ago much better job now, we are emphasizing that everywhere we can on the business portal. >> commissioner riley. >> i want to congratulate you. >> thank you for all your work, this is really important. one question was about new licenses or new, like there's a new temporary alcohol permit available which i haven't seen a lot of exposure about, stuff like that, like for new licenses that come up on the home page like this is now available to you or this is a change in this licensing. so is there kind of a news feed of updated --. >> yes, absolutely. we are working with some departments and of course regina at the office of small business to get the most relevant information up there in a timely manner but we are very open to anyone who knows of other information they think may be relevant. >> if i could add just a point of clarification, up until this new feature gets launched the portal was just a place for you to go to, it didn't really capture anybody's data or information to be able then to feedback out information. so as jason has identified on the home page there is a section for news and announcements and we're trying to work very carefully from regulation that you here to key it up and then make sure when it passes it gets on the portal as a news and announcement, but eye convenient eventually with the new feature there will be the ability to also capture individuals' information to be able to communicate to as well as the clients that come into our office. but i think in terms of, in terms of sort of a broader ability to send out announcements there is i think a better job that we at the city can do and ways perhaps this commission can find ways to do it. supervisor farrell has re-introduced his neighborhood notification legislation which should be coming to you i think early june but we'll get that out to you and maybe we can have a broader discussion with him through that legislation. >> if i might add to that, one of the great things about us now having to use the authenticator profiles is we're starting to collect data instead of it just being a site you can go to to get information, we can push information. the tool that we've decided to use has something in it called chatter and what that does is allow you to subscribe to different groups and if you are in that group, anything they push out will go to them. in that way it's sort of like social media like facebook. if they want to have interaction with planning or whatever, then they can subscribe to planning and planning will be responsible for putting the information out. >> jason, you did a great job today, thank you very much. thanks, keep up the good work. all right, next item, please. >> item no. 5, presentation from the mission business community on the 14 mission rapid project. the presentation will be by memorandum bers and business owners of the mission business community. >> okay, who's starting off our presentation today? >> good afternoon, commissioners. >> welcome. >> thank you for having us here. gracias, william, for setting this up for us. i think this is a very important issue for us in the mission district. as you know, the mission has been developing a lot of development, a lot of fires, police-related shootings. community and the small business community is very stressed right now, a lot of trauma because of all the changes and living in fear of being displaced from their business, from rents increasing and then having to leave, there's a lot happening in the mission district. with this project that recently was rolled out by sfmta regarding the busses on mission street has caused additional street to our businesses along mission street. as you know, mission street rivaled market street once upon a time with its theaters, lae restaurants, lots of parking at one time, and events. the miracle mile was from 16th to 24th street. so it's a hub, a regional hub. it's also now a latino hub for events, you know, for the bay area and for people who have been moved out to come in to get services or parts, they can't find in other neighborhoods or parts of the bay area. so we have to see that as a regional location and how all that connects to mission street and what's going through mission street and impacts not just the mission but the whole city. one of the things we've been seeing, and i talk to a lot of the merchants from 24th to 25th, about 75 percent of them, each one of them said that they have lost some business because of these changes along mission street and also it's making them harder to conduct business. you know, ups deliveries, federal express wasn't considered. deliveries for their merchandise or for folks who don't have commercial trucks, you know, are having to find another place to park and then walk, you know, we have a lot of small businesses, mom and pop businesses, that don't have a lot of employees so they have one or two people working in these stores and sometimes they have their children dropped off after school to wait in the store until they all go home. so all these different things that are happening are making it really really tough for merchants to exist on mission street. and the underlying feeling of all of them is that it's a way of removing what's left of all these latino businesses along business street which are very small mom and pop kind of businesses. so we need to look at this as a, look at it through a cultural lens for us and we're suggesting a social economic report to be done in that area to see how it really works with the latino market. because it's very different from other corridors so we have to look at it very individually and not very cookie cutter. i think this project is really focused just on the busses, which is great, but it really needs to incorporate all the different things that are happening on mission street that make this a very vibrant corridor. it has been sustained by that for a lot of years. there was two incidents, there was an elderly that was hit on 30th and mission not too long ago. the car that hit her said they were confused, they weren't sure which way to go. this morning we had a major accident on 23rd and mission, a car flipped over, we're still getting details of that incident. so there's a lot of things that have been happening. you know, one thing that i witnessed, i've seen lot of cars going through like actually city cars driving through not making the lights, dpw and uber and lyft double parking. i gt a car and we drove through it and it was very apparent it was a sdig zigzag effect through mission street. it was very apparent it was an effort to get cars going through the east side and there was no left turns all along valencia street so all the cars are being thrown on the other side. we realized it was a zigzag, went down chaved, went up 26th and again we have to turn right on 24th street and it just kept going all the way down so it's difficult to get through. if you don't know exactly where you are going it's very confusing, you won't come back or you will take a longer time going to those businesses. we did see a lot of cars double parked because of one lane going north. we went around these cars across the double lane 3 times towards incoming traffic. so that's very dangerous. so there's a lot of things that we need to do to improve this project, make sure that it works for everyone, for the bed pedestrians, to make sure this mission street is sustainable and stays as a major commercial through way. a lot of people go downtown and the other one is of course people come not guilty to get services that were moved out from the mission. that's all i have right now. i'm sure there's a lot of other folks who have experiences about what's happening, business owners and some commercial groups also. thank you. >> commissioner adams, do you have a question? >> eric is head of the merchant association over there and you do a great job, eric, and i have a lot of admiration for you and i'm happy you are coming to us today because i'm down on mission, it caught me by surprise. and i have a question. how much outreach was there from mta before this happened? because i was there one week and then the next week i was there and they are laying the (inaudible) down the street. and i have a business on mission street and we didn't hear a word what was going on. did you get any heads up on this? >> yeah, i actually went to some of the meetings early on when they were rolling this out so we did talk about that, making sure that all the businesses were outreached to, you know, in different languages all along mission street. we asked them to provide flyers to every single business in the area and any other way that they used to communicate and of course a lot of businesses they did not hear about it, they didn't receive any notice, things of that nature. we put out some word to all of our merchants in the area. but i think people also felt that it wasn't completely explained correctly, basically thinking it's just red lanes and nothing about the turns in the area. >> right. >> so it wasn't very clear what was happening and for us, too, who were there in the process it wasn't too clear about where the turns were going to be and where the no left turns were going to be. >> my second question is what would you like to see us do as a commission to help you out? because it's definitely affecting small businesses. that's all we have all over there, especially with those turn lanes. oh my god. so what would you like to see us do to help you out? >> i think one of the things i think we need to do is form a -- well, for you guys is to be very engaged, to be very involved in the process, to have a representative at some of the meetings and attend the community meetings. a lot of our small businesses can't attend these meetings because they are very busy. engaging with us, engaging with sfmta, making sure the business community is represented and making sure all their concerns are taken into consideration. >> thank you. if you had the best of all possible worlds, what would it look like if you could ask, i want to change it this way, what would it look like tomorrow if you could snap your fingers and say, would you put it back the way it was, would you make some modification to what has been done? i'm just curious. >> right now we've asked for some changes, immediate changes, to stop the negative impacts right now. we need changes done right away and then also looking at it down the line in a bigger way, you know, making it, you know, looking at it again through this cultural lens for mission street, promoting mission street in a certain way and also doing things that represent the local community. you know we talked about these crosswalks like they have in south america and europe at 16th street and on 24th street where everybody can walk at one time, you know, things of that nature. we even talked about changing the colors of those, the red carpet, you know, for the neighborhood it represents a gang color. so it's not very positive for us in the neighborhood so making them, like, a pattern like they have in the alleyways where they are brick, so things of that nature that really represent the community and also making sure there's a bottom up process, not top down. you know, again, it's too cookie cutter. we just can't think what works here is going to work somewhere else. every corridor is very different, the way people shop, the way people get there. for me and from talking to some folks, the mission businesses in the community really come together to create its own plan, making sure all these things work together. we're not saying to stop this right now, remove it all, but we're saying it really needs to improve and it really needs the voice of the community to be leading it and to creating its own process and its own vision. >> okay, and do you feel that you have engagement with mta on this at this point in time? >> yeah, we've started the conversation through david coppola's office, what can be changed, what can't be changed. we started those conversations. again, we do want to take it bigger. we want to be sure the vision of the community, we can just make some adjustments and that may or may not alleviate the problem. so we want to take it further. there's a lot of different things happening, a lot of development coming on mission street which concerns a lot of the businesses also so we can incorporate all those different things in making sure mission street is safe, not just for pedestrians and riders but safe from being displaced and evicted. >> uh-huh. uh-huh. commissioner cartagena. >> i just want to put a little bit of context about those community meetings. immediate things we were thinking of implementing we have to get rid of the right turns right now. in essence what has happened is our corridor, our business corridor that involves driving, has been butchered. it does not make it accessible any longer to vehicles and that's part of like eric was saying, the cultural -- we're regional merchants where people come and drive. i think the next step would be eliminating all the right turns until people can make a better assessment. one thing i want to preface, the people at mta they have been amazing. they have been amazing people but i think it's the processes that are in place that make it inadequate in the process, the final product. like you said, they did have outreach but there was no, like, well, you want parking or right turns? people obviously would prefer parking but it's just having the sophistication of having the follow-up questions with what happens with a right turn only system throughout the whole corridor? it's asking for that immediate ask right now that mta, especially our corridor, because a lot of those businesses are month to month. if we don't act fast this becomes a moot point because then the business are gentry fieed or misplaced. >> the changes so far are all paint, there was no construction. >> we found out they created an island at cesar chavez to force cars to go right and also those plastic bearers all around to force the cars to go right. i guess that's the major change. >> one further thing, our ultimate goal, we do want an expedited muni service. the goal is funny, we're all sitting at the table, we all want the same thing, just not at the expense of this particular group. it's, i think there is room there in capacity to work together, just like eric said, like first cultural lens and don't plan on us like oscar would say, don't plan on us, plan with us. so --. >> yeah, one thing, you know, we look at transit as separate from everything else. for us in the mission, you know, transit and merchants are inter29 rred in the way it works and how business comes to the neighborhood. we have it look at them together and not separately. >> commissioner tour-sarkissian. >> i have a recommendation. when you get down to your list of recommendations or changes that you want to make, why don't you put them in writing and submit it to the small business commission. >> okay. >> since we're going to have the mta here, we would like to engage, to have kind of a forum for you to be able to engage mta and for us to be part of that. >> sure. >> i know it's a process. i think that you're going to be eventually having a list of things from all the businesses. >> absolutely. >> it would be a good idea for us to have that so we have an understanding of what your needs are as representatives of small business. >> i think the first one we're pushing to be removed is the island on -- because it means you can't enter. >> something like they've done on dubose and market. >> that's reconfigurable. so that's good news. so there's a certain sense of urgency here because, as you say, once you're out of business. >> that's it. >> that's history. anything that we can do to facilitate moving this forward as quickly as possible is he that businesses aren't harmed and ultimately pushed out of business altogether. so i know you have an ally here and william, who is close to this issue, you have an ally here on the commission in general to facilitate the conversation and move as quickly as possible with the mta to make whatever immediate changes can be made to kind of easy up on this a little bit. >> absolutely. thank you. and of course there's other persons here to talk about the issue. >> we'll welcome anyone else who wants to -- do you want to handle this? how --. >> public comment. >> before we --. >> just a second. >> before we do additional speakers, i think william, i need you to identify who is part of the presentation and then who is public comment. but i think based upon this particular issue there's, even with public comment if there's follow-up questions that you have for a person in public comment obviously you can't engage in a dialogue but you certainly are welcome to ask follow-up questions if you want a little more detail. i think with this situation we can deal a little more informal. but i did want to inform you that in your binder i did print out in sort of the short term and then the many-page plan so you could look at the right turns and then while you may not be able to do this today here, but if you go home and sort of think -- if you were to try to sort of be that little car in a little map driving around, the choices that you have and what, the difficulties i think for those blocks that are between the rights turns or right after right turns. >> creates dead zones. >> thank you. >> director, just for presentation, i think that would give you a good consensus on a presentation basis and then from there public comment after. >> okay, let's then stick to that plan. we just have some procedural items we have to follow here. so we will open it up to public comment so anyone else whos here who wants to comment can comment. public comment is limited to 3 minutes and we can't have a back and forth dialogue with you. if you have a question or comment or something that you want us to directly respond to we will make note of it and then we can come back and ask you questions, but we have 3 more people that are part of the presentation so you do not have a time limit, you can make your presentation comments and we can have some dialogue. welcome. >> i really appreciate you having this item on your agenda today. my name is roberto herpb dez and i work alongside of eric, and eric is president of the 24th street association. i am on the board of directors of the mission street merchants association and it's really hard for a lot of businesses to take time off from their daily jobs, work, running their business, to be here today. so i'm here representing everybody i ran over here and i was a little late, i'm glad i made it. >> we know the drill. >> let me start off by saying the mission is in a crisis. the mission has lost 10,000 residents, most of them natives due to all the evictions that are going on in the mission. the mission out of all the neighborhoods has been hit the hardest from all the gentrification that is going on in the city. the new people who are moving in, primarily techies, 6,000 of them moved in, do not smaup on mission street. simple as that. they have these little apps and they go and if they want to go have dinner they go to their little app if you as a small business aren't on cyberspace they will never come to your business. that's no. 1 that's true. you know what i'm talking about? second of all is that they are not the type that will walk into a business. they don't do that. third of all, a lot of them use their apps to get home delivery. you know, i thought seniors were the only ones to do home deliveries for food. they have apps because i studied it very closely, they have apps now where they order dinner home and now you can get breakfast in bed. check that out, breakfast in bed. unheard of. but these techies got that kind of money that they can afford to have breakfast delivered to them in bed. so what impact does that have on a small business that's mostly i'm sure familiar with siegal's, one of our oldest businesses on mission street, michael gardener, owner of the business shared with me numerous times he's lost 55 percent of his business since the people have been evicted. ever since this red lane has been put on mission street, he has lost an additional 15 percent of business. he cannot sleep at night because if the trend continues he will go out of business. so let's talk about out of business. julio's business on mission street between 25th and 24th street went out of business. you have encantada gallery, out of business. i can go on and on and on, there's a number of businesses who have been displaced because the rents have been increased or because of loss of business. so in addition to that, now you have 10,000 people moved out but a lot of them drive in because there's products and services that they can't get in concord or in pittsburgh or in richmond or in stockton. they will drive in to get latanos yuccas, rent a tuxedo from siegal because he's the only one that has zoot suit tuxedos. you know what those are, right? but mike and everyone else will tell you that has a specialty that people will drive in, it's like a maze. you can't, first of all, drive straight down mission street like you used to. then they took parking away from mission street so they've made it so it's a maze and one customer told us that it took them 98 minutes to finally get to their destination and get a parking spot, 98 minutes. not returning. drove from stockton, california, to come shopping on mission street, formerly lived here, will not return. and this is what we're hearing every day. so let's go to sfmta, they did reach out to the community, they came to the mission merchants association, they presented to us several options. we said no to every option that they presented. we did present an option to them. we said, keep the 4 lanes, you can have one lane dedicated for the busses because we are in total support of public transportation. don't get it twisted, don't get it wrong, we totally support public transportation because there are a lot of people who will take the bus to come to work or to come shop. they could have simply get the 4 lanes, did one red lane dedicated or another color, like eric said we shouldn't use the color red, but they can use a coded, painted lane, dedicated to muni. but they didn't. they did not listen to us. they didn't listen to the businesses when they went to meet with them and they had a third meeting. and several of our members went to all 3 meetings. at all 3 meetings they were told not to do what they did and they did exactly what they wanted to do. that is a total disrespect to having community input. why have community meetings if you're not going to listen to the community? and that's exactly what they did. basically what we need to understand is what is the difference that it's made for muni? let's talk to bus drivers. bus drivers saying they are now in more danger of driving a bus because more people are speeding up and cutting them off, no. 1. no. 2, you ask muni, well, how much time is this saving riders? two minutes, folks. two minutes. please ask ed, the director of sfmta, how much time muni has gained from doing what they did. two minutes. is those two minutes worth the impact it's having on the businesses? no. if you speak to the schools you will find the schools in our neighborhood will tell you that the tardiness of children today has increased by 78 percent. because if you are a parent and you have 5 children or 3 children and you have to drop your children off to two or three schools, every right turn, right turn, right turn, right turn that you have it make is a loss of time. so we ask you today that you please contact the director of sfmta and their commissioners and have a joint meeting with them to tell them exactly what you heard today and that they need to, first of all, immediately stop what they are doing, revisit what they are doing. we've already met with them, they have done absolutely nothing. in fact, the only thing we've heard is bike riders and some organization that they are a part of complaining of how dare this community be complaining about what muni has done for san francisco. that's what we've heard. that's the only response that we've heard. it's like pitting a neighborhood against the new folks, bike riders who are living in our neighborhood. i was born and raised in the city, in the mission district, all my life. i rode a bike, never had a bike lane, never had a problem. simple as that. but now we have dedicated bike lanes for these entitled folks who buy six, seven thousand dollar bike lanes. i had a bike that didn't have any brakes. does everybody see that picture? i have documented 19 different busses and we have 216 other photos from merchants who can document that the busses aren't even using the red lanes. this is the evidence. over 200 different times we have photographed busses not using the red lanes. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. we have two more presenters. >> hithere. i'm eden stein, i'm the owner of succession art and design in vernal, also the vice president of the mission vernal merchant's association so i am here on behalf of the 150 businesses from cesar chavez to randell, supporting them, because we can't really wait until mta figures this out. our neighborhood has been very impacted by the red zones. we've seen loss of business, loss of customers, some of the things that have happened since the red zone's gone in, we're seeing more accidents. carisen on our corner, they are nervous someone is going to run into their building. they support 7,000 people, they have a preschool, they want to make sure that everyone who goes to their business is safe. they are very passionate about keeping everybody in our neighborhood safe. since mta has been working in our neighborhood they have caused traffic jams, we are seeing major back ups all the way from randell to 29th to valencia and one of the things we've been on them for the last 2 1/2 years is to put left hand turn signals on 29th and valencia and on 29th is our gateway to our bike wiggle and many small businesses. we're seeing people race down 29th street so they could get back to guererro to get off mission street. and as far as being a merchant on mission street, many of my customers have said they have tried to find parking, they've got to the end of caesar chavez and they went somewhere else because they can't get to our neighborhood. the last few weeks i've been do ago walk from 16th to randell and almost every small business is impacted in some way by the red lanes and all the changes. on 20th to 22nd a lot of the businesses that are restaurants that to -- said to me our delivery trucks won't come. how are we supposed to run a business if we can't get our delivery trucks in and they won't show up because they can't get on to mission street? and that's a real problem. that's going to shut people down real quick. art and design represents 60 independent artists and we think it's really important to get the arts and culture in the mission and in vernal and we think this is a direct outreach, mta, how are we supposed to benefit the arts if we can't even get people to our neighborhood? from noon to 6:00 we're seeing mission street be a dead zone and a lot of the daytime businesses being really, really impacted. at nighttime people are more willing to take an uber, take a bus, take a taxi to get to our businesses but they have to be really intentional. so many people have kids and a full-time job so you only have a small window. if they can't get to your business they are going to go somewhere else because their time is so precious. so those are some of the things. also in our neighborhood we had bus bump outs built that are not being used. we had many, many things built in the last couple of years that just were restructured and our bus stops got moved from the original placement of the bus -- of the bump out and where they have placed the bus stops are not ideal to our community. they placed them on dark corners so we've seen an increase in crime. they placed a bus in front of a preschool so they are seeing people smoking in front of the preschool and people loitering and it just doesn't feel productive or safe to the community. where they had the bus stops before it was, like, open areas that had more opportunity and were more visible. now when you wait for the bus you feel like everybody is messing with you. and once winter hits and the darker months we're going to have a real problem with crime because people are going to see our neighborhood as free pickings. all the people waiting in the dark bus stops, that's who they are going to approach. some of the other things is a lot of our parking, i know there was 50 parking spots taken away from 16th street to randell and i know that they did, they went out and they talked to merchants but when i did a small group meeting we asked them, how did you talk to when you took away 3 parking zones and put a loading zone? and none of the merchants knew about it so they talked to employees or they talked to somebody who didn't have the official, didn't have the day-to-day experience to say we need a loading zone or we need 30-minute parking so our barber shops don't go out of business, we can get quick people in and out. we need a loading zone so our live music venues don't close down and the bands don't get ticketed when they are loading their gear in. the only place, the knock out, for example, is a live music venue and the only place for the bands it load it in is the bus zone, in the red zone. we don't know exactly where to put them unless there is a loading zone that can happen. and one of my last biggest issues that i've seen many, many times is at 29th street the bus not being able to stop on the red carpet just rolling through the lights, it's raining and it just can't stop, and pedestrians getting hid. the red zones are really slippery so bicyclists on mission street, they only go on the sidewalk because our stretch of mission is really broken up, the busses can't stop and we just see everyone on skateboards, everyone on bicycles, on the sidewalk which is not safe and the busses just going through the lights because they can't stop. so that was a big issue for me. >> all right, thank you for your comments. commissioner tour-sarkissian. >> kevin today and lane, thank you for the businesses you are trying to help. i noticed also that you did some walk between 16th and randell and talked to your business owners. i would like to talk to you about process. now, this happened and have you been in touch as an association with the mta >> i have. i've been at every single meeting that they have held, the three meetings that have just occurred, trying -- i closed my business down on multiple occasions so that i could show up to the mta meetings and make sure they knew that our neighborhood was really struggling. >> that's wonderful. i think the way i see it, you've been gathering a lot of data and i wrote down quite a bit of it and i'm wondering whether mta has all of this. >> they do. >> they do? you've presented all of that orally or in writing. >> at both and sent to many departments. it just feels like, it doesn't happen fast enough. we're -- i'm an example of a business who has lost their first location. i lost my lease and i had to relocate. i had to take a whole entire restaurant out so i could rebuild my business in my neighborhood and i always feel like as merchants and people that are on the streets, like, we make thins happen fast. and i've been at all of these meetings and they've been agreeing but they are not, i haven't seen the action happen yet and that's what we need to feel some confidence and hope as small business and we're not going to get shut down because we can't get our customers to us. >> final question. have they done anything in response to recommendation at all? >> they have come out to the neighborhood. i did hold them accountable to do a walk in my neighborhood and to talk to at least 10 merchants that really got impacted by the changes and try to make some changes. and that was more based on what they can do right now and that's loading zones, 30 minute meters and potential light signals. because it sounds like that is the only thing they can do immediately, so we're really trying to hold them to that. >> have they done anything? no. >> not yet. we're waiting. >> when did you start this process. >> as soon as this -- i mean i've been, for the last 3 years that i've been part of the association we have been of course always talking about issues like those left-hand turn signals have been a really big issue in my neighborhood for 3 years and i was always told it's just, you can't get that done, you can't get that done. and then as i've gone to these meetings they're, like, that's on the table like it's not hard any more. i don't know when it got easy to do that. but that took about 3 years to actually even get them to notice. so that is really crucial to people not getting into accidents at those two signals. >> commissioner adams. >> what business do you have? >> is he session art and design. >> because i frequent that neighborhood a bit, quite a bit. and i wanted to just say thank you for fighting because i met, i do drive over there, i don't take public transportation but i go to fox hardware right there and it has been, i go to emmy's spaghetti shack. i wanted to say, as somebody involved with the merchants in mission vernal you guys first off have done a great job because there wasn't anything going on there for the longest time and with virgil's sea room and rio and everything going on, you really brought that section of mission street alive and it's very vibrant now. >> my business is 9 years old now. it's important for people to know you can survive past year 5. >> i go there, i can't find parking any more. where i'm winding up parking on guerrero street or down by san jose highway, which can get you killed, and having to walk over there. anything we can do, please, please, let us know. >> we just can't wait. >> i hope mta is watching this. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. we have one more presenter. welcome. >> good afternoon, commissioners, my name is irwin rodriguez, providing services to the community for 43 years. and commissioner mentioned today, this list of organizations, agencies, groups, that have been meeting in the last few weeks and they have a list of recommendations for immediate action so we can forward that list to the commission. among those immediate actions that are included on the list are, one, that we need to remove all required right turns, two, stop the red lane painting, three, stop enforcement unless it is to help with safety. those are among the immediate actions that the group -- and the group includes mela, merchants association from vernal and mission, also i would like to bring one more thing to you. our program, mera, our mission is to help our community and especially my program is to support those who are planning to start their own businesses. those who are planning to bring their own income to create wealth in the community. i'm going to mention 3 examples today, just 3 examples. there are two street vendors, two hot dog vendors in a block between 20th and 19th streets. both vendors, they did not receive any notice from the mta that they would get a move. now you can imagine how long it will take for them to get a new permit in a new address. the san francisco department of public works p take at least six months to provide with a new permit to these two vendors. they are struggling with that issue every single day because they were removed from their original location. there is another business that we've been helping that he was able to open his fifth restaurant which is located on mission and 26th. when he started this restaurant he created 6 new jobs in the community, but now he's reporting a 50 percent loss of business. it's affecting everybody every single day with all these changes in the community. so we really ask for your support on behalf of small businesses in the mission district as well in the other districts and so i can provide more examples, more documentation to the commission. thank you. >> thank you very much. commissioners, any other questions? that concludes the presentation part of this. so we can now, if there's no further commission questions, we can open up to public comment. okay? so let's have public comment. any members of the public who would like to comment on this item? please bear in mind public comment is limited to 3 minutes and there's no dialogue during that time. say your peace, we'll make note of any questions or comments you want us to refer back to. welcome. >> hi, my name is marie sorenson, i'd like to take a minute to say that i went to all the meetings. i also went to all the mta meetings for potrero avenue. the way they work, they come in and they say, we want to improve the situation. let's break down into groups. so wie break down into groups and then we talk about what we want, what we need, and so then we all go away and then about two, three months later they come back and they say, we have a plan for you. what do you think of this? of course after the first meeting there is no discussion. we cannot ask questions. they come, they give it to us, they give us little dots, vote on this, have the vote on this, vote on this. and they don't address any of our concerns, thank you for helping us with this big plan and i'm always standing there saying i didn't want that big plan. it's like somebody else took over. like on the case of potrero avenue, the bicycle coalition showed up. i talked it a woman who lived in the marina who had never ridden her bike down potrero avenue but, man, she was for that program. in terms of mta on mission street when we did have votes people were so angry and mta would not talk to us. they would say, just vote. just vote. well, we're concerned about your concerns. so finally somebody said, how about having a thing where it says, no -- we do not want to vote on any project. send it all the way back. the amount of people that voted send it back was way over people that voted on cumulatively all the projects. and they said, we spent so much time and money on this, this is what we think you really need. and we said no, we don't want it, it's going to ruin mission street. so let's fast forward to all of a sudden they are rolling out their new plan. oh, heck yeah, we're going to cut busses, we're going to make it faster, we're going to do this and that. well, the two minutes that they whooped and hollered over in the mission was, guess what? they eliminated half the stops. these are long blocks and i'm handicapped myself, i have titanium knees. so i'm not, i walk because i have to. i just had the disks in my knees replaced a second time. so i can walk but there's lot of elderly people that live in the mission that it's not that easy to walk two blocks. so the whole thing about two minutes is bologna. the other thing i'd like to note is it's every other stop here, but downtown it's still every stop. so who are they really catering to? i'm also a pedestrian so when i try to cross the street i'm constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure there's no car now that everybody has to turn off mission street, that i'm not going to get nailed by somebody that's so flustered because they can't go straight that they're going to hit me. it's just wrong. it's very dangerous for pedestrians right now. i actually got to ride in a car for the first time yesterday down mission street. we were looking for something specific and of course we didn't have the gps, much less the address. and i couldn't remember what block it was on. so we're constantly going around and turning left on cap, trying to get back on mission street so of course, you know, all the streets are backed up on the side streets because you can't go straight down mission street. that is just fundamentally wrong. mission street should be, i don't care, yes, they are meeting with campos and they are meeting with mta, but i'll tell you what, that's a lot of bologna. they are not going to do anything because mta wants this. it needs to go back to the way it was, to have drivers go down mission street and busses go down mission street with no turn offs because it's just wrong. it's wrong for the businesses. they also need to stop -- sorry -- they need to stop, busses need to stop at every single corner the way they have for years. >> thank you very much. sorry, we didn't have our timer on properly. thank you very much for your comments, appreciate it. >> okay, i think i covered it all. besides, yeah, mta wants to talk to us? they're not going to. >> next, please. sorry, a little timer malfunction there. incidentally under normal circumstances you will hear a little gong at 2 1/2 minutes, that means you have 30 seconds left and then when the final gong comes we will give you the proverbial hook so please be mindful of the time. welcome, thank you. >> eileen bogan, resident of sunset, here to request a hearing by mta on the project on mission street and also the el terra project. i agree the muni forward is a cookie cuter approach, not just on mission. they are trying to do similar things on terravel and the mta doesn't listen. they basically pat you on the head like has been said. i'd like it read some quotes on an article recently in the chronicle. it says, we have to really look at how it's working or if it isn't working, why. erica rail, lifetime mission president and president of calle24, a preservation group, i think we need to revisit the plan. residents, mer chants and many others are seeing red. campos wrote on his facebook page that his office was flooded with calls. once the paint and signs and the parking control officers arrive, though, the trouble started. drivers weren't the only ones frustrated. merchants businesses have been down since transit only arrived. some of that is from misplaced mission merchants who in the past have driven back to dine and hang out. now the travel restrictions are keeping a lot of them away. the changes has sucked some of the life out of a usually lifely main drag, especially midday. there is a definite loss of activity on mission. he said it's visible, you go out of there and around noon and there is usually a lot of hustle and bustle. now it's just silent except for busses rolling by. it's a dramatic change. i'd like to do a comparison from the alteraville, their improvement is 3 minutes from the ocean to west portal. again, wow, we're going to disrupt the merchants, the residents, in order to save 3 minutes? there is no cost analysis that can justify this. thank you. >> okay, do we have more public comment? >> good afternoon, 1 more time today. commissioners, i think i had a speaker card in there. i'm just going to mention a couple things in here. i'm going to give you a written list of some of our demands so i have copies of the list. it's not a proper format, i'll send it to you in a letter when i have time to put it together, along with a pretty extensive list of what the mta staff that we met with on 3 occasions told us. we were told staff can do this and they cannot do this, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and cannot do. we're also really mentioned enforcement. okay, one thing to say you have to do this turn but are you really going to be enforcing it? we were told there's really 3 different enforcement officers from their department on mission street and exactly what they are. i have my notes that i took at the meeting approved by the staff person who was there so i know that i'm pretty accurate on my notes. okay, so i just want to mention one or two things that haven't been discussed here. i've been running into these, what appear to be tourists like my elderly aunt from atlanta walking up and down the street with maps trying to figure out what's going on, what they're doing. and it just occurred to me, even people who normally would be coming to the neighborhood, particularly people who are really, really familiar, they've been coming for years, they always get off at this bus stop and they know where they're going because they get off at this store, they take a right or a left and they recognize where they are. nowadays you get off on a bus stop, you don't recognize that bus stop, you don't recognize that store and oh, am i in front of or behind, do i take a right or a left? i can tell you recently i've had some experiences with some other parts of the city where there's no real signage and you really don't know whether to walk to the right or the left, there's no real numbers on some of the streets and that sort of thing. so i think it's really bad form for a city that wants to invite tourists and visitors to come to the city to confuse them. and when you set up a whole new set of just pedestrians as well as drivers, but when you set up a whole new set of rules and regulations for people to follow, who knows what they're supposed to do? what you are seeing is mass confusion on the streets and that to me is a real problem, one that we're hoping we can deal with. one other thing. you asked what you can do, i blaefrb -- believe you can support us in our request for a full hearing about these matters before the board, the mta board, and the board of supervisors. thank you. >> thank you very much. next, please. >> why don't you go all the way? okay, that's fine. that isn't terribly important except how worn it is. because from the day i heard about this thing on mission i printed that out, folded it up and i've been carrying it around showing it to people ever since. usually with the words look at how crazy this is, lack what they've done to mission. look what they're going to do to us. and that was a great, great piece of -- great handout because it finally told us what they were going to do to us. some of us had been to some of the meetings, et cetera, but they wrap all these projects up in, you know, things like transit effectiveness project and it goes from one end of the city to the other and ought bus lines and then when they have their hearings there's little bits of here and there in. normal human can't keep up with it until you get something like that and you go, oh, my god, and they're painting it now. anyway, i'm here today as a small business customer. and i'm approaching 70 this year. i'm on the leading edge of the baby boomers. and that means there's a lot more of us coming. you know, i've seen things that said, you know, that at some point san francisco will be 30 percent seniors because there's a big lump of us coming. we have money to spend. we have money to spend at small businesses. we like to get out of the house. but the city is designing this whole thing for young, rich, healthy and transient people. it's way too much, way too fast, and it certainly doesn't bode well for your small business customers like me. i live in potrero hill, i go to the mission, but i drive. i'm not fully handicapped but like the other person that spoke, i can't walk long distances. so i am car dependent. the city is making it impossible to drive and park near your small businesses. there are whole swatches of the city i don't even go to any more and with regard to the mission, you know, one little example, i live on potrero, my friend said, oh, let's meet at emi's spaghetti shack. i left to go down there to meet them, encountered this mess, drove around and around and around, could not find any parking, got so frustrated with just what was going on, my blood pressure must have gone crazy, i went home and i said, sorry, i would not be good company tonight and don't everybody make that an evening destination for me again. you are losing business. >> thank you. thank you very much. all right, do we have any other members of the public who would like to comment on this item? henry. >> i thought i'd chime in on the end of this. first, i wanted to talk about this whole rapid transit. all this around the world, korea, joe an he is burg, we're usually out there on through ways, just a poor man's plane, that's what this bus rapid transit is. it's not really meant to go from commercial corridors. as everybody has spoken earlier, i've gone to a number of meetings with mta and it wasn't about what we wanted to hear, it's about what we're going to do. they gave us some choice but at the end of the day, this is what we're going to do. is there a way to make it better? yes, there is. we have dedicated transit lanes for certain times of the day. synchronized lights to keep your busses moving. if you want a bus to move as fast as it can from point a to point b, nobody gets off and small business dies along the way because nobody gets off. that's what they're doing. i could go on and on. you already heard from everybody else. i just feel this is not what we want to do for our community. it really is wrong. i hope that you will be hearing all of us out here and i'm sure you will be hearing more as time goes by. so, commissioners, great system for why we can't afford to build a train to toronto, 5 speed rail or whatever, it's fabulous, it does work. but on commercial corridors, no. >> thanks, henry. are any member s of the public who would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner dooley. >> i wanted to thank everyone for coming out today and i want to urge every single business corridor to get out here and talk because clearly it's all over town. i'm in north beach, you'll be hearing from columbus avenue next. this autocratic attitude mta has toward the citizens of san francisco has got to stop. they need to be involving both the residents and the business community from the early, early part of planning, not when they come, which they do and waech all been to these meetings, where they say, oh, this is a community meeting where they tell us what they're going to do and pretend like they're interested in what we have to say. i congratulate you for coming out and i urge you to get in touch with your supervisors as you have and have our supervisors stand up and say, there has to be some huge changes here. it's not going to get better. there are many more projects coming up, one after another. they don't look at the cumulative effect of the different projects, they look at them one at a time and they don't see the mess that is being made when you do several at once. so you guys are doing the right thing. thank you and just keep pushing on this. >> i echo that. thank you for coming out. i know it's a hassle to come to these meetings and it probably seems like you've been to many many of them and to have to come to one more at city hall seems like a burden but i appreciate you coming out. my observation is that the mta, while they may be the experts in transportation theory, we as the business owners in the neighborhoods are the experts in the neighborhoods. when they don't reach out to experts on the ground, they make mistakes. clearly here they have made some pretty serious mistakes and put the lifl hoods of people and businesses at stake and if we don't move quickly we're going to do permanent damage in this instance and continue to do permanent damage if we continue on this moh did you say operatedi. there are a lot of projects afoot and many of them similar to this one where the experts have really not paid attention to on the ground knowledge and so we will try to work with you as best we can to try to implement some changes and also make a point out of this, that this needs to be something that's done in the future for all new projects. so thank you again for coming out today. commissioners, do we have any other comments or questions? all right, well, thank you so much. all right? let's take it from here. all right, next item, please. >> item no. 6, presentation of the california paid family leave bonding with new child and updates of passage of ab 908, presenter is myself from the office of small business. >> menica and i are going to switch places so she can go stand at the podium and make her presentation to you. >> awesome. >> again, commissioners, in your binder is the powerpoint presentation and some supplemental items for you under item no. 6. >> could you cue the powerpoint, please? >> sfgov tv if we could have the powerpoint, please? >> so this is sort of everything we'll go over today in part 1 of this discussion. first we'll talk about the state of california paid family leave program, an overview of that, some of the changes that we'll be expecting with the passage of ab908, how weekly benefits are calculated, how wage levels and weekly benefits are associated, and then i'll give an interim, we'll go into a deeper discussion of this next time we talk about this how the state of california and the city of san francisco's new policies create some overlap and then finally we'll talk about some future topics and i would like to get some other direction on questions i can possibly answer for you in the future. the paid family leave allows partial wage replacement for 6 weeks after vacation and pto have been taken and the pto has a special provision within the city of san francisco law which we can discuss a little bit later. there's a lot of parents who want to bond with a new child and it must be taken within one year of the birth of the new child or adoption or placement for foster children. it's under the state disability insurance program and it is administered by the edd, employment development department, of the state of california. it's funded by employees through a payroll tax so the employer simply facilitates the deductions and also under this fund are the disability insurance and the paid family leave care, which is for other members of the family. there are no minimum work hours or length of service requirements and the application actually, commissioners, i placed copies of the application under item 6 in your binder in case you'd like it take a look at that, as well as -- so the application is required and also proof of relationship documents. so what i also provided in your binders was another one pager that says some of the documents that can serve to prove that relationship. so right now the policy has a 7-day waiting period. i already mentioned that it's up to 6 weeks. the weekly benefit is 55 percent wage replacement and there are some ranges for salaries, so after a certain salary you will only collect 55 percent below that level and you won't collect anything more after that level and right now that salary corresponds to $106,740 . with ab908 two major things change. one is that the 7 day waiting period is removed and the second is the replacement rate is changed. in 2018 it will be 60 to 70 percent instead of 55 percent. the calculations of those, the wage levels, are also different and i will go into a little more depth about that later. >> you can just review what your codes are? >> of course. there are quite a few codes on this page. the weekly benefit here ranges from $50 to $1,129. that has to remain below the d subw, which is the maximum worker's compensation temporary indemnity weekly benefit amount. if you continue in your binder also i did place a lilgt backet -- packet that looks like this and that is the table, essentially. so the first value is that $75 which represents the minimum that an individual can earn within a quarter to receive this benefit. and then it goes all the way up to the maximum, which is that d sub w, and that d sub w corresponds to the salary i mentioned earlier. we don't know the numbers for 2018 yet, so you will see some estimates a lit later where you use the 2016 figure on the last page of the table. it's calculated using quarterly wages but some of the calculations require this weekly wage, and b sub w represents the weekly benefit and then another calculation requires this state average weekly wage, which is another number, it's very close to the d sub w, but just slightly different. okay, so now getting on to that calculation, so to figure out what an individual's weekly benefit would be, you start with the month in which they filed their claim. so this table right here demonstrates that if you file your claim in january, february or march we will take -- or the state of california will take october of two years previous, two calendar years before, but it's all within a 17 month period. let's say that we file the claim in january of 2016, so the 12 month period under which your quarterly based wage will be calculated ends in september of 2015 and it would have begun in october of 2014. so once that's determined then within that 12 month period, which quarter had the highest wages? that is the quarter that will be used for determining what the weekly benefit is. and right now there are -- so as you can see on this little diagram, the wage calculation changes in 2018 but right now we'll just talk about the present. so if an individual makes within a quarter between $75 and $1,749.20, then we use this chart that i showed you and all of the values are listed with ranges. if they make above $1,749.20, then it's their quarterly based wage times 55 percent divided by 13. and the 13 represents the number of weeks in one quarter. so because the weekly benefit is how these figures are presented, we go from quarters to weekly but then in some cases we're using a weekly figure from the state moving up to the quarter and then back down to the weekly benefit. it's a little bit mathematically confusing. and that number, the weekly benefit, can go up to this figure i mentioned before, $1,129, the last row on the table in the documents you are looking at. and again i will discuss the khaifrpblgs -- changes in the wage level for 2018 in a bit more depth next time. >> so you take this, you don't take into account the last quarter before you file. >> correct, you do not. >> that is excluded. you go back a year and then within that year you take the highest quarter. >> yes. >> and then you divide the weekly wage, if it's over a threshold you divide by 13. >> the quarterly wage is actually the number you would use because individuals could make a little bit different amount in each week, so they take the quarter in it's aggregated form. >> the highest quarter. >> that's right. the $75 up to $1,729.20 are in terms of the quarterly wage. and but then the benefit is given in a weekly --. >> you divide it by 13. >> correct. >> to come up with that amount. >> that's right. >> it cannot exceed, after you did all this computation, switching from quarterly to weekly, it gives them the amount and that condition exceed the $1,129, that is the old one which has to be changed under the new legislation. but that would be the max. >> yes, on a weekly basis, that's right. >> got it. >> i'll make a little side note here but this is what menicka will be presenting next time. the local law requires you to take a look at the last 90 days. >> that's why i pointed it out. >> right, right. which is why we think it's really important to really understand how the states works first before we start overlaying the local. >> if your employer is giving you bonus compensation, is that included in the total wages? so if you get a year end bonus or any time, midyear bonus, does that -- is that included or is it only base wage, some kind of base wage calculation? >> that is a question that i will note and take to the edd >> so if you are an employer you would want to know that. the typical practice is to give a bonus in a lump sum rather than averaging it out over the year so you put yourself at risk of really grossing up, having a spike in your wages that could play out in your disfavor. >> and i think this is one of the reasons why we do this, because -- sorry to interrupt you, menicka -- but i think we want to ask all these kinds of questions because oesd will be making its rule making so will they be, how will they handle the bonus amount in that last 90 days. >> right. >> as part of what they see as the requirement. i think this is what we want to really hear all these sorts of questions because the more we can get that information, but then, two, what do we need to keep in mind as os e.d creates its administrative guidelines and we want to make sure we have our own clarification. >> it is relevant whether that bump that brings up the highest quarter, would that be considered part of wages? there are wages and whether the computations would be based on that. the answer is yes, but it's nice to be, to double check that. >> i mean and with all due respect, an employer could gain that in the opposite direction and put someone on at nominal wage with the promise of sweatening the deal at a later time so they can keep the average wages low for benefits of this type. >> for that quarter. >> just to say if the bonus dollars didn't count, then i am going to put you on -- it's like being on sales commission. i'm going to give you minimum wage and then give you commission. if your commission doesn't count if you are a sales person then you are not going to get anything but a minimum benefit. they may be experts on the administration of compensation programs but they are not experts on the administration or the construction of these kinds of plans to try and figure out, one, how to deal with cash flow in a business but also how to deal, what are the loopholes in things like this. when i see this awkward-looking nature (inaudible) california, it makes me think what the legislators were trying to do or were told to do was make huer sure that the historic cal wages were already cast in cement and there is some kind of 90 to 180 day period where there can be some adjustments which may in fact be bonus and commission, which is contingent on the completion of the deal or the deal sticking for a certain amount of time so they probably wanted to say, look, we're only going to look back as far as we know it's already said and done. >> or they did not want the timing of the claim to be such that you would spike your wages and then rely on that to get compensation. >> maybe it takes some of the gamesmanship out of it on either side. i'd be curious what the rationale is behind that gap is, initially because it would inform our local officials if they need something there we would want to know the same thing. >> hopefully it will be the same policy and approach to these issues. >> although it sounds as though we're on a path to having a different policy. >> can you explain why we're dividing by 13? >> 13 is the number of weeks in one quarter. so to go from the quarterly wage to the weekly wage, we divide by 13 and to go from the quarterly benefit to the weekly benefit we divide by 13. >> the weeks in a quarter, okay. >> so just to clarify your question, commissioner dwight, you'd like me to find out the rationale behind skipping the previous quarter. >> effectively this 90 to 180 day waiting period or blackout period, looking back beyond 90 to 180 days, what was -- i mean i don't know how far you have to dig on this, but was there a rationale on this which might be useful for us. the second item is what compensation or what base compensation are we using here, would it include commission, tips, and the like, variable compensation, because it may affect how it is claim order by employers or gone after. >> wonderful. any other questions on the calculation of the weekly benefit before i go forward? so just looking at 2016 now, if you look at the next slide, so what i've done here is divided into wage levels. so this is the 2018 law will be separated in a similar way, different figures, but i'm just going to start at the very beginning. if an individual earns less than $75 in any quarter during that 12 month base period they are not eligible for any sort of benefit through this program. if they earned between $75 and $1,749.20, they would be eligible for between $50 and $74 as laid out in that chart. and if they earn between $1,749.21 and $1,923 -- it's a bit over that, but that threshold is just between, is between $1,923.08 and $2,052, i tried to use cleaner numbers, in that range they get 55 percent of their weekly base wages, quarterly wages times point 55 divided by 13 to get to the weekly. and then in the upper limit you can see that the weekly benefit levels off in the blue and that is the d sub w, that benefit i gave you. moving into a brief inintro of how california and san francisco laws will overlap, this table here shows the different dates that things go into effect. and as you can see, things are happening at all different moments at the state level and the city level in terms of both parental leave and minimum wage. so just starting at the top there, july 1st, 2016, at that point 55 percent is the benefit within the applicable wage range at the state level. and the minimum wage in san francisco is $13, of course the parental leave in san francisco has not yet gone into effect, which is why there are dashes in those two columns. on january 1st, 2017, the state benefit is still 55 percent, but now the san francisco paid parental leave goes into effect at a supplemental rate to get you 100 percent. that means it's 45 percent that employers in san francisco would be contributing but only employers with at least 50 employees. at that point the minimum wage is still $13 there in san francisco. then on july 1st, 2017, the state benefit's still 55 percent, which means that san francisco employers make up that gap of 45 percent still but now that's expanded so now it's employers who have at least 35 employees and of course that includes the category above. now, in that same time the san francisco minimum wage increases to $14 an hour. now, on the first of january, 2018, this is where ab 908 goes into effect, so the state law increases the wage replacement rate to 60 to 70 percent, which reduces the percentage con trib because from san francisco employers to 30 to 40 percent. at that point. but a greater number of san francisco employers would be participating in this because now at this point employers with at least 20 employees are roped in. and the minimum wage is still $14 an hour at that time. and then finally july 1st, 2018, 60 to 70 percent from the state program out of that sdi fund that we're talking about, 30 to 40 percent from san francisco employers for employers with at least 20 employees and the san francisco minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour at that point. . >> i have a question. just to clarify the following slides, does the city ordinance have a dw, does it have a maximum for that 45 percent and what is it? >> if i'm not mistaken, and i will check on this just to be sure, but if i'm not mistaken the city uses the same. >> the same? so it won't go over threshold and is it again for 2016 $106,740 as a yearly salary? in other words, so we are going to be tracking the same maximum to be checked, to be verified. >> yes, in the legislative digest, i believe, it did mention that figure of $106,740. >> thank you. >> something i would be interested to know is how many employees are thereby excluded by this 20 employee threshold? because one of the primary observations of this commission, that one of the major defects of our legislation is that it actually excludes some of the very people that this legislation seeks to assist and those are people who work for the smallest companies in san francisco. now, a lot of those are sole proprietorships, but there are a lot of businesses with less than 20 employees that are employing low income workers and it seems completely counter to the progressive nature of this legislation to exclude those employees from the benefit. so i'd like to know in san francisco how many employees that actually excludes and what percentage of the employees are excluded on this basis. so if we can find that out, it would be great. >> certainly. okay. okay, the next 4 slides are a few different scenarios that kind of show you what a weekly contribution or weekly benefit would look like for employees who work 5 hours, 15 hours, 25 hours and 40 hours. so you can get a better sense of what the dollar figure is that goes along with that. one thing i want to clarify here, this first slide is 5 hours per week. the reason that the san francisco portion -- let me walk through what this -- i know there's a lot going on on here, but that's because the laws are a bit complicated in how they fit together. i wanted to display what exactly is happening at each point in time. so the rose corresponds to the rose in the previous slide that we discussed and on the right-hand side now what is new on this slide versus the previous is in green is the benefit from the state level and then in this kind of orangish-yellow color is the san francisco employer contribution to that. now, why is it zero here? because it's 5 hours a week and an eligible employer or covered employee must work at least 8 hours. >> under sf law. >> correct, under san francisco law. so in this particular case those employees would be collecting from the state but not from the city. >> got it. >> now moving up to 15 hours a week, here's where the san francisco law is applicable. however, the first row on every single one of these slides will be zero for san francisco because that law has not yet gone into effect. so let's start with january 1st, 2017. the state ab 908 has not yet gone into effect, but that is the date on which the san francisco law goes into effect, so in this period the contribution from san francisco employers with at least 15 employees will be 45 percent. for a minimum wage employee on january 1st, 2017, at which time the minimum wage is $13 an hour, the san francisco employee would receive $87.75 from the san francisco employer each week. now, when we move to july 1st of 2017 now we're including employers with at least 35 employees and the minimum wage has increased to $14. so the weekly benefit for an employee working the same number of hours will be $94.50 from a san francisco employer. and on january 1st, 2018, this reduces because the state has increased its wage replacement rate and now the san francisco employer will be paying a smaller percentage. however, it's expanded at the same time to a greater number of employers because of the at least 20 employees kicking in. then on the first of july in 2018, the minimum wage goes up so that's why the entire bar gets longer because that employee would be making more money and the san francisco employer's contribution goes up by $4.50 per week. . >> and these contributions apply only after expending whatever if you have any vacation accrued, so this is post depletion of accrued vacation. >> that's correct. now the same thing for a 25 hours per week at minimum wage again, so you can see that the 2017 contribution from the san francisco employer is the greatest portion that it would be because ab 908 has not yet gone into effect. then, finally, forlt hours a weekality minimum wage again. these are just sort of to give you a sense of all the numbers. i'm happy to answer any questions on the specific calculations if you have any or if you'd like to take a look at them and follow-up with me. >> this is the weekly benefit? >> yes, this is the weekly. >> so you take six times that number if the person has no accrued vacation and you are paying completely the entire benefit feir a period of 6 weeks. this could cost, if you look at a full-time employee working at minimum wage in 2017 this could cost you 12, 13, 14 hundred dollars total out of pocket, 6 times $234. >> plus federal tax. >> right. so that's an interesting point, what are the adders on to that? >> it's a question as to what the payroll tax would be on that amount. these are wages that you're paying, so therefore you have federal tax added to that, in my opinion. question would be --. >> right, so these are the kinds of questions that we need to find out is the 55 percent that is paid by the state pre or post all the tax deductions and what is the level of expectation for the san francisco employer, is it pre or post tax in terms of what they are expected to pay the individual, are they paying them that wage and then taking out the payroll taxes? >> right, because if it's w-2 income then it's going to get grossed up like any other income with all the attendant fees and taxes, which is not -- technically sdi would kick in on it too. i can see you paying sdi on top of parental leave benefit. >> also, just as a point of clarification about the waiting period. the law has changed, there will not be 7 day waiting period on the state level. could you remind me whether that waiting period exists or not on the city level? >> i will need to check on that. >> please. >> and i think what we will clarify for you is whether that, i think the waiting period in here is a waiting period after your eligibility date. so, you know, we'll clarify the waiting period pre or post eligibility date. >> how it tracks the state legislation, if there's going to be kind of a lag or waiting difference period. >> the fundamental issue here is that when you apply for the benefit from the state coming out of an insurance fund so it's not counted as income to you. you just get an insurance benefit. here the city is going to make us put this on an employee's paycheck as a payout, as income. and so it's going to go into the income equation rather than coming out of a fund, an insurance fund. so this is a very important distinction, very important, i say, only because it incrementally affects -- it adds to the cost. whether it's a few dollars or not, it again gets to the very point that nothing was done to anticipate all of the implications of this. is it a benefit or is it income? and if it's income, does it get grossed up and have employers paying not only to the city but because into the state because if it's income i got it tai sdi, i got to pay all the insurance, all the deductions that i'm paying on ordinary income apply so it gets even further increased. >> yeah. >> so, you know, and why we're asking these questions after the legislation has been signed into law is what is so wrong with this process. and, i mean, say no more. >> it is an important question. if these are wages and not insurance benefits they come with all sorts of other additional expenses. work comp is based on wages and a lot of other, you know, expenses or premiums. so one has to kind of educate the small businesses and businesses in the city to find out how is it going to affect them and what their obligations are. so the tag on as to how much it's going to be and what applies and doesn't is important. >> because what's going to happen is when you come in for an insurance adjustment on your worker's comp, they're going to say, oh, you reported, you anticipated x amount of computation, now you have y amount of compensation, you are going to get dinged because you underwithheld. whether you get fined or not, i underwithheld, i have to make up the difference now. again we don't know if this is a big amount or a little amount but the mere fact it exists in this law is a flaw relative to the way it's administered at the state. that presents a huge problem. if we're having this conversation here, imagine what the conversation is in the trenches where uer you're trying to figure out what to do and how to run your business. >> 20 cents an hour, that's something they didn't account for. >> it is not an inconsequential percentage of the total. >> so like if you factor in on your average your typical costs or your state insurance, all that stuff, sdi, it's about 20 percent which was not accounted for. it's just that threshold, you hit that over 20 mark and you have 3 or 4 employees, like one of the first companies i had technically had 35, 40 employees but a thousand dollars or 15 hundred, $2,000, that was my profit margin. you know. >> so in fact the net effect on the business could be 20 percent higher than the numbers that we're seeing here because of the ripple effect through all the other ways that this affects the business' expenses through worker's comp, sdi and all those other things. >> that's just a dollar amount, that doesn't include the overhead of the time consumed. if you want to quantify that, then .... >> understanding just kind of understanding how the state deals with its calculation, the state manages that calculation, right? so when we deal with the san francisco law it's going to be to the business to manage that calculation. >> that's right. >> and if you're getting into, if you have employees that work for multiple employers how do you insure? so i think it's great, i mean there's some lead time and i'm glad we're looking at this now before oese really starts getting into the weeds of writing their administrative guidelines. i anticipate a request that they create some kind of calculation table to help -- because our small businesses, especially those between 20 and 50, you know, tend not to have in house hr services and so trying to handle and manage those calculations are going to be much more complicated than i think was perceived and so i think that there's going to be, i perceive for you commission to, at the end of this, a list of -- there is be some things that menicka will not be able to answer because she's not setting the administrative rules around the compliance, but we can draft a list of questions and recommendations of what our small businesses are going to need to ensure that they are able to comply with this easily. >> this, i mean already we're revealing a level of sophistication that's way beyond the means and expectations of any small business. so i think that we're going to have a lot of good questions and these things are going to have to be addressed. you can't obey the law without addressing them. you have to get down in the weeds on every one of these issues. then we haven't even discussed how this, i mean really the whole funding mechanism is abysmal. so the idea that this falls solely on the company that's affected is just sort of a tragic outcome of this. >> i'm a little bit concerned about the timing, when the state benefit kicks in and the local -- i'm a little bit concerned about the timing issue, when the state benefit kicks in that is the insurance benefit and the wages are paid. a lot of businesses pay on a bimonthly basis and there are some issues, timing issues, that are of concern to me because of that waiting period and when that, these wages are earned and payable. so whether it's going to be in the same cycle, maybe that's the obvious but we need to clarify that to everybody, it all the businesses. >> and if you do think of additional questions after this meeting, please do email me, especially -- so for the next time we discuss this if you have some specific scenarios you'd like me to explore i can raise some of those when i discuss some of these things with the edd and i can also do some research and find out how specific situations would be treated under -- again, i can't deal with some of the --. >> so it's olse that has to come up with some of the administrative guidelines. the 8 months to do it. well, less than that because you have to have outreach and education period. really they have very little time to get this done before informing employers how to deal with this january 1. >> i have a question. on the 24 hours, the 2018 numbers you use 30 percent for the city. >> 30 to 40 percent. >> but the number is 105, which is 30 percent. and then on the 40 hours you use 40 percent. is there a reason why you are using two different percentages? >> are you looking at the 25 hours? >> the very last page --. >> i'm looking at both, the 25 hours you use 30 percent for the san francisco employers. >> and we're looking at which date? the last row? >> 18, 2018. >> the 25 hours falls right at a threshold and the calculation for 18 is a little bit complicated because there's another figure, the state average weekly wage, and at this level if your wage is above a certain amount, they take the greater of one number or another number and one number is 60 percent of the quarterly wage divided by 13 and the other number is 23.3 percent of the state average weekly wage. and whichever one is greater the state will pay. but that falls right at that border. i think the border is at 24.9 something, so that particular number is a little bit tricky because you'll see, i found at one point that actually somebody who made more got a little bit less. somehow the numbers worked out so there's a little, in the calculation there's a little drop where it's not a steady line . >> these are not definite, 30 or 40 percent for everybody, it depens on each individual case. >> it does not depend on individual case, but it depends on the exact quarterly wage whether they fall into -- ?ue ?oo as the saying goes, it's complicated. >> and you have a ph.d.. i have a question about it if i may. the question you've laid out was very helpful and thank you with the edd tables as to how it worked with the numbers at the state level. >> uh-huh. >> at the city level it's going to be pretty much, do you have an idea how they are going to come up with the numbers, is that going to be the same calculation or is it going to be much simpler, they are going to get your wages and the average and they are going to multiply that by 45 percent or -- you're going to have all these thresholds and tables, do you have an idea --. >> what i know so far and some of this we will need to clarify with some of the finer points you brought up, but the city law requires the employers with covered employees to supplement to 100 percent. >> yes. >> so it would be whatever their wages are, minus whatever the state benefit is, that's what the san francisco employer is responsible for. >> so then within the 106, correct? 116, so in other words if the state sets a limit beyond the 55 based on the table that you mentioned, the city comes in and no matter what covers that gap up to 106,740, correct? >> wait. i'm sorry. the state covers the gap? >> the state has a 55 percent based on all the other computation requirements that you mentioned, which are too complicated to set out today. correct? >> right. >> so we get to a number and beyond that the city has, the employer has to cover in the city, whatever that gap is. correct? >> up until the d sub w >> up to the max. >> potentially that 55 may not be reached for some limitation that you just mentioned. i mean, there may be some -- we'll see next time what you come up with. >> you're wondering if that, you had mentioned there's sort of a drop, there may be a point where the state pays less than 55? >> yeah, i'm concerned and i would like to find out whether there are instances where the city employer may have to pay more than 45 percent for some --. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. so the state pays the greater of the two numbers, so even if there is a little strange gap the state picks the larger number which means the city employer pays the lesser number. >> so it seems to me the safest thing for an employer to do would be to wait and see if the employee's benefit is from the state and then use that as the reference point. you can make an -- once you know how that was calculated by the state you can say, well, then this is what i have to supplement. because the state's going to report back to you well here was the benefit that, here's the salary that you are getting the x percent of, so they are going to identify the salary, however they calculate it through all this averaging. they are going to identify your benefit and so the -- technically under our law we are required to pay the differential between whatever the impuetd salary is and the benefit that was paid by the state, we're supposed to gross it up. that's my understanding. >> but the periods don't match. so you have state that excludes the last quarter and gives you a highest wage within that period of time divided by 13, yet the city takes into account the last quarter. so what --. >> the city is calculating the maximum -- the maximum benefit differently. >> and this is what my concern is, that you have a computation based on the basis, nerd in other words, taking 55 percent of that but the city is taking another number and telling you to pay 45 percent of that. how do we reconcile --. >> the state is quite possibly calculating the benefit on a lower wage if we assume that people get cost of living adjustments, that salaries go up, not down, the minimum wage goes up, not down, the city is going back further and therefore capturing a lower wage than the city is going to capture in its methodology. so again this is a major, major point of contention because when --. >> when we design the wall we're very well aware of that. >> our minimum wage is accelerating faster than the state's so we will always see on the minimum wage side of this equation a higher percent so we are going to end up paying not 45 percent, but more than 45 percent because we're going to be referencing it on a higher gross take home pay than the state is us using because they are looking back 180 days. >> so basically is the message that we have to convey to small businesses in the city, they should not be relying on the 55 percent? >> in fact they cannot. >> they cannot rely on it. they have to have separate computation on an average and they have to take into account the last, including the last quarter and if that's the highest then they have to pay 45 percent or more of that. >> massively complicated. >> which is why we're doing this early. there is a level of expectation that we need to ensure the olse provides to make sure that the rule making and the how to cup -- comply makes it as uncomplicated as possible. we may need to ask them to do more than is required on the face of it. >> huge amount of homework. >> huge amount. it's going to be important for us to submit in writing, the letter to the olse, the letter of expectation what we're expecting them to provide to our small businesses to ensure they can easily and accurately comply with this law so that there are no issues later on down the road because it wasn't thought about. >> this legislation never contemplated any of these complications. >> to further add to that, obviously so it is complicated and the computation, i saw that, but olse is probably going to have to have staff. this is a benefit that people are going to partake in heavily. >> yeah, they are. it's an entitlement. >> this is something if i was a small business, i can't figure this out, even if i do know the numbers i wouldn't necessarily have to go to olse, this is my employee, what should i be paying them? because the penalty phase, the retribution coming back as an employer, that's scary. that's scary if you get it wrong. and it's complicated. it's very complicated. >> this is why you have members of the board of supervisors who have never met a parole -- payroll and i'm going to slam them. this is a bad piece of legislation and they did not listen to us when they presented here twice. you know, here we are having to deal with this. >> we're scratching the surface here. thank you for your presentation. this is just points of how complicated this is. we're going to have to make some very blunt recommendations to ose and this needs to get reported to the mayor's office and the board of supervisors. this is the very thing we are here to prevent. we weren't consulted at all and we could have helped them a lot. if all they had done is harmonize with the state of california, we would eliminate 50 percent of the complexity. simply harmonizing with the state of california and anticipating what they might do. waiting two weeks, california passed their law two weeks after we passed ours, if that long. >> and like commissioner tour-sarkissian was saying, it's more than likely because like you said, the way we're calculating is just --. >> we requested a 30 day delay in the passage of this legislation. that 30 days would have allowed us to see what the state of california had done, to do our own research, to inform them of the complexities of this, the implementation of this legislation, and now what are we stuck with? something that the mayor was forced to sign because how could you not sign it? because if you did nothing it becomes law anyway. none of the supervisors could object to it, how could you? and so now we are left with clean up. and by the way the small business community is going to be the most affected by this because they're the least capable of figuring out the complexities of this kind of legislation. you know, shame on them. >> election year. >> politics. all about politics. >> mr. president, i believe that there's a lot of work product in this presentation. >> yeah, there is. >> and frankly a lot of good data that can be helpful to the city management, i think. appreciate an excellent presentation and a very helpful tool to whomever is going to make -- to implement the law. i don't know how regina would share this. >> well, let's hope this is a good example of how we need to get out in front of issues like this. because basically it created a nightmare for the city because the administrative overhead for the city is also not being contemplated, the expense for olse to administer this, just the expense to figure this out, i don't think they have planned this in their workload. to figure this out over the not 8 months, over the next 3 months so there's a 6 month education period for business. >> that, in addition to no plans for, i'm sure, in olse's budget to even have any sort of side of technology and developing a technology tool to help businesses. >> you should be able to plug your numbers into a calculator and figure this out and that is not going to happen. >> just so, commissioners, next month we have one meeting, may 9th, then that's going to -- we're going to have a large sfmta presentation, i'll talk a little bit more in my director's report. the next time menicka will be before you will be june 13th to do the wrap up. >> you need to give olse a heads up on this. it's only fair they know just that our preliminary findings, some of the complexities of this, give them a shot across the bow so they won't be, oh, we're going to do this this weekend. there's a lot of work to be done. >> commissioners, one of the things i am also working on is to try to develop a set of scenarios of every possible complication that can occur. so some of that is pertains to the wages and what ages are earned in which periods and the multiple employers, as regina mentioned. and one of the things we were discussing is possibly creating some sort of decision tree to help -- because there are so many questions that are -- it's a whole path dependent process where you end up and what rate you pay and a whole series of things so we're working on that and hopefully that will also help olse as it develops its requirements and again if you can email me with any questions that you come up with, they're really helpful in terms of guiding my research and helping me find the right places to explore. >> well, great work on this. >> thank you. >> without belaboring it any further. and the beat goes on. we'll have to do more work. but thank you, this is great. all right, commissioners, any other questions? seeing none we'll call for public comment on this item. any members of the public that want to comment specifically on this item, if this is not comments on this item it will wait until public comment at the end of this meeting. are there any members of the public that want to specifically comment on this item? >> i do apologize with the confusion and that i need to have allow like nancy reagan said, all together, right? i think that on this june 22nd we will be scheduled, i'll have it all on page here so you can see it. (inaudible) that put these numbers on it where we can get more money this has to be efforts. this is what i was talking about which is tried really hard because i was in what you call scrambling, you know, i didn't mean it to put it that way. i apologize that the clearance has what you call hocus pocus what we have on the pages, to put it in mathematic order. and that explains the spelling is very rare. i'm sorry my teachers couldn't help me so i had to help myself i know that it's been very confusing and i didn't mean to put it like that. i will get it a whole lot more understandable, you know, because i have been through some, a lot of things that a lot of people wouldn't ever that was very tough. >> okay, thank you for your comments. are there any other member s of the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, let's move on to the next item, please. thank you. director's report. >> item no. 7, the director's report. thank you, commissioners, so next meeting is the may 9th meeting and we will have the sfmta here. i have had a preliminary meeting with deanna and prior to today's topic coming up our plans were initially to provide an update of the lombard street, the extended parking meters and then to begin be to provide you with a schedule of all the projects that are ahead and their timelines so that you can begin to prioritize what projects you want to have come before you to get detailed presentations. and then also to provide an overview with things like the transit effectiveness, muni forward, what does that mean, what goes into planning for each -- you know, that's sort of an umbrella for some of these projects and so what's involved with that. so if you do want me to i will also talk to her about the 14 mission as well so to ensure the project manager is here. so if there's anything else, this will be the first meeting. this will be the first meeting bimonthly so every other month we're working to have a scheduled presentation before you so that you can stay hopefully soon ahead of the curve on some of these issues and really dive into some of the issues and details hopefully ahead of time. and again just sort of overlay with the small business leaders quarterly meetings, you heard the presentation last time, the item no. 1 in the tier 1 was, you know, being at the table early on and so how do you ensure, you know, this is the opportunity for the small business commission to kind of be early at the table with the sfmta and working with them but also helping to ensure that business input is really at the table as well. then if you recall the mayor in the 15-16 budget, he did put in some funding to develop construction mitigation program around some of the infrastructure projects. this program is nearly finalized so i'm hoping to also have a presentation on that program for the may 9th meeting as well, but if not, it will be the june 13th meeting. under item no. 7 i put in, it's time for the summer youth jobs so i put in the announcement for it. this year we're going to do work with the work force side of oewd and united way. they really want to push out -- they would like to engage as many businesses as possible even if it's just one internship or one job that a business is able to provide, but really work to increase small business participation and engagement with this. so you have the flyer, this is the kickoff event on thursday, may 12, at the asian art museum at 9:00 am. so you are certainly welcome to attend and learn about the program and the initiatives but i do want to encourage to share with your business networks as well and our office will be helping with it. then in conjunction with that, on the work force side of oewd theirs was called work force investment san francisco, a work force investment board. this is basically a board that oversees some federal dollars that deal with, that deal with kind of how the work force dollars are managed. there have been some changes in the federal program that also combine some changes at the state program so they're going to be reconstructing that board. so there is a requirement to have more small business engagement. a couple of areas that they are giving some consideration to are around construction, hospitality, retail and health care. so i will likely be, you know, having further conversation with each one of you to see if finding good candidates once i get a clear description of what the needs are and how the demographic shape in terms of size and what have you. but i just wanted to put that on your radar. in your packet is small business week, the mini guides have gone out and this gives the overview of the week. last meeting i provided in the written director's report calendar. i will work with menicka to start sending calendar invites to you and then doing follow-up just to mind out which events you will be participating in, but the highlights, the three big things are the kickoff event monday for flavors, monday the 23rd, flavors of san francisco, then there's tuesday the board of supervisors award ceremony and then wednesday is the small business awards in the evening that will be held at at&t park. but there are other couple events happening that you as commissioners may want to attend eventually but in terms of those three items, those three events, it will be good to know the capacity of the number of commissioners who will be attending just for the brown act. then also in your binder i sent some articles around taking a look at retail. i'm not going to go into it but i printed those articles out. they are probably going to have some relevancy as we continue to look at formula retail but also around the affordable housing bonus program and the affordable housing bonus program. so i forwarded those articles to you in the email, but i printed them out for you as well. i did want to make a note around, you know, we've had the conversations around the affordable housing bonus program and discussions around business support and developing a package. and so this will be coming up for rediscussion amongst staff at oewd and with planning before we bring it back to the commission. but there are other projects that are taking place so right now there's a building at sutter and polk, it's two levels of commercial space but it is going to be redeveloped. and so i think that there's considerations that, you know, the affordable housing bonus program is not just going to affect businesses and commercial space. that's not the only program, right? so there is general development that is taking place where businesses are being impacted. so anyway i just want to put that on your radar as i think we begin to look at this on a small scale and if there's anything that we can develop that's scalable. in your binder i also put in proposition e is paid sick leave, so this is, this is lining up the state with changes that have to be done at the local level and have to be on the ballot. the one unfortunate thing that will not be on there and we would only be able to do it by the ballot is allowing the employer to say menicka for the paid family use to use pto and paid sick leave time before the employer's contribution kicks in and that of course the ballot measure was written before the paid family leave happened so that's not included. so just note that unless it happens at the ballot, san francisco employers cannot make it a requirement to utilize paid sick leave. then just very quickly, so the position was, the position for the legacy business program manager was passed on the first read at last week's board of supervisors meeting and this week the mayor signed into law supervisor tang's mandatory disability access improvements, the all gender toilet facilities and then of course the paid parental leave for bonding with new child. so that concludes my report unless you have any questions. >> i think we're good. okay, next item. >> item no. 8, the president's report. >> i have nothing to report. >> item no. 9, the vice president's report. >> i have nothing to report. >> item no. 10, commissioner reports. >> commissioners, any reports? >> i have a short one i'll be working with sba tong how to succeed with asian american business owners. it is scheduled for tuesday the 24th, it is be at 901 market street from 5.30 to 8.30 and is sponsored by east/west bank. >> any other commissioner reports? okay. >> okay, item no. 11 is general public comment. >> any member s of the public that would like to make comment at this point? >> yes, commissioners, my name is ray heart, san francisco open government, i'm very curious why you are holding all these ayen today items and not asking for public comment. it's a requirement of the sunshine ordinance that each agenda item there will be a request for public comment and you are apparently just ignoring that completely. i think that is not a laughable matter, commissioner dwight. you seem to think it's humorous. you are not following the open government rules or the brown act in the way you are conducting your business and very frankly i will file a complaint with the sunshine ordinance against you just to make a point of it. you want to laugh about the fact you are not following the law and somebody in the public has the temerity on step up and say you should be and you think it's a joke, so we'll take it somewhere else. just to let you know, i have 24 orders of determination against various city bodies including the police commission, library commission and so forth so some of these very matters. you can't sdurpblg the public by treating their public participation in these matters as if it was a joke and simply going through each item on the agenda and ignoring the opportunity for the public to make comment is exactly that and i think you all know it. you just choose to ignore the law and flaunt it in the face of the public and very frankly i believe it is the responsibility for any city government body to encourage this participation and attendance of the public and by not asking for public comment, you are not doing that, you are in fact discouraging it. >> thank you very much for that. any other members of the public that would like to comment on matters that are generally within our purview? >> shirley dalton. i feel sorry for the ones who have to work, especially when we got somebody that wants to damage everybody in the room. i mean, this is kind of getting ridiculous. i mean, where do they want to tear apart because i don't think the ltd, i say not me, bdl, you were saying that you was not going to consider the process of, i think it's tf, what is wrong with that process? because i think that we just been leading us along, you know, because i know for a fact i had put everything on the list for that the (inaudible) control and all of this has been just blown out of proportion. and i think we're going to have a hearing on this and i think we're going to get it straight because if we don't get it straight i feel sorry for you because i'm going to have this damaging the whole people in the world because of this, i mean, and it will be -- i think he can reason with himself and try not to hurt herself and be nice to yourself instead of being angry with the world. >> all right, any other members of the public that would like to comment on any items that are within our purview? >> hello, my name is michael petrellis and i'm here again to talk about the small businesses in the castro which my boyfriend and i don't frequent. we are like many other people, gay and straight, who have no reason to go to the castro. and art -- part of the reason is because the castro merchants association, which used to be merchants of upper market castro, they really made it clear they don't like activists coming to the community. they also made it clear they are very much in the pocket of scott wiener and they endorse his politics. it's really sad to see how the castro has lost its interthational feel. i went be there yesterday to go to the castro theater and i saw maybe two people from the neighborhood. everybody else with us a tourist, taking pictures, i noticed they weren't going in the stores either. seems like every week i pick up the bay area reporter and merchants are complaining about this issue or that issue. they never seem happy. they don't seem to understand part of the reason why their businesses are down, part of the reason why no one cares or let me say very few people care any more about jane warner plaza and we can no longer sit there, you really can't find tables or chairs there any more, has to do with the policies of the castro merchants and how they have just set themselves up as a body that doesn't want public participation, doesn't want the public coming around, doesn't hold public meetings and then they want the public to come and spend dollars. i'd really recommend if anyone here is connected to the castro merchants association that you send a message to them that they really need to rethink how they interact with activists, people in the neighborhood, who need reasons to come to the neighborhood to spend money. because right now my partner and i, neighbors in our building, we're happy to shop in the mission. we shop along church street. we are not coming to the castro to shop. it's about time the castro merchants woke up it that fact. okay, thank you. >> thank you for your comments. any other members of the public that would like to comment at this point? seeing none, public comment is closed. next item, please ?oo ?a item no. 12, new business. >> commissioners, any recommendations for new business? >> no. >> all right, next item, please. >> sfgovtv, can we please have the slide? >> all right, as is our new kuflt custom, we begin and end each meeting that the office of small business should be your first stop when you have a question about what to do next and it is the official forum to voice your concerns regarding any issues that you think affect the economic viability of small businesses in the city of san francisco. so if you need assistance with small business matters, start here and for the record, we have called for public comment on all pertinent issues today and we always encourage the public to come to our meetings and make themselves heard in our forum. thank you. >> do we have a motion to adjourn? item no. 13, do we have a motion to adjourn. >> i second. >> all in favor? all opposed? all right, we're done. >> meeting adjourned. (meeting adjourned). >> i think it ae's public and private property. i'm against graffiti. >> who can get it out the most who can be noticed the most. >> i i've seen seniors doing graffiti. >> the city is art, other people who have their names tag -- >> [inaudible] our unit there are 2 sections we are doing one is abating and others are notice of violation to private property. all the utility boxes in public right-of-way we abate. >> we abate calls that come within 48 hours. >> we are a small group in g f graffiti. we don't have enough help. >> i have a group in town down and china town and the north tunnel. [inaudible] the graffiti we abate everything is coming up to the areas now. >> i'm willing to take it on. i think -- >> you are telling me you are ready for this? >> i think so. >> okay. >> there you go. >> all right. >> all right. >> ready to do it. let's go. >> want to get the gray signses this over here and the garbage can and normally we don't do private property since it's on the corridor route you can come with me we will use black. >> we had a lot of changes in the graffiti unit. we do private property if someone moved we remove it and send it to the attorney's office and they take appropriate action. >> damage their property there. it's important to write the color in case they want to say what part of our house you abated the graffiti on. >> using your safety glasses the gloves. >> you got it. >> you know some places we gashi, people appreciate that. you know, a lot of timeses they say, thank you. >> the time where it's visible. a lot of people put it on the ground. >> i like when tourists come and say, you do this for your city and you get paid for that? >> we use the [inaudible] for the holes and the retaining walls. [inaudible]. white on the fire hydrants. fire box red for the fire boxes. our brown for the pg and e poles. >> we are not painters we do our best. >> i'm assuming it has to do with gang activity. >> if it's territorial i mind. >> in case it's gang related and they are marking our territory i would like to paint it over. >> anything with numbers like x iv or x 13 west side mob and the bay view those are gang related. with gang related or profanity we will abait it as soon as possible. >> i consider it an art. there are circles of people that form around it whether or not they should ruin public property. >> this is art work i'm for it. unless it's on someone's property and they don't want it there. judge kids with silver paint expressing their ego needs doesn't belong on our property. >> graffiti is when you don't have permission to write anything on their property. >> eighth street is part of your regular rout? >> yes. >> everyday. >> eighth street. divisidero street. irving street. every block they going through they paint 3 or 4 streets in the block the poles the utility boxes, mailbox. >> thank you. >> okay. >> put the drop cloth. come on around. >> there you go. force for we have to remember we are not painters we abate graffiti. we are abaters not painters. get that out of the way and keep moving. >> how many of these do you do a day? how many poles we do a day? >> yeah. >> depends on the location. may be 20. >> do you like working with the team? >> yes because i'm a people person. i like being outside and interacting with the public and i like the response we get especially from the good job we do in the community. >> goodbye.

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