welcome to the small business commission meeting on december 11th, 2023. the meeting is being called to order at 4:31 p.m. this meeting is being held in person in city hall, room 408 and broadcast live on govtv. the small business commission thinks media services and govtv for televising the meeting, which can be viewed on govtv two or live streamed at sfa tv.org. we welcome the public's participation during public comment periods. there will be

an opportunity for general public comment at the end of the meeting and there will be an opportunity to comment on each discussion or action item on the agenda. please note that, starting with today's meeting and moving forward, the commission is discontinue doing remote public comment. there will be special accommodation for individuals who cannot attend in person due to disability. public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker. an alarm will sound once time has finished. speakers are requested but not required to state their names. sf govtv. please show the office of small business slide. to today. we will begin with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. before item one is called, i'd like to start by thanking media services and sf govtv for helping to run the meeting. i'd also like to acknowledge our new commissioner for ron benitez. well i'm ron. hi. we're really

excited to have you here and i hope you enjoy your first meeting. i will. so go secretary , please call item number one. item one, roll call. commissioner benitez. president commissioner dickerson. present commissioner herbert. president huey here. commissioner ortiz. cartagena here. and vice president ziziunas. present. present didn't you have a quorum? thank you so much for the san francisco small business commission, an office of small business staff acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone , who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula, as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone

have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. please call item to item to approval of legacy business registry applications and resolutions. this is a discussion and action item the commission will discuss and possibly take action to approve legacy business registry applications. presenting today, we have richard carillo, legacy business program manager with the office of small business. welcome, rick. it's on. good afternoon. president huie vice president zuma's commissioners, city staff, members of the public. welcome. commissioner benitez and richard carrillo,

legacy business program manager, the legacy business program is a program in the office of small business, which is a office of the small business commission oversees. we'd like to acknowledge michelle reynolds, my colleague in the office of small business, who provides beneficial assistance to the legacy business program. govtv. i have a powerpoint presentation . before you today. are 12 applications for your consideration for the legacy business registry. each application includes a staff report, a draft resolution. the application itself and documents from the planning department. the applications were submitted to planning in three groups. group one consisted of two applications and was submitted on september 20th and heard by the historic preservation commission on october 18th.

group two, consisting of four applications, was submitted to planning on october 18th and heard by the historic preservation commission on november 15th. group three, consisting of six applications, was submitted to planning on november 8th and heard by the historic preservation commission on december sixth. so as you can see, we normally don't have 12 applications in one meeting. this is. three

it seems like our public mics are not working. so i was told

to pause the meeting and call media services. okay okay. hang on one minute, please. apologies his can on. oh, great. hey it works. okay again, richard carillo with the legacy business program. we are up to item two. a um regarding businesses that that are applying for the legacy business registry. item two. a is earwax productions. the business founded in 1983 and currently located in north beach, does sound design and audio production creating engaged audio experiences across all media earwax productions,

designs, sound for film, television, the internet and radio, as well as audio for tours installed actions, toys and electronics as their projects range from major hollywood features to mobile apps and animation to interactive museum installations . as they have worked with local playwrights, filmmakers, artists and inventors. earwax productions helped create some of the first audio tours as well as some of the first interactive media products, including internet sound design and some of the first digital audio post for film.

text one last time. but i will read that the core feature tradition the business must maintain to remain on the legacy business registry is sound design and audio production as if govtv. if you could go to the

powerpoint. thank you. item two b is thai house inc. the business is a family run restaurant located in the castro serving authentic thai cuisine. thai house inc. also known as thai house express restaurant, offers dishes such as crispy money bags, sweet and tangy pad thai and rich coconut curries. their food is inspired by tradition. thai flavors using fresh and traditional thai ingredients. the menu at thai house is always changing and evolving as they strive to bring innovative dishes to the table. so no two visits will be the same. their dishes will tantalize your taste buds while giving you a unique culinary experience that you won't forget . the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring thai cuisine. item two c is elixir. the business is a bar in the mission, providing the local community with beverages,

community and hospitality in a beautiful victorian atmosphere of mahogany and redwood elixir offers classic whiskey cocktails , traditional cocktails, beer and wine trivia, happy hour, industry night ticketed cocktail classes, tasting events, private group events, a whiskey geeks membership group and a cocktail club. the bar has been doing business as elixir since 1990. house over. the location itself is the second oldest. continually operating saloon location in san francisco. there has been nothing but a saloon on the north west corner of 16th and guerrero streets since 1858 and a saloon at this location may go back as much as another ten years before that. in 1906, the great earthquake and fire burned it to the ground, but it was rebuilt and opened in 1907. during prohibition. it survived as a soft drink parlor. the core featured tradition, the business must maintain is bar. item 2d is

friends of scrap inc. the business is a non profit organization in the bay view neighborhood that was formed in 1976 and later established with the california secretary of state in 1978, known as scrap. their mission is to inspire creativity and environmental stewardship by promoting the creative reuse of materials that have traditionally been discarded as waste. they operate the nation's oldest creative reuse center, diverting 200 tons of soft salvage materials from landfills each year while providing free and low cost classroom and art supplies to teachers, students, families and artists in marginalized communities across the bay area. scrap is a bay area resource for makers of all ages and everyone who values access to creative experiences. scrap also has a popular arts education program. the core feature tradition. the business must maintain its art

supplies and craft store. item two e is heroes club inc. the business is a shop in the richmond neighborhood founded in 1989 that specializes in asian nostalgic science fiction and anime fine art collectibles, including action figures, toys, model kits and more. many pieces date from the 1960s to the 1990s and include out-of-print vintage model kits. heroes club was founded by robin kwok, who graduated from the prestigious academy of art university of san francisco. he has been custom building sculptor ing and painting model kits for several decades, each high quality limited edition fine art collectible requires an incredible amount of time and designing, modeling, painting and casting all pieces are unique and handcrafted heroes. hero club was robin williams favorite store and other famous

clients include nicolas cage, guillermo del toro and michael jackson, the core featured tradition the business must maintain is collectible store. item two f is il palio. the business is an italian restaurant with argentinian influence that was founded in north beach in 1984. palio means the chicken coop in italian and they do their best to live up to this name by serving some of the best braised marinated and grilled chicken in the bay area. they specialize in grilled chicken cooked moist inside with the skin crispy. they also feature ribeye steaks, lamb and pork chops, rabbits, sausages and a number of other culinary delights. il palio also serves freshly prepared salads and soups daily. the business is a regular dining spot for locals and tourists alike and is well known for its generous portions, reasonable prices and family

friendly atmosphere. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring italian inspired cuisine. item two g is city art gallery 2.0. the business is an artist owned and operated gallery that supports a community of over 100 local bay area artists. city art gallery 2.0 known as city art cooperative gallery is structured so that artists volunteer a little time and money. so all of them can have a professional exhibition space with no paid staff. their art is affordable to local working people and they return a minimum of 71% of sales back to their artists on the first friday of every month from 7 to 10 p.m. they have a monthly opening reception where you can enjoy some wine, view the art and meet their artists. although the business is not yet 30 years old, it has contributed to the history and identity of the mission and san francisco and if

not included in the registry would face a significant risk of displacement. the core featured tradition in the business must maintain its art gallery. item two is firefly restaurant. the business is a restaurant established in 1993. in the noe valley neighborhood that serves new californian cuisine as an early example of the farm to table movement in restaurant dining. firefly restaurant prepares vegetarian, vegan and gluten free offerings offered ings that are seasonal depending on the availability of local produce. it is also a favorite among the bay area jewish community for its authentic jewish cuisine offered during jewish holidays. happy hanukkah. one firefly nourishes its community by cooking seasonal homestyle goodness with sustainability, a body and planet in mind. they serve food that assesses the that part of

our deepest soul where genuine expression can flow forth if they give their food and service their best selves as honest and vulnerable as they can. muster the food at firefly is constantly evolving. an entire, entirely personal. the court featured tradition the business must maintain its restaurant. item two i is lamp lighters, music theater. the business is the oldest theater company in san francisco, founded in 1952, lamplighters music theater is the premier producer of the art of gilbert and sullivan and other compositions of comparable wit, eloquence and musicality. they are one of the world's preeminent gilbert and sullivan companies, having produced the entire gilbert and sullivan canon, as well as other light opera and music musical theater classics. in addition,

lamplighters music theater has an arts education program focusing on musical theater and opera. lamplighters is passionate about their craft, and they maintain a stimulate atmosphere of growth and support for their performers. production teams and administrative staff. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is theater. item two j is a rally or rally. the business is an authentic mexican restaurant and taqueria. founded in 1989, in the financial district rally, o'reilly serves traditional mexican cuisine featuring award winning salsa and famous margaritas. their salsa won first place in the 1996 california state fair regional salsa competition. it has no additives or preservatives and is made fresh daily. raleigh is a common interjection in mexican spanish slang, expressing approval or encouragement. it like. all right, so the restaurant's name o'reilly rally means a right or right as

indicated on the restaurant's logo. o'reilly rally serves office workers, residents and tourists alike, and also does catering. they are active in the embarcadero community and also support other small bay area businesses. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring mexican cuisine. item two is polly, an ice cream? the business is an ice cream parlor founded in the sunset neighborhood in 1955. polly, an ice cream, serves handmade premium ice cream and a warm, welcoming shop as well as milkshakes, ice cream, cakes, cookies and chocolate. they are known for their wide variety of unique flavors, including durian , red bean, black sesame, oolong tea, kanji milk, lychee and others. they also feature unique adaptations of international international desserts as ice cream flavors such as brigadeiro, a brazilian dessert

and anthony bourdain visited the shop in 2001 and enjoyed several of their, quote unquote, kooky ice cream flavors. polly an ice cream is also known for their big flavor wheel. if you can't decide which flavor you want, a spin of the wheel will decide for you. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is ice cream store item two is san francisco women artists. the business is a non profit arts organization that supports and empowers and expand representation of women in the arts and encourages a diversity of inspiring artists at all stages of their careers. san francisco women artists was established in 1925, though its origin is from an organization known as the sketch club, which dates back to 1887. the organization maintains a gallery in the inner sunset that features 600 artworks annually annually where contemporary art,

handcrafted jewelry, sculpture and ceramics are exhibited and sold. the gallery also hosts community art organizations and features a youth wall. the community served by san francisco women artists, women artists in the bay area is a diverse blend of talents and backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. is the core featured tradition. the business must maintain its promotion of women artists of all of the businesses met the three criteria required for listing on the legacy business registry and all have received a positive recommendation from the historic preservation commission. legacy business program staff recommends adding the businesses to the registry and has drafted a resolution for each business. for your consideration, a motion in support of the businesses should be framed as a motion in favor of the resolutions. thank you. this concludes my presentation. i'm happy to answer any questions. there are business representatives present

who may wish to speak on behalf of the applications during public comment. great thank you so much, rick. that was that was a very thorough presentation that you did that you started several times. so i appreciate everyone's patience. commissioners any questions so far? i'm seeing no questions yet. let's open it up for public comment. so if commenters want to line up to my left, your right and then come up to the mic, that would be great. good afternoon, commissioners and director tang adam tongs with supervisor middleman's office is speaking in strong support of firefly thai house express and elixir. thank you so much. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is merritt richmond. i am the president of the board of directors of scrap. we're really appreciate the honor of being nominated for this and we just

wanted you to know he did such a good job explaining scrap, but just wanted to hit a few highlights. scrap was founded in 1976 by ruth asawa and jefferson award winner anne marie thielen and they were passionate about providing arts education for san francisco youth and putting artists to work in our city. for almost 50 years, scrap has provided affordable art materials to san franciscans, and we have curbed the environmental impact of wasting those very valuable materials. this mission is still so relevant today as scrap continues to strengthen the cultural fabric of san francisco this year, we will welcome over 30,000 unique visits to our depot in the bay view. we will divert over 200 tons of donations from landfills, and those donations come from over 100 zip codes in the bay area. we will deliver after school arts education to over 1000 students in san francisco's southeast neighborhoods at scrap . we're so proud to help catalyze creative thinking and

the collaborative power of the arts and to support the vibrancy of our city. thank you so much. commissioner president, you and commissioners. i'm mary lou larkin, vice president of the san francisco women artists organization. thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today in support of our application for the legacy business registry. as rick told you, the organization has deep roots that go back to 1887, when women were not allowed to join the arts organizations in san francisco. so they formed their own group called the sketch club , which brought together women in san francisco to curate their art, to support each other, to display their art and to counter the male anti women culture in the art community. the

organization went on for many years, and until 1906, when the earthquake destroyed its headquarters, it then merged with another organization and became a coeducational a coeducational coed organized formation that that lasted for a while. and then the women branched off again in 1925 to form the society of san francisco women artists, which was the basis for the organization that i'm representing today. we have many distinguished members from the organization. ruth asawa was a member, imogene cunningham, emmy lou packard, and we were the first organization to display artwork by frida kahlo in the entire country. so we were the first people to present her work . the organization subsequent has been recognized by the california state senate. senator hillary clinton, when she was the first lady, the to the mayor's office, san francisco

mayor's office, the san francisco attorney's office. we started as a women's organization. but today we welcome all sexes, genders, ethnic cities, races to our organization. an also when the organization started out, the purpose of the organization was to support our members art, to promote their art, to display their art and that is one of our legacies that continues on today. but the other thing that's really important to us, because we started out as an organization that had a lot of prejudice against us, that today one of our main goals is to support diversity, inclusiveness and. what's the other one? i can't think of a diversity, inclusiveness and equality in the arts. so thank you very much . hi there. my name is ari

singer and i am here today in my role as vice president of the board of trustees of lamplighters music theater. our company is more than who we were when we started with just two pianos and a group of talented friends. 71 years ago, we are the 140 artists and craftspeople we employed last year and the thousands of san franciscans who we have entertained and inspired for generations. we are the formal recognition we received in 2021 from then-supervisor matt haney. we are the local collaborators who raise money for mission housing. on giving tuesday. we are the 59 years of original works, including this year's newly commissioned one act operetta by george, which celebrated the chevalier saint george. we are of the city and for the city we hope you will come to see our next show,

ruddygore, which is a new take on a classic gilbert and sullivan operetta, which will combine victorian sensibilities with folklorico dancing with english and spanish language subtitles and day. of the dead style ghostly ancestor letters. we hope that when you do come to see our show, lamplighters will have the recognition granted by you today as a san francisco show legacy business. thank you. hello everyone. i am very happy to be here talking to you. basic basically to thank for the nomination of polly and ice cream to be a legacy business in san francisco. this is a very important moment for our business. and it is not just a business. it is a place that we have built together also with the community to share experiences and to create

experiences there. and it is very pleasant to see when we have several generations going together as a family to our store and then they start like to, to remember when they were going to the school, to lowell, to any other school nearby. and and they start asking, oh, do you remember this person or the other one or, or when they also say, hey, this was my first job. and, and they tell their kids and their kids they are excited and so the grandpa was here. so it's very nice. so i'm very happy and i'm very thankful for to the small business administrator person because i didn't even know about the program. and when actually they went to the store and then i remember that i was told, hey, you should be part of the of the legacy program. and then i was like, i didn't know that that existed. and i was very excited.

and then thank you for that. thank you very much. and also to rick and all the team in the in the legacy business program, because it is not something that i had to figure out how to do. i really had very good help to get it done, to gather the information, to put it together. and so that actually shows what the city is actually doing for preserving the businesses, the legacy businesses in the city and encouraging the other, like the businesses that are that are getting started also to be later part of the legacy business program. so thank you very much for all that you're doing and thank you for the nomination and thank also to the community because as the community is the one that has built polly an ice cream. thank you. bye. still working. good afternoon,

commissioners, and thank you for this opportunity. my name is jim mckee and i'm with earwax production and delighted to be part of this process. real quick, earwax began actually on florida street in the mission 40 years ago. since then, we've we've occupied a space at hyde street studios over here in the tenderloin battery street down in jackson square and natoma street. and so at and south of market and for the past 20 years at the sentinel building in north beach, i want to thank rick for doing such a great job with introducing everybody here. he did an amazing job and wanted his attention to detail. is unbelievable. he was telling me things i didn't know about my own company. so that was the real genesis of the company actually began in when it was working with marcos kounalakis.

he came to studio that i was operating for antenna theater down on florida street, and he was doing a program for the world affairs council called spotlight on world affairs. and after a few sessions, he said, you know, you should start your own business. and we had a consortium of musicians, electronic recorder, people from mills college, graduate students that decided to put together association. so we formally went to city hall and said registered as a as an association. and to that end, i want to give special thanks to chris hardman, who was the director of antenna theater, then ran the recording studio on florida street soon three theater magic theater, one act, eureka act, a bunch of other theaters that helped us as a fledgling business to create sound design and original music composition in the 80s. it was a vibrant scene in theaters since

then, lots have happened, you know, with computers and internet and video streaming, and now we're doing virtual reality. and i'm really happy to say that the opportunities, the creative opportunities just keep coming and they keep getting better. and the city is sort of open arms to welcome welcoming that special acknowledgments to the original members of the group jean-francois danny, bob davis, andy newell, barney jones, my mentor, eric bauersfeld, aka admiral ackbar, david davia nelson, nikki silva of the kitchen sisters. francis coppola. for all of their encouragement over these many years, i want to thank you for your time. um, good afternoon. thank you. good evening, commissioners. my name is angelina. you staff with supervisor connie chan's office here today to speak in support of clemency, legacy hopeful legacy business heroes club.

it's truly been a business that has served kids, kids at heart began. enthusiasts and even the serious, most serious of collectors, some of whom have celebrity status in the city but truly is a neighborhood and neighborhood serving spot. it's clear for anyone who visits the store that it serves also as a museum of sorts, where you walk in, you literally see pieces that are coming to life and really highlight the artistry and the passion and dedication. and frankly, point of pride that the founder, mr. robin kwok, illustrates in his three decades plus work dedicated to shop and his models in the store are truly works of art and so i think when we're looking at the legacy business program and ways of kind of highlighting what's unique in san francisco, not only is it one of the few collectors shops remaining in the city, but it's one of the few and the only actually that highlight asian and sci fi and really promote that niche and space for young asian kids even

to kind of have an outlet and have a space that they can call their own and identify with and we also love that it's also a space that highlights that folks are able to customize. if you walk in, you can tailor pieces. and frankly, if you can imagine it, i think he can make it. and so i think there's a lot of exciting potential, not just in preserving the pieces that have been made and are on display, but really, frankly, what hopeful future generations of kids in san franciscans are able to access when they go to the store in the future. so thank you for your consideration on of heroes club and frankly, the many other sweet and savory and artsy shops on the agenda today. so thank you. good afternoon. my name is shay. i'm the general manager at elixir saloon. on behalf of the owner, myself and our elixir team, we would like to express how honored we are to be here today. i've been with

elixir for over 15 years. that's nearly a third of my life. one of the reasons that i've made that investment is the history of the bar has since 1858, our location has been has been a saloon. so that's 165 years of providing drinks. but more importantly, a place to gather, spend time with friends and possibly make new ones. i met my wife at elixir. i was born and raised in san francisco and i take great pride in keeping the doors of our establishment that has deep san francisco history open, especially in such a difficult time for small businesses. this is why your recognition means so much to all of us. on behalf of the elixir family, thank you. hello my name is robin bordeaux and i'm the owner and manager of city art gallery. i'd like to thank the commission for hearing our application today as many of you

know, it's notoriously different, difficult for artists without a proven financial track record to get a gallery show at established galleries as we are one of the few galleries in san francisco that support emerging artists in order to return as much as possible to the artists. we return at minimum of 71. even though i'm the owner, i take no salary and run the gallery as a service to the greater art community. we. had 112 local artists have at least one exhibition in 2023, and 11 of our artists were accepted to the young open exhibition, which is on right now. we supply a sense of community both to our artists and to the local art buyers because we make art affordable to working people. i just want to thank you all for hearing our

application and i urge you to vote yes. thank you. hi sorry. good good evening, commissioners. thank you for nominating thai house inc. my name is paul palmieri yogurt. i am the son of krishna. and sir upon mary yogurt, and they started their restaurant in 1985, truly as thai immigrants coming into san francisco in 1982 and i was born in 85, so i was born into the business and we are still here. and still alive. and it's been such a crazy ride for us because san francisco's is an ever changing city and i mean, all we can do is ride the wave right? and it's been the toughest. i think it's been the toughest time for small businesses in the last couple of months. and thank you for thank you for letting us become part

of this great community. and i hope that we can continue serving, are serving thai food and serving the community or as long as we can. so thank you very much. i appreciate it. any other any other public commenters, any anybody on the line? oh, no, we have no more line. okay. it's just us. it's just all of us. well all seeing no public no further public comment. public comment is closed. so commissioners, any comments, any questions. commissioner dickerson. now, you

know, i don't need a mic. they're all right. there we go. i. i first, i just want to say thank you. thank you to each and every one of you who have really paved the way, way as business owners and have created these communities throughout the city that makes this city the great city that it is. so i just want to say thank you so much. i love when we have generations standing up, speaking before you even born. you advocating for these businesses that have continued to, you know, carry the legacy of the heart of the one or ones who who founded it. and i think that in itself is

the true legacy that the vision can continue to thrive, especially in 2023, like the young man just said, probably the hardest season that we've experienced as small businesses has been in this year. i i am still very hopeful, though i, i am looking at all of these businesses. one thing i can say is you made it. you survived it. and i believe we have everything that we need inside of us to continue to thrive. and i just want to, if i can just say, just encourage you, just keep on keeping on, because i know right now things, you know, there's a saying that we used to say, you know, sorrow may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. and so i just want to say thank you for not stopping and creating this community. and the last thing i want to say is i'm so looking forward to every

time this is my favorite part of being a commissioner on these in these meetings is to be able to hear about these businesses. and i do when i when i see these on here, every opportunity i get to come and visit you. if i haven't visited you before, look out here i come and i always bring a crew with me. so just know we are coming. so again, thank you for all that you do. you're an inspiration to many of us and just continue to be the light in the city. thank you. well any other commissioners? okay thank you. thank i'll just say thank you, everyone, for taking time out of your workday. family time and you know, everything you provide to the city. um behind the counter or wherever you stand at your small business.

and we appreciate you coming down here and reminding us why why we're why we're here. so thanks for being here. and we look forward to voting on you. yes. thank you so much for sharing all of your stories. and thank you so much, rick, for all of the work rick and michelle, you know, it's such a fascinating thing thing. every time we have these meetings and i get to hear about the history of your businesses, it's really a history of our city and i think it's incredible to me the roots that we have in our city. so i mean, every time it just inspires me to, you know, keep building here and keep living and experiencing joy here. so i really commend all of you for your daily you know, just getting up every day and taking care of the people that you take care of, because i know how that feels. and you know, i also i

also do love to go visit like all the legacy businesses on the list. and, you know, i think, rick, you've done a great job of encouraging everyone to visit one another and creating this into like, its own community and ecosystem, too. it's like, you know, if people could look at the legacy business list when you're thinking about services, i mean, the diversity of businesses that you have on here, this is just today's meeting alone could be like several weeks, if not months. yeah, it's turning into a directory, like a phone book directory. so yeah, definitely. today i think we have all we need. we have audio to help us with our, our our troubles. hey, we have, you know, so many wonderful businesses within our city. so thank you so much for all that you do. i hope that you celebrate tonight and take some time and enjoy this

accomplishment. so thank you. um i think with that, we take a vote. it's been a little while since we've had a meeting, so i'm a little rusty. sorry is there a motion in favor of the resolutions? i i am in favor and nominate this for the resolutions. i second the nomination motion by commissioner dickerson, seconded by commissioner herbert. i'll read the roll. commissioner benitez. i. commissioner dickerson. absolutely. yes commissioner herbert. yes. president huey. yes commissioner ortiz. cartagena yes. and vice president ziziunas yes. motion passes. congratulations. congratulations. all right. uh, item number. item number three. item three, san francisco

municipal transportation authority sfmta briefing. this was a discussion item that needs to be continued. our presenter was unable to join today, so we'll need to continue this item to the next meeting. uh, if there's no objection, we can move to item four. great um, please call item number four. item four san francisco business tax reform. this is a discussion item. the commission will hear an update on the city's ongoing efforts to review the city's current business tax structure and develop recommendations for needed reforms. presenting today , we have amanda freid with the office of treasurer and tax collector.

all right. can you all got one work? nope oh, no. this one work. great. try that one. one more time. hello oh, okay. okay this will be fun. all right, we'll do some gymnastics. uh, good evening, everybody. i'm amanda cohn, freed from the office of the treasurer and tax collector. really happy to be speaking with you all tonight about our business tax reform process. i'll say up front, business taxes are the easiest thing to make your eyes glaze over if you're feeling a little bit of insomnia, i recommend pulling some of this up in the middle of the night. i'm going to do my best to try to explain this as carefully as possible and also point you to some places for those in the room and who will watch this later to catch up after the fact. i know it's dense, so i will try and just a little bit of a summary of how we got here. the supervisor, mandel mann,

requested that and then was joined by the mayor and other members of the board to request that our office, the office of the treasurer and tax collector and the comptroller work together to provide some proposed reforms that we could consider for the november 2024 ballot. we issued a memo over the summer, in july outlining some of the issues with our current tax structure, and i'll go through some of those and then since then we've been meeting with businesses and other stakeholders on about a monthly cadence to hear their input and to present some ideas for reform. um, and in our meeting, our last meeting, we presented a model for some reforms, a package of reforms are in a process now of getting some additional feedback and then we're going to issue our final report to the mayor and the board of supervisors. by the end of december. what this part of the process is about is

really what are some good, good tax policy reform forms that we can put in place with a baseline of being revenue neutral. so our two offices are apolitical. all we're trying to figure out what can solve some of the problems that we're having right now in our business tax base. and for the economy generally. so we're and you'll see this in some of the examples as we go forward, looking at 2022 revenues and everything we propose should bring in the same amount of money that we got in last year from business taxes. just from different ways after we make these proposals, then the conversation necessarily becomes more political. so that's when people will work with the board and with the mayor around different pieces that work or don't work for their community. and they'll be kind of a discussion of viability of whether anything goes before the voters. it's kind of a long process from here. so what i'm presenting to you today is just

the recommendations from the comptroller and the treasurer moving forward. as i mentioned, there was a report in the summer that was talking about what are some issues, what are the problems that we're trying to solve. the first was a real risk of tax loss because of remote work and relocation of workers out of san francisco. the second is an overreliance that we're seeing right now on taxing commercial property uses at a time when that industry isn't doing very well reduced. we want to reduce volatility stemming from over concentrate motion and you'll see this in a slide today that five of the top five tax payers are paying a lot of our revenue for the city. and so the threat there is if one or more of them chooses to leave san francisco, that would have a huge impact on our city's finances. we also really want to promote greater simplicity and predictability from tax payers,

which is what i talked to many of you about a lot, and also greater equity for small businesses. so these were kind of our goals as we started the process. s and the first, as i mentioned, is to reduce volatility and reliance on commercial property. so the ways that we're doing that, we're proposing to do that are two fold in the homelessness gross receipts tax into the general gross receipts tax base rather than have it as a separate tax, it would be included in the rates of the base gross receipts tax and a portion the same portion of that tax base would be dedicated for the same uses that go for the homelessness gross receipts tax. now that same idea would happen for the commercial rents tax that would be reduced by 25. but the revenues for the uses in that case, early child care would remain the same as they are now. and then we're also proposing to reduce the overpaid executive tax by 90. and we would maintain

the administrative office tax, which is really for very large businesses. next is really the broad simplification. the first is to increase the small business exemption to 2.5 million. it's a it's a bit over 2 million, right now and that would continue to adjust with cpi. so that's something we heard loud and clear from many small businesses is to make sure that that exemption continues to go up with inflation. we would simplify the business registration schedule. right now, it's a little bit confusing. so just to have one one set of rates for businesses at different sizes instead of two, we're proposing to eliminate $10 million of regular lottery license fees. these are the fees that businesses pay on a bill from our office, from the treasurer and tax collector's office. every spring. these predominantly hit small businesses and they're paid a

lot by the restaurant industry. so the fees for restaurants are particularly high, but other types of businesses that that have these fees, you know, massage parlors and. i'm blanking on lots of other examples. gas stations, there's many other businesses where if you have an inspector coming to see if you're still doing what you're doing and you're paying a fee every year, that's what's kind of included in this $10 million base. and we're also simplifying the schedule down to five schedules. it's currently 14 and adding some additional tiers for very large businesses above $50 million. right now, the tiers stop at $25 million and above. and this is the part where it gets a little a little tricky. so right what we want to do is create some uniformity in how businesses figure out which portion of their receipts get counted for their tax calculation in the you know, the

words for these are apportionment and allocation. they mean slightly different things for your purposes. what we're saying is it's very tricky right now. businesses depending on what category they're in, have different rules about how to calculate which portion of their receipts are counted for taxes. this is only for businesses that are operating inside and outside san francisco. so my complete permission to tune out if your business is only in san francisco, this really doesn't impact you. but for businesses that are operating worldwide or nationwide or in california, this has been a source of difficulty with our current tax. so every business now except for those in the real property category and i'll explain those, we'll go to 75% sales, 25% payroll and the big thing this does on a macro level is it reduces that reliance on our tax base to who has jobs in san francisco. so if a business we

don't want to penalty if businesses bring workers into san francisco and we also want to keep revenue if businesses choose to leave san francisco but are still selling into san francisco again, all of the rates are adjusted to achieve that revenue neutrality that i talked about in the beginning. so just to back up a little bit, how do we do it now? the gross receipts tax was first approved in 2012 and then updated in 2020. prop f and i'm going to talk a little bit about prop f as we get into some of our examples. gross receipts are the total revenue and other receipts of a business. i gave some examples here and businesses file the gross receipts tax annually with a deadline of february 28th of each year to give some context of size, there are about 95,000 businesses registered in san francisco

right now, about 41,000 businesses pay the gross receipts tax. so the vast majority of businesses are small and are exempt from the small from the gross receipts tax entirely. this is really a very small portion of our overall tax base. currently, the way that the tax is calculated, it's based on your gross receipts in san francisco and your business activities. you pick from a list of categories. so those of you who've renewed your business registry have done this every year. so we have some options in food services or retail trade, and then your tax rates vary depending on that category. and as i mentioned, that calculation becomes even more complicated. if you have receipts in san francisco and outside of san francisco. so next, i'm going to attempt to show a video if we don't have technical issues that we created to help understand a little bit of this process of apportionment and allocation so

that as i explain the changes, hopefully it makes a little bit more sense. okay. in the interest of time, i'm going to skip that video and i'll point you to where it is on our website. if you go to sf treasurer.org, there's a business tab at the top and if you click on it you'll see a gross receipts tax overview. that page explains a lot about how the tax works. now and the video is embedded there. sorry for that. sometimes that's tricky in these meetings. so what the main point of the video

is to show that if you have two businesses with fairly similar facts, so you could have a clothing retailer and a financial services corporation option and they both have $20 million of sales into san francisco and the same amount of payroll in san francisco at the at when they're done with their gross receipts tax filing, they're going to have very different bills. the clothing retailer pays significant only less than the financial services corporation. right now under our our current tax law. and that's by design. so we understand that different industries have different facts and circumstances and when the original tax was passed that the rates were different depending on the kind of business that you are. but the rates are one portion of what's different. it's also what's calculated. so right now, many industries in san francisco are based it's entirely based on where your payroll is. so it's 100% based

on what percentage of your payroll is in san francisco. that's how we figure out what percentage of your gross receipts to include in your tax calculate options. whereas other industries are 5050 sales and payroll and so that means that if you have to industries that are kind of similar, they're different, but they, you know, you could be in one, you could be in the other, you your overall tax bill is going to be really different depending on which of those calculation methods you use. and right now, those outcomes are they're somewhat of a penalty for locating your workers in san francisco. so that was sort of a base reason while we're trying to change. so as we move ahead, the proposal shown here on this slide is to reduce to make this whole process a lot simpler. so hopefully in five years when i come up here again, it won't take me so long to explain it. there'll be five categories all of the categories except for one use 75% sales, 25% payroll as the way that they're going to calculate apportionment and

allocation, the one that is staying the same is real property. so these are real estate companies, hotels as accommodations. right now in our current schema, there are 100% based on their san francisco sales and they're going to remain. we're proposing that they remain 100% san francisco sales. it's pretty easy for them to calculate that because it's physical property in san francisco. it's not really like a complex business type where you have to kind of figure out how to do that. it's very straightforward. so our proposal that that is that that stays. but everything else changes. and these are the five categories. and i'm going to go through each category and the impacts of the changes as we go on here are the proposed rates for the categories. it's a bit hard to see this on the fly. so again, you can you can refer back to this as we go, and i'll show you how this impacts different industries is in terms of the impacts by business size. as you can see, the relief for small

businesses is quite big. so businesses under the small business exemption threshold are going to see a reduction in average of 37% reduction in what they pay in business taxes for these businesses. they're not paying the gross receipts tax. this is their business registration fees and license fees. so on the whole, a big a big reduction for the smallest businesses. there's also a big reduction at the top end of the scale. and that's, again, talking to those initial goals that we had around kind of reducing the concentration risk that we have with a few very large tax payers and then it kind of varies in between there. to start again with our majority of our businesses, which are very small. we have two examples here. the first is an artist, their san francisco gross receipts are $150,000. they only do business in san francisco and

they're going to see an 8% reduction in that's driven entirely by the change in their business registration fee. take a nail salon. with $750,000 in san francisco. receipt s, they'll see a 10% reduction in in their gross receipts in their business registration fees. next, we have a restaurant that this restaurant is over the small business exemption threshold. but i think by most standards would be considered fairly small. $6 million in san francisco receipts. this example is different because they do pay the gross receipts tax. so i just wanted to compare that for you right up at the front before we get into some of the other examples is so this restaurant, one thing to note here is that restaurants are one of the categories is when prop f passed in 2020, there were some reductions in gross receipts, tax rates for certain industries that were really hit hard by covid and food services is one

of those. so the gross receipts, tax rates for food services are low lower right now than they were originally planned to be. and those lower rates are set to expire right now in 2026. so we've listed here and all of the examples, you'll see what they paid in 2022 if nothing changes, what they would pay in 2026. and then under this proposal, what they would pay in 2026. so that variance column on the right is between the two 2026. if it if nothing changes or if this passes. but i think it's really fair to look at the 2022 baseline and understand that for industries in those prop f reduced rates right now, it's not going to feel like a reduction in based on based on what they're paying right now. but those rates are already set to expire. so it's a little bit complicated, but just wanted to put that context out. actually,

before i get into some of these other business activities. i just want to see if there's any questions about the small business rates, because now we're going to get into some much larger business examples. so i want to make sure that part's clear. okay. i do have a question, but i don't know if it fits to ask you at the end of your press presentation. i just had a question around the breakdown of the regulatory licenses that you were looking to streamline or and also the process on how the office determines which regulatory licenses need. sure. i'll take that one at the end, if that's okay. when we get to it. you got it. okay. and i did miss one example. sorry. we have a clothing store. $3 million. there are going to see a 13% increase. sorry. i just wanted to say that one. oh, sorry. go ahead. go ahead. oh, commissioner herbert had a question. thank you. i just had a technical question about the

restaurant gross receipts. so i'm just want to make sure i understand. and so it looks like the gross receipts stayed the same from 2022 to 2026. and you're proposing that in 2020. i mean, from 2022 to now. and you're proposing that there's a 10% reduction by 2026 in the gross receipts tax for small businesses for the restaurant example, in 2022, they. paid $12,105 in their gross receipts tax. if nothing changes in 2026. that same business would. pay $24,185. so there's scheduled to be a large increase already between 2022 and 2026 because of the reduced rates expire. the covid rates sunset. right. so if you compare the 24,000 that

they're slated to pay in 2026 with the proposal that we're putting forward, it's a reduction in of 31% in their gross receipts tax. yes. okay. does that help? thank you. yes. yes. okay. and then the last example that i flew through was this clothing store. we're going to talk a lot about retail and wholesale in that section. but just did want to flag here that this small clothing store would see a 13% increase under this proposal. so. okay, the next act city to go through is advanced service. as you can see here, all of the business activities that we have listed here and some of the percent differences again, between the 226, 20, 26 as is, and 2026 proposed listed here for as it's a little bit hard to understand what these

mean. we're going to go through an example or two here. we have a package software company with worldwide receipts of $25 million, 30% of their payroll is in san francisco. and about $100,000 of their their gross receipts are attributable to san francisco. so that's what's used in this calculation here. you'll see they end up with a 25% reduction if you move over to an online data management company that's much bigger, 25 billion. they have 7% of their payroll in san francisco and $1 billion of san francisco gross receipts. and here is the first time you'll see coming into play the homelessness gross receipts tax sunsetting. so you'll see 100% of the homelessness. gross receipts tax goes away, but that's largely put back into their gross receipts tax base. this is also a business that pays the overpaid executive tax. and due to the, you know, 90%

reduction, this particular business is going to get a 91% reduction in that rate with an overall 3% change. um, next we have financial services fees and overall this industry would see a 17% increase. and here if you had a financial services company with 100 million in worldwide receipts, but five of those in san francisco and 10% of their payroll in san francisco, their tax bill is going to go up 64% next, we have the real property category, real estate and accommodations is the difference here between these two types of businesses is, is that the changes for what we call baby c or the commercial rents tax are are are realized for the first

category. the real estate and rental and leasing services. that's where you'll see that 25% reduction in the commercial rents tax come into play. but accommodation fees do not pay that tax. so that reduction doesn't have the same impact for them. so you'll see here commercial real estate company. again, their apportionment is 100% based on sales. the you'll see the reduction in their commercial rents tax. so they go from paying 875,000 in commercial rents tax to 656,000. and that largely drives their overall reduction of 26% okay. and this is where it gets it gets kind of more interesting read sale and wholesale trade. so here you see a general breakdown and you'll see large increases for both retail and wholesale trade. what exactly does this mean for this? these

industries, the changes to apportionment and allocation have makes for some very big swings because you're going. to 75% of their calculate coming from their sales and 25% for payroll. so let's start with a wholesale market out there. are i can't give you specific examples that would violate somebody's confidential reality, but you can think of several big wholesale markets in san francisco selling different things. this one and i'll say all of these examples are made up. we tried to make them realistic, but they are not real businesses. so this example is $50 million a business. 65% of their payroll is in san francisco. but a modest portion, $5 million of their overall receipts are attributable to san francisco, and overall they get

a reduction of 37. and here that big reduction is largely because of how much payroll they have in san francisco. that's really kind of like moderating the what's going on here for this company. um, in this example, while this is a large retailer with $10 million worldwide, they don't have any employees in san francisco. so and they sell about $25 million into san francisco. they see a 78% increase in their tax bill. so this is a company, again, with no employees here. if you compare that to a large retailer with some payroll here, it's very different. the outcome here is a reduction of 60. again, that's because of that importance of that payroll factor here. this business also benefits because they pay the overpaid executive tax. and so having that reduction does net some difference as well. okay.

lastly for this category is a large grocery retailer and this is a very large company, $40 billion. they have 2% of their payroll in san francisco and 500 million in their gross receipts. and they see a 160% increase in their taxes under this proposal. and our last category, see, we're shopping for names. if anyone can think of something better than all other, i would appreciate it. we have kind of a mix of things here. so transportation, fashion, construction, food services, arts, and with a kind of wide range of impacts. one thing that's important to note in this category is some of these categories are very small. so their overall gross receipts are very small. so where you see a difference that looks like it

stands out quite a bit, that's usually because it's a handful of tax payers that are causing this swing. um, so, so let's see overall for these examples, like what does this mean? one of our goals was to look at concentration risk of our, our top tax payers and what that would mean to our business tax base if businesses were to leave. so we went from having 28% of our revenue coming from five tax payers. that's down to 23. and there's reductions in each level. the top five, top ten, top 100, but more so than just those percentages are kind of what i talked to you about, these business as if they are to leave san francisco under this proposal will still pay quite a bit of taxes because of the way that we've weighted san francisco sales in that calculation. so the risk ask is

reduced because the taxes are reduced. and also because if they leave, we'll still get the tax revenue from these companies . another portion of this is to improve predictability for tax payers. we hear a lot that this is a really complex set of taxes. it's hard for them to predict year over year what they're going to owe. so we're proposing a number of changes. one is to move the tax extension deadline. this largely impacts large tax payers is because our deadline, february 28th, is well before the federal and state deadlines, which come in the fall. and so when it's time for them to file, they're like, we don't even have the information they file. and then they end up amending their returns in the fall. and those that can cause some major swings and it causes the comptroller to hold that revenue because we're not sure if we're really going to those those numbers are going to hold or not. so we're proposing to shift it to a later extension

deadline and to formalize a voluntary disclosure agreement procedure. these are for taxpayers who realize, oops, i should have been paying taxes all these years and i haven't been. and they voluntarily come forward. we have a program now, but we don't have it. well publicized or explained. so we want to change that and we also are exploring different ways that taxpayers under this proposal could request and receive guidance up front rather than through audit. and then we're also going to be convening interested parties meetings to get feedback from taxpayers about our online form and um, the other thing that we hear a lot is there's just so many new taxes. so even if you pass this, what's to say that in a couple of years someone isn't going to come and change it again? so the comptroller's office did a scan, a statewide of how other jurisdictions get tax measures on the ballot. it's much, much easier in san francisco to get a tax measure on the ballot. so

we're going to be proposing a series of reforms, aims to make getting a tax measure on the ballot in line with a charter amendment right now. and this slide just has a summary of all of the changes i just talked about and we're requesting feedback by december 13th, if you get it in a little later, that's okay. that's just our suggested what we're hoping for and then we'll submit final recommendations, actions to the mayor and the board by the end of this year to kick off what may be the next part of the process. and that's it. happy to take questions. great. thank you so much for the presentation. you're all awake. that was a lot of information. commissioners any questions? i know we had a question earlier about the license fees so i can go back to that if you'd like. okay, i'll go. commissioner herbert first. herbert thanks again. all the numbers make my head spin. i

just like to make lattes pretty much. um, but i was just had a random question, which is how does the office of the comptroller track the remote workers? since there's so much of the payroll tax has to do with the overall tax? sure. so the gross receipts tax right now , if you have if you're in a business activity category where it matters, where your san francisco payroll is, part of the calculation, you do have to report that to the tax collector every year as part of your filing where it really comes up substantively is in audit. so if there's a dispute around your your payroll number and companies have many ways to sort of show us their payroll in san francisco versus outside and, you know, it's sort of it's company specific how they choose to do that and what we ask for. but in general, we were able and the and the report from the

summer really codifies shows what happened when business is had workers working remotely outside of san francisco. what the difference in the tax payments would have been if all of those workers stayed in san francisco. so we really are able to track it and track the impact. it's not i wouldn't say it's lost revenue, but we're able to compare if all of those workers were showing up in person in san francisco, this is what this company would have paid compared to what they actually paid. great. thank you. and then, um, how can we collect tax? this is might be obvious, but how how does the, uh, tax collector's office collect taxes from businesses who leave san francisco? what? how is that justified? sure. there's is what's called nexus is the requirements to in order to register as a business in san francisco and pay our business taxes back in. i may mess up the year. i want to say 2018 as part

of the actually, it was part of the cannabis tax measure. there was a part of that proposal that changed the requirements so that any business that sells more than $500,000 into san francisco , even if they have no physical presence here, has to register and pay taxes and so it's sort of a compliance exercise for our office to make sure that we're getting you know, that we're understanding all the companies that are operating that might be selling into san francisco and making sure that they're registering and paying taxes. got it. okay thank you. yeah. oh oh, sure. vice president, business is no. yeah, i'm okay right now. thank you for your presentation motion. yes. i just wanted to. i have three questions. one is, if there's a specific list or breakdown down of the regulatory license fees that you all are looking at, i

know even in some of us have met with the controller's office around in-depth studies we've done on on regulatory license fees that, you know, should have had audits by this time or, you know, in compliance with reporting or, you know, just needing to be streamline or duplicative with abc or whatever. right? we've worked on that quite a lot. so my first question was we'd probably love to see any specific fees. um, and i can tell you a couple if you know that we've flagged if that's helpful for you. um and then if, um, any of those are actually to be sunset or if they're being reduced. so kind of the specificity specifics of that. and then, um, how you all, your objective framework for, for deciding what needed to kind of be on the chopping block and whether it was in line with when

they were created. did you know, looking at past audits like what types of materials were you all considering in that process to make those decisions? and then, um, yeah, that was my main question for yeah, those were my main two questions. and then i have a smaller one later. sure. so right now, all of the regulatory licenses come out to about $14 million. so the 10 million we're talking about is almost everything we have on our website. like we have a list of every license fee right now that's charged on that bill. we haven't yet figured out like how exactly this part will work. it's more of a conceptual model saying based on some work that our office did to look at how regressive these fees are for small businesses because they're flat, you know, small businesses pay the same as very large businesses is. and so the impact

, if you add the license fees onto the taxes, make the smallest businesses have the highest effective tax rate. and so that's sort of the argument underpinning this is it really doesn't make sense. the rest of our tax structure is really progressive live and we have this outlier with the license fees. so the goal is really to reduce or eliminate as many as possible through this. i think the question there will be a lot of procedural questions around how exactly that works. businesses will still need to apply for or get permitted get inspected. so that part needs to stay the same. obviously, the departments still need to be compos updated for their work and that all needs to happen. so the question here is can we reduce the annual cost so that it's not a monetary burden on the smallest businesses and instead build that revenue into the overall tax structure so it's spread out among 14,000 businesses instead of the number

of businesses that pay right now, which is much, much smaller. wow. that's honestly, this is like the best news i feel like i've ever gotten from this committee sitting on this side of the commission because i feel like this could be something we could market to small businesses as huge, you know, and just like you said, conceptually seeing fees that increase this with no recourse is why small businesses are mad all the time. you know, and if we were able to show them, hey, you don't have this random line item, you know that would go very far. yeah. so that's very exciting news that you're looking that comprehensively at the regulatory license schedules . um, and i would love maybe we can talk as staff to our staff about or maybe in our discussion on what we can give you all and

that would be helpful that we've contemplated over the years in this area. yeah, that'd be great. i mean, i think the complication is going to come in and like, how do we operationalize that? how does it work? i think from like the big picture, it's like, sure, we'll take the revenue and move it here. that's fine. and so it'd be great to have your partnership to figure that out. absolutely. and i think we you know, we've tackled some of the low hanging ones, too, that i think through amazing staff research have shown and already done the due diligence of showing that cost savings can still be recouped here. but this in itself is just a burden, right? so we've definitely looked at through that lens and i think we'd be happy to send some some of that work to you. um, and then my last question, since we're talking about business taxes, i know small businesses also deal with the real property from the assessor and that's something that's been

a lot of confusion for small businesses and calculations over the years. i don't know if that's being considered in this. unfortunately, that's a state law. it's part of state property taxes. and so we don't have the authority to change anything about it. so that's not. yeah. interesting. okay. i didn't realize that. thank you. sorry. no that's good. thank you. commissioner ortiz katona. thank you, madam. madam thank you for the presentation. great. we're excited. i actually had a question from a small business, so let me see if i get it right. some of the small businesses that contract with the city, they have huge amounts of pass through, right? like during construction or hauling or whatever. so maybe they get they do get reimbursed. let's say it's 20 million, but their actual management fee maybe is only half a million of the whole contract. when calculating this, does that affect the gross receipts or should they just

highlight the management fees that they're getting for these pass through reimburse city contracts in general businesses have to report all of their receipts. so it's the whole number. it's not the answer that that business wants me to say. i will say particularly for construction subcontractors, that's an issue we've we've heard about for a while. and i would definitely recommend them to be engaged in the next part of this process if that moves along, because i think those are the types of feedback and tweaks that i think policy makers, that's really a policy choice could could change. well, i just had a couple questions. let's see, um, how do you think this is going to or will it affect companies in encouraging people to come back into the office for in-person work? i'll try to channel ted egan here. that's

not totally my lane. i think in general right now there's a sense and a reality that the way that our taxes calculate make it a little bit harder to bring employees back. whether or not that's really factoring into businesses decisions, i'm not sure. you know, the tax people are pretty separate from from the hr folks. but let's assume that it's you know, it matters certainly under this reducing the payroll factor would make it easier. you know it's better for the businesses to bring workers back into san francisco or reducing that penalty that exists in our current structure. the other thing right now is we the san francisco becomes more competitive when you look at other municipalities, business taxes. you know, right now they're still going to pay more to be in san francisco, but not as much more to be in san francisco. that's the reality. yeah, that chart last time was during the presentation. the

comparison was interest ing. yeah um, and just to clarify, anybody who says in into san francisco should be registering with san francisco if they have $500,000 or more of sales. okay um, and, and oh, just, i don't know if i didn't understand. i don't know. i didn't understand why clothing retail was like going to go up so much. yeah. so let me actually go back. okay. so if you look at the rates here, i know it's hard to digest this all as you're looking at it, but one thing that's interesting with the whole wholesale and retail category is how progressive it

is. and this is tax progressive, not political progressive, meaning that it starts very low. so compared to other industries and then increases. at a different clip than the increases in the other industries is again, these are all things that could be tweaked in a model, right? you could you could lower the rates for smaller businesses and raise the rates for higher businesses. it's all a bit of a balance. but in wholesale and retail, there's certainly their tax rate is low for the smallest businesses and then and then continues to go up for the retail industry. the move to have 75% come from their sales is pretty substantial for businesses that have workers inside and outside of san

francisco or operating inside and outside of san francisco. but the increase is, is just the rates that you see here reflected. so for that small retailer that was only in san francisco, that rate is higher than the rate currently. and that's how it's how it is in the model. and again, something that could certainly be adjusted up or down in the next phase. so like like businesses that have like just an ecom kind of business, right? like they and they're not in san francisco, they're not necessarily like a registered san francisco business, but they sell over $500,000 in sales in san francisco. how do you go? i mean, are they all registered? i, i don't understand how so many of them there are so many of them. you know, we have we have a team of investigators was it's really a data project because those corporations are doing things like paying sales

tax to the state of california and taking other actions that it's not that hard for us to find them. you know, it has over time, like ramped up since. it's a fairly new change to our code, but it's certainly something that we look at quite a bit and follow up on. yeah because it seems like it kind of takes an account the, the larger kind of businesses that generally operate right on online. right, right. okay, cool. um, director tang. oh, thank you, amanda, for your presentation. an and i appreciate that in one of the recommendations is that, um, it was just, i forgot which slide it was on, but it was discussed trying to put up front more information for, um, uh, businesses to better understand what category or what the rates are and so forth. and just in general, not even with just business taxes. i think we hear from a lot of small business owners the, the need for more

information up front for clarity to hopefully prevent issues down the line. so really want to encourage that. thank you. commissioner ortiz cortina just because i'm going to get asked and i want to have an answer, let's say this construction company is about 5 million gross , 4 million gross receipts. san francisco, a million elsewhere, seven, 5, 80% payroll still in san francisco. what are you thinking? like how can i calculate? how can i give them an answer if you want to email me, i'm happy to mock up an example like that and definitely can't do that in my head. yeah. and construction would be like advanced services now under the new, um, under the five categories, double check if i want to say the wrong thing. wrong construction is an all other. it's an all other. okay thank you. uh, vice president

business. i just quickly wanted to say the item of voluntary disclosure agreement formalizing what? so that's bringing people into compliance is what that's meant for. and we really like that here. so thank you again for that because a lot of businesses feel like they're scared to negotiate with an agency and this opens a door for compliance. so what exactly needs to be done in to make the is it the lookback that is the specific edit on that or it's two things. the lookback is changed. that's that's a that's a clear change. and the other thing is right now we don't this exists. it's but you can't find it on our website. so you sort of have to ask, which is very scary. and i get those calls sometimes. like i'm representing a business. i can't tell you who they are, but like, what would happen. and so the one thing

i'll say and this would remain the same under this new proposal , is it it only comes into play voluntary disclosure. if we've never contacted you before, you truly have to be off our radar. so if it's a business and we've sent them a letter saying we think you're operating here, you need to register that, that's not a voluntary disclosure. we already identified the business, but we do from time to time get businesses that are like, oops, i just realized like i exceeded that $500,000 threshold or i opened up and just like i had, i had a bad accountant, i had no idea. and that happens. and it's in it's a shared interest between the city and the business to get them into compliance as quickly as possible. and so i think this reduced look back in line. this is what the state does as well, is just, you know, would be would be clean and just making the rules a little bit more upfront. okay yeah, i'd love to learn more about how how that is

meant to work just because i, i feel like that there's also regulatory license fees that people have ignored because they're scary, they don't understand them, and then they accrue and they don't know how to settle it. yeah. so so anything bringing small businesses into compliance, we're happy to help you with the public facing end of when that plays out. thank you, commissioner herbert thank. you. in the interest of providing feedback, would it be possible to get a copy of your presentation? sure it's posted online in the controller's office website. they have a section for business tax reform. you can also find it through the treasurer's website. but either way it is posted. and then my sorry, i thought my email address was on here but it's amanda dot freed freed at sf gov .org and then this was also blasted out in the osb

newsletter. if you get that there was a summary with the link to the slides and email addresses too, or a website where you can give contact, it all goes to the same place. so feel free to email me or if you know laurel and the mayor's office economic and workforce development or ted egan or ben rosenfield. we're all going to get it and we're all going to share it with each other. so there's no wrong door at this point. the most important thing is you get your feedback in. great. thank you. well let's see there. does anybody else have any? no questions. thank you very much, amanda, for coming tonight. oh, we need to take public comment, but i just want to appreciate how much work this is because i know there were many, many meetings and this is material that's very challenging , urging for people to engage with in the super abstract. and i think you really kind of honed it into something where people can kind of can give feedback and find themselves within the

categories. and even if they gave feedback based on their own experience, i think that would be super beneficial. so i would encourage everyone to kind of consider where they stand, what this looks like, because perhaps you're not the only person that feels that way. so this is the opportunity to really be part of this process. so thank you so much for bringing this forth and thank you for my co commissioners director tang for attend seeing so many meetings, so many to bring to a feedback thank you so any public comment out if public commenters want to line up my left looks like none. great. thank you so much. have a great night. item number five. item five board of supervisors file 230768. authorizing and permitting neighborhood amenities. this is a discussion

item the commission will learn about an ordinance amending the public works code to streamline and authorize the approval of certain neighborhood amenities in sidewalks and other public right of ways within the department of public works jurisdiction. motion to reduce the fees for certain minor encroachments and clarify permitting revocation and restoration requirements for all minor encroachment permits. presenting today we have beth rubenstein with the department of public works. i'm going to go first. i'm going to hi, i'm beth rubenstein. but jen lowe from supervisor melgar's office is going to go first. oops, sorry. i'll just keep this really brief . thank you so much, commissioners, for calendaring this item. again, i'm jen lowe, supervisor from supervisor melgar's office. we're the sponsor of this legislation. we've been working in very close partnership with the public works department on this legislation in which we have aptly named love our neighborhoods as many of you know how much san franciscans,

our community members and merchants really love to give back to the communities that they live in, play in work in and contribute to. and so what we have learned over the years is that many of these wonderful projects in the public right of way and in public spaces like murals or maybe even a shared library, often times have to go through process because they're in the public right of way. and we have a lot of rules and regulations around that. but they probably weren't intended for painted murals on, say, a retaining wall or tiled staircase walls or that said bookcase on your sidewalk and so what we wanted to do was to make it easier for san franciscans to love our neighborhoods and to create these projects. and so what this legislation aims to do is to create a completely new process for what we call our love, our neighborhoods, permits and beth is going to go through kind of what this looks like. but we're hoping to achieve here is to encourage more projects to go through a better system because right now believe it or not, tiled staircases is

considered a major encroachment process, which has to go through the board of supervisors for approval and hearings. and it's already a really a lot of work to get all these neighbors and donors involved to do something wonderful for the community. so we want to make it easier and that's what we aim to do here. i do want to note that we did get some feedback from cuny benefits districts and some merchant groups that we encourage it as much as we could into this legislation. but supervisor melgar intends to have trailing legislation to iterate on this. this is creating something completely new. like i said before, what we have in our current code is minor encroachment processes, ridiculous permit schemes and a major encroachment processes. this is completely new. and so by doing so, we're going to have some kinks on the road and some questions that come up and we want to iterate. we want to improve on it and we want to get feedback from the people out there who are doing these wonderful projects to benefit their community. so i'm going to hand it over to beth to kind of go into detail. the legislature went through the land use and transportation committee, went to the full board for a first

reading last week. it's going to go for a second reading at the full board tomorrow. but as i previously mentioned, we're still going to be working out many of these things in the regulations. but also in trailing legislation. so your feedback is still welcome. and like i said, we want to make this as easy and painless as possible to encourage more of these projects. thank you. thanks, jen. hi, i'm beth rubenstein. i'm the deputy director of policy and communication at public works and super pleased to be here. and thank you, commissioners, for inviting me. i do want to say as i go through this is that we've been focused on capital projects, so permanent projects, and i know that that small businesses are definitely really interested in activations and temporary projects. and it would be something i said to director tang. it is something that we would like to look at in the future, but it's not in this legislation. so but you'll see there is a lot in this legislation, ian. and as jen mentioned, we really carved this out of minor and major encroachments. and what we're

carving out of is community driven projects in the public right of way that benefit the community. so it's not like an construction project, it's not even like a personal property owner who wants to put a enclosure for their trash cans. that's not community benefit. it's for it's for the community. so. just looking at sort of the let's see. yeah. so obviously, the other thing, the mission of public works is to be stewards of the public, public right of way and ensure sort of safety and accessibility for all. so in this permit and what we've worked really closely with professor i mean, professor supervisor melgar about is making it easier and more accessible to do these projects. but also making sure that we make sure they're accessible to all people, mobility issues, site issues. so on and so path of travel and safety. so we don't want rickety, scary things in the public right of way. so the goal you can see the goal is

to is to create a user friendly, inexpensive of and better coordinated with other city departments, permit process is. so in developing the permit and we started last spring. we did a kind of a listening session, as jen mentioned, we talked to cbds, we talked to merchant associates, we talked to nonprofits like parks alliance, and we talked to other city staff like in the community challenge grant office to sort of see like how things go and what was interesting is we heard the same pinch points from all all stakeholders, which is sort of a good sign in that everyone agreed and also is a clear sign that there is some broken pieces . so some of the things that came up is that wanting a better coordination between departments

, you know, community members, many of them who are volunteers who are doing this kind of work, they'll go to public works for a permit and then then they'll hear, oh, we actually have to get approval from the arts commission and actually maybe mta has to review it and maybe puc, you know, it sort of goes on and on. there was a really clear desire for one portal, one in, one out, which like honestly makes it a little hard on public works because we don't have jurisdiction over mta and arts commission. but it does mean but we can sort of streamline it and we can track it. part of that is also having a permit process that's more transparent. so as a as an applicant, you could we want you to be able to go online and see where it is in the process. if it's being if it's stuck at mta, you should know or if it's stuck at public works. you should know or if you can just see how it's moving through the processes. the other thing we heard was, was the expense and like the board, we the board does a lot of workarounds in

terms of waiving fees and, you know, that's, that's a workaround. it's not a long term solution. so we looked very carefully at at the current fees for like minor encroachments and major encroachments. we looked at those and we also looked at the annual assessment fees because and these were developed more for like construction projects and development projects, not for community driven projects. so you see we got rid of, we lessened the fees considerably. and just to remind you, those fees were only cost retrieval to begin with. we're not making any profit, but we did reduce them. um, yeah. and basically covered like that sort of reducing redundancy. so when we, we have a permit, it's good for all departments like an applicant doesn't find out a month in like oh you actually need extra information for another city agency. so this is a this permit covers a range of projects, small and large, everything from something like a

little libraries that's in front of one property owner to a cbd applying for a multi amenity project that includes benches lighting a mural, a street mural and so on. so each one has very different requirements. so the way we dealt with that is we divided the projects into three tiers and the first tier is actually fee. it's only for the applicant is just a private property owner and the project is in front of that one property. and in fact it's not a permit, it's we call it a registration because it doesn't have a fee like legally our city attorney say we can't call it. we don't call something without a fee permit. so this is a registration and it's free and it doesn't have to go through any other city departments. and basically the applicant self certifies what's what's important. they self certify that they follow the guidelines set out by public works. and what's important is, is that right now people are putting out

little libraries or benches in the public right of way. and that's those are lovely amenities. but sometimes they're not in the correct location. they they're either in the path of travel. they get in the way or they're too close to a tree. and we definitely want to protect our trees or they're too close to a parked car. so we need to have very clear guidelines. people need to self certify. tier two projects honestly, are sort of the bulk of the real projects that our community does. some examples. you can see are like a tiled staircase. the this is kensington bridge over over portola avenue, the painted bridge or the bottom one is a is a sidewalk mural in mira loma the hop skip and jump. so these are the projects that most communities do, and some of them previously were minor encroachments. some of them were major encroachments. we're carving all that out and what

they all have in common is that the applicant must be an organization. it can't be an individual. these are projects that are in in front of multiple property owners. they're on retaining walls. they're on existing staircase faces in the right of way. they're along corridors. so the applicant has to be a nonprofit organization, a merchant association, a cbd, something like that. and the types of projects you can see go from painted and tiled murals, sidewalk murals, commemorative plaques. we tightened up the process for commemorative plaques because it was very confusing and it would go back and forth to and from the board of supervisors. so that's much clearer. and it also includes string lights along commercial corridors like all these string lights that we love right now that are like in almost every corridor. honestly, they've been put up. willy nilly. there's been no permitting done by any department for them from from

our i mean, this is what we found from our research and there are some dangers like mta is concerned that sometimes there too close to live mta lines also like i was on valencia street the other day and there was some string lighting that was like hanging low, you know, who do you call? we don't know because we don't know who's responsible for it. so they need we need to bring that into the permit world. low cost. it's $500 for a permit previously, it was probably around more like $3,000 for like i mean, it could have been it could have been 3 to 5 or $6,000 for a minor, a major encroachment. and plus there was an annual fee that was based on square footage. so $500 is a pretty minimal fee if you think about these projects or even easily eight, $10,000. and these projects also typically have to be coordinated with other departments, but they would be through the one, the one stop portal and then tier three are

made like they're the sort of more unusual projects, probably typically done by cbds, that they're they're either multi amenity projects, like i mentioned before, or they're major landscape projects. there are also projects that we that maybe we don't even imagine yet, like one project that we that we have right now. i think it's in the sunset is for fog catchers, which are these really cool ways of irrigation using fog. but these type of projects need greater engineering review, tier two needs engineering review. but tier three is sort of a higher level scrutiny and the commensurate with that, the fee is $1,000. and these these projects are even more expensive. typically so it's proportionally in relationship. so just the components of the permit. so the legislature that jen talked about and the tiers

are all in the legislation and we hope it will be passed tomorrow. it was passed unanimously at first reading, and we have six co-sponsors as there's kind of trailing regulations. our bureau of streets and mapping right now is working on those regulations. those are really the specific types of dimensions and details. and it also lays out exactly how the process works. and then we have a whole communication plan that includes like an online, very user friendly portal that's very clear. multi lingual brochures, posters and so on. and we also want to do some community outreach, particularly in, i mean, everywhere, but particularly in communities that maybe haven't done these community driven projects because it seems really inaccessible, awful and just overwhelming. and then this is the last this is the last slide. it just sort of shows our general timeline and how we got here and open to any questions for myself or jen. thank you so

much for the presentation. um, commissioner, vice president ziziunas thank you. can you maybe give us a sense of how this would interplay with a small business? so like, because i've only heard examples of private like residential property owners or public right of ways, it it doesn't. there's there's not really an example. we can think of right now. well, i'll tell you the a simple example like a small business might just want to put a bench on the sidewalk, but not to use for commercial purposes. so it doesn't it's not instead of a tables and chairs permit or or a small business might want to put a little library out, you know, in the furnishing zone, not obviously in path of travel. so those would be sort of the only ways that we can imagine like one single business owner. but we do imagine like commercial corridors as as a group getting together to do these projects. okay. thank you. and you said these these are permanent

fixtures you're looking at now, but there might be another phase of more temporary. and i feel like that might be something small businesses could then maybe better play into host events and completely. yeah i agree. i mean i know and i spoke to your director that like that's definitely more in your wheelhouse in terms of interest, but definitely did want to let you know this was happening and get any feedback. yeah thank you. and then my second question was, you said you as part of this study, you been collecting data on fines and that sort of thing that are incurred from public right of way use. did you mention something that you were. i didn't i didn't really talk about fines. no but but fee structure like we looked at our existing fee structure and it was quite it's quite expensive. and typically a community group will go to their supervisor and ask them to waive. and so you have legislation that's a workaround and we were trying to avoid that and just sort of say, let's have a let's have a

reasonable fee structure that's well, well below cost recovery. but does make a group have to have a little skin in the game because in most in tier two and three, there's definitely fundraising involved. and we work with community groups all the time and we see that sometimes they get grants from the city or sometimes they raise funds in the neighborhood. okay yeah, yeah. i was just curious about that, just because i know that that's a bigger topic of, of public right of way incursion things and we'd love to see data on, you know, we, we all want to help better use of our public right of ways. and so if there is part of this where you all are collecting data on use of public right of ways and where there's been, um, you know, where you want to bring people into compliance. so that would be helpful for us to see if there is data around that. okay yeah, we haven't looked at that for this, but i think for maybe sort of the next round of, of

different type of legislation. yeah, i think that would be interesting to see. thank you, commissioner herbert. i just want to say thank you for your presentation. these projects are so important to the vibrant city of the city and bringing people together in the community and it's just great that you're working on reducing the fee structure and just making it more palatable for neighborhood groups. and it's really important work. and thank you. thank you. yeah, i appreciate it. i mean, i think when we when we describe san francisco to our friends or like our visitors, like we want to take them right to the murals or the tiled staircases, i mean, these are the places where that beautiful little garden, you know, in the business district, these are the places that we feel pride, pride , a pride of place. so, yeah, thanks, commissioner benitez. cool. thank you for your presentation. and i concur with commissioner herbert as well that doing these kind of things is really brings like an identity to the neighborhood i

think is really great. one of the things you had mentioned about this was that trying to speed up the timeline. i'm just curious what the current timeline is from application to approval. and what do you hope to shave that down to? i've sat in some of these merchant meetings as well where we're just constantly waiting and just waiting for approvals. but what what's the current timeline now and what's your projection of what you hope it can eventually be? yeah, you know, it depends on the project. as you can see, there's a range. is there? yeah i mean, for the major encroachment projects like a tiled staircase we've worked i mean like jen and i and others have worked a lot with community groups around todd staircase, acs, and because major encroachment projects have to go through the board of supervisors, i mean, we say it takes 12 to 18 months for that to happen. and then honestly, during covid, like everything just super slowed down, you know? so we do have groups that like have been working on this for two years and we have a community challenge grant and then the community challenged grant has is a certain time limit in terms of their funding

requirements and then they get out of compliance with their cg grant. so i mean, those are things we were listening to. i mean, for major encroachment, it's because they will not have to go through the board easily, see that being cut in half. i can't say right now. you know, there's i mean, honestly, there'll be a little bit of a learning curve when we introduce this. this will be the it'll be a new portal, a new staff and so on. but we feel like we know the we know the projects well. so it's definitely going to be considerable different now the other caveat i would say is that especially i mean tier one will just happen automatically, but for tier two and three, where it has to go to other departments like definitely going to the arts commission, you know, a lot of them go to the arts commission, but there are many that go to mta and puc and we can't really control how long they sit there. we can encourage them and we can put we can put pressure on them or my colleagues can put political pressure on them. so we can't

you know, we're not in charge of the full process. right. director tang, thank you. i just had a question that i know has come up repeatedly, so just perhaps we could get some clarity on the record. but if a single business owner wants to get string lights on, just say the tree. the one tree in front of their shop. it seems like it would be tier two too, but let's say it's just a business and it's not a nonprofit, it's not a cbd. it's not a merchant association that's going to be applying for this permit with the single business owner. have to apply for this permit for $500. yeah if you could just clarify that situation. i believe i believe it would be tier one actually, because it would just be in front of one property owner. so so, you know, so one of the things is we're talking about property owners. we're not talking about tenants. so that so that's actually really important. and particularly because many of

your business owners are tenants, they're not landlords. but the way this is set up in terms of liability and legal is around property owners. so and we haven't we haven't had city attorney look at it in terms of tenants and business tenants. i mean, that is something, you know, as jen mentioned, it might be something we could do in trailing legislation or a question because when it comes to, say, things like building permits that are usually pulled by business tenants, what they'll do is they'll have to get a property owner sign off. and so is that something that you would contemplate then, instead of, i don't know that it would need to be trailing legislation, but more of implementation that a small business owner would need to come in with a property owner package. i think we want to keep this as simple as possible. so i think that's one of the questions that we need to answer in the regulations. i think yours is a very specific question to string lights. that's on a public tree. and so i think if we do do a registration process, it's a little different than installing, say, a little library. so i think we'd

probably have something a little bit different for that depending on whether or not you know, that string light is going to be plugged in or if it's just battery operated. i think those are like the nuances that need to get worked out in the registration process. but i think to your point, we would like to make it as easy as possible to not have to require, you know, all these different types of regulations if it's not necessary. so if it's not like a permanent structure, i would venture to think that they would not necessarily need permission from a property owner because it's not necessarily on their property, but in the public right of way and would need to get permission, so to speak, from public works. i hope that answers the question. that would be ideal to make it as simple as possible. so. so again, you're going back to this. you're saying it's most likely tier one, not tier two, or we have to we probably have to. look, i would say that our intention when talking about string lighting and tier two is we were looking at lights down a corridor. we haven't really addressed like specifically lights in front of a store like

one one property owner. so we'd have to sort of look at that during the regulations piece. okay. yeah, it would be great because that question does come up a lot. so we have to be able to provide the correct information to people. yeah we will definitely look into that and get back to you. great. i just had a few questions. see for any, i think mostly for tier one, but maybe you could speak to the other tiers as well. what is the response ability for like neighborhood outreach for the applicant there? there's actually not for tier one, there's no neighborhood outreach as a private property owner, you can if you self certified that you're within the safety and accessibility guidelines, you can register for those types of on those types of projects. yeah. okay and then tier two and three would be whatever it is that they're currently kind of in right now. currently, you

know, and this may slightly change maybe when we get to the regulations, but i'm not expecting it to. is that currently we're working off of what the arts commission requires because most of these are like murals and tiled staircases and they require letters of letters of support. they don't require noticing. okay. so and for the string lights, you know, i was involved in a lot of the string lights that kind of went up in the city. we did our very best to keep them very safe. no, i know. i love them, but i'm just saying it from like from just my public works hat. i'm just saying there was not a permit. full disclosure. but you know, one of the questions is just that the string lights tend to go like through several, several blocks. right. and so and the projects also tend to kind of grow also. so sometimes, like what we've seen and this is where i think the small business component

comes in is like what you were saying, the merchants associations or different neighborhood groups get involved and it's kind of like, you know, this stretch, these five blocks, get the string lights and they're like, but like at that time, nobody else wanted the string lights. but then people see them and they're like, now i have string light envy. like, how do i how do i get string lights? you know? yeah, exactly. so the project kind of like grows in scale. so the $500, are we looking at a $500 for the first five or the first phase of the things and then the next people have to pay another five? where does this begin and end? yeah, i think it's a great question and something we've thought about, but we haven't figured it out. i mean, i think again, like if you go back to the goals we're trying to make it easy and sort of low barrier. so we're not looking for places to like raise, raise money. so i don't i don't know the answer to that, but i do understand it. i think what might become more complicated, what could become complicated for certain commercial corridors, is like,

who's taking responsibility for it. so like the merchant association of that corridor may have decided like, okay, they put up five blocks and then like the stores in the next two blocks want them to. those folks will have to convince that merchant association to extend and extend the lights because, again, they have to be an organization. okay and that's and that's so that there's like an ongoing commitment in terms of maintenance and liability, because if it's just one person who's it's like even it's like a beloved business owner who's been there ten years or whatever, we don't know what's going to happen in three years. and like they may decide to leave or whatever. so we need it to be an organization. sure. um and also in terms of this one stop portal, i'm wondering, like i don't know, i don't want to hearken back to something else except i do kind of want to bring it up is like the, you know, is the graffiti kind of

situation for i think it's kind of like where you opt into the program. and then so small businesses had to opt in to opt in to this program. and i think department of public works was that the right agency? yeah would then be able to come out to certain to the corridors that are in within the legislation to help with graffiti removal and that i was super excited about it. but then the sign up for the sign up i don't know. i don't think it's really a portal. it was like a fax machine. i think. i believe there was like a fax component to it. so i'm just a little bit like a little bit like unsure about this idea of a one stop portal. this was this was last year, if you remember. i know about this program. i didn't know about the fax machine. i do know it was not

involved with that program. i did hear that the sequencing of the rollout was not as smooth as it could be, is what i've heard for the opt in graffiti. like we weren't quite ready when people wanted it to start. that's all i can say. i think our desire and jen and i have been working on this a lot is like we've been pushing this forward. we really want this to happen as soon as possible. we've got like five tiled staircase that are like ready to go and they're super frustrated because it's been like two years. so we want that to happen for them. and on the other hand, we want to do it right. so we want to have that portal in really good shape. we want the regulations and really clear shape before we before we launch it. so, you know, we're trying to balance that. we're trying to balance doing it well and doing it now. okay. well i look forward to seeing the one stop portal. i think that would be really great for all of our agencies and i appreciate that you put that as a priority for

this. and if there's any possible way to pass a post-it to whoever's in charge of the fax machine, because i just really want to find out about that fax machine. i want to make sure small businesses like can take advantage of this because graffiti removal is so onerous for somebody to have to come and open their shop and have to remove graffiti from their from their storefront. and there are still people getting notifications of violations of like graffiti, which is super disheartening in this type of environment. i think you were here earlier when you know, businesses talked about some of the challenges that they're having this year as well as in the past previous years. and it's like it's literally those little things that drive people mad is that, you know, if you're already trying your very best every day and then you get like a notification on your door that somebody's graffitied your place and that it's your responsibility to then remove it asap. you know? so i think, um,

i think those kind of things are the things that we hear daily. and i'm sure you hear as a, you know, and so i'm hoping if we can get rid of that like low hanging fruit, if we can get people logged into a one stop portal and like register your business for graffiti removal, that would be amazing. so i know . okay. yeah, i will. i will definitely go back to my folks and ask them about that. yeah just a little post-it note on their desk. would be amazing. thank you. any public comment? are there any public commenters in the room seeing none. seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. thank you so much for your presentation. thank you for having us. item six legacy business program fund conceptual framework. this is a discussion item the commission will review the current legacy business program, grant structure and discuss a strategy to make improvements to the existing rent stabilization grant. presenting today we have richard carrillo legacy business

program manager with manager with the office of small business. welcome back, rick. testing good. good evening, commissioners. richard carrillo legacy business program manager with the office of small business govtv. i have a powerpoint presentation today. i'm going to present a proposal that the office of small businesses proposing to do that, i need to provide the history of the legacy business program and its grant programs. there are about 20 slides in the presentation. i'm going to try to keep the presentation to about eight five minutes. the legacy business program in san francisco has a history that dates back to 2012. a business in union square gold dust lounge was being evicted, which led the nonprofit organization san francisco heritage to create a legacy. bars and restaurants program within their organized mission by 2014. businesses throughout san francisco were being threatened by escalating

rents. in march 2015, the legacy business registry was created by the board of supervisors through a city ordinance to be eligible for the registry. a business must have, number one, operated in san francisco for 30 or more years with no break in san francisco operations exceeding two years. number two contributed to the neighborhood's history and or the identity of a particular neighborhood or community. and number three, be committed to maintaining the physical features or traditions that define the business. in november of that year, the approval of proposition j on the ballot created the legacy business history preservation fund, which created two grant programs that i will discuss in greater detail the legacy business program is like a toolbox filled with different tools to help longstanding businesses continue and thrive. there are four

categories of tools or assistance that we provide legacy businesses, marketing, promotion in business assistance grants and legislation. to today i'm going to talk about grants. as i mentioned, the legacy business historic preservation fund was established by a vote of the people and approved by about 57% of the voters in november 2015. the fund consisted of two grant programs the rent stabilization grant and the business assistance grant. the legacy business, historic preservation fund has its own section in the administrator code, section two, a243, which is separate from the legacy business registry and section two, a 242. this is important why i'm bringing it up at this point. the rent stabilization grant is an incentive for landlords to provide long term leases to legacy businesses.

landlords apply for and receive the grant. the grant pays up to $4.50 per square foot, up to 5000ft!s. so 1000ft!s would be $5,000 per year. and 5000ft!s would be 22,500 per year. grant applications are accepted year round. a biennial consumer price index adjustment has been added every two years since 20 1719. the business assistance grant was a former grant for legacy businesses as it paid up to $500 per full time equivalent employee up to 100 ftes. so. one fte would be a $500 annual grant and 100 ftes would be a $50,000 annual grant biennial adjustments were also added to this grant. note that there were no dedicated source of funds associated with property mission

j. the mayor generously included $1 million for grants and $20,000 $20,400 in the annual budget for the legacy business. historic preservation fund starting in 1617. unspent funds rolled over to the following year. the board of supervisors generously provided additional funding during several fiscal years. there were numerous issues with the business assistance grant. it was not related to rent, which is generally the purpose of the legacy business program. it was difficult for applicants to produce payroll reports needed to confirm their data. it was extremely time consuming for office of small business staff to review payroll reports. there was a big difference 100 times between the smallest and largest grants, and it was not worth the time and effort for micro businesses to apply. after two

years, 16, 17 and. sorry, i might have that wrong. 1718 is what it should be. there was no longer enough money to fully fund both the rent stabilization grant and the business assistance grant. since the rent stabilization grant was determined to be effective strategy to stabilize long standing businesses in san francisco and the business assistance grant had so many challenges, the sbc directed the office of small business in november 2018 to quote, prioritize the funding of rent stabilization grants to qualified landlords over other grants paid through the legacy business historic preservation fund. the business assistance grant was, in effect only for four years total and was discontinued after fiscal year 1920. the office of small business created a replacement

grant for the business assistance grant that we call the legacy business grant. it differed between renters owners was for profit businesses and nonprofit organizations to create four categories of grantees. as for profit renters receive four x for profit property owners received three x non profit, renters received two x and non profit. property owners receive x. x is determined by the amount of money available and the number of businesses within within each of the four categories. the grant is simpler, easier, less time consuming and more equitable. all we implemented it as a one time grant with $400,000 from the board of supervisors in fiscal year 2122 to create a new grant program, it required that we moved money out of the legacy business historic preservation fund. that is important. with regard to my presentation today, so i highlighted it in yellow because the legacy business historic

preservation fund was created by a ballot initiative. we could not create a new grant program within that fund. today the rent stabilization grant for landlords is the only available grant through the legacy business program. the office of small business can encourage landlords to share rent stabilization grants with their legacy business tenants. but we cannot require it without going back to the voters. approximately 60% of rent stabilized grant landlords share some or all of the grant funds with their tenants. however, 40% do not. on november 2nd of this year, the san francisco chronicle featured a thorough front page article by caleb pershan about the rent stabilization grant and its slightly one sided nature how it favors landlords over legacy businesses and how some landlords share the grant with their legacy business tenants.

but some do not. the article was an inspiration. it got me thinking since the rent stabilization grant is the only available grant that the legacy business program currently has. is there a way that the office of small business could require that landlords share some of the grant funds with the legacy businesses without going back to the voters? and this is something we've been pondering for several years, is there is. we could create a new legacy business program fund in the administrative code. this is possible because the legacy business historic preservation fund did not include a dedicated source of funding. we could then place the funding we receive in the annual budget in this new legacy business program fund, the city attorney's office advised that this is acceptable. i'll note that this would of course be dependent on support from the mayor and from the board of supervisors as required board of supervisors action. the

new legacy business program fund would give the office of small business flexibility to create rules that otherwise would not be possible without going back to the voters, we would replicate the rent stabilization grant as a new grant within the new fund with slight changes to the rules and a new, slightly different name. the business stabilization grant. the new grant would come before the sbc as an action item. ideally at the january 22nd meeting. as we're working on the budget for the next fiscal year, the board of supervisors would have a review period. we would slowly phase out the existing rent stabilization grant over time by accepting re application for the multi-year grants, but not accepting new applications. the proposed rule changes for the new grant would require that landlords share at least 50% of the new business stabilization grant with legacy businesses and eliminate the special contingency contingency provision that landlords are

allowed to put into the lease, which allows a landlord to cancel a legacy business lease if the landlord does not receive $44.50 per square foot through the rent stabilization grant. thank you for your time. i'm open to any questions. thank you very much for your presentation. i see director tang don't have a question, but just want to thank my staff. obviously for this great proposal, as we all know that the legacy business program, when it was first established, was very well intentioned. but like many things that are established through voter initiative, it makes it really hard for us to change things later on. if we find that there are issues. so this was a creative way, i think, around this problem that we see, which is we would love for more of the funding to go directly to the hands of small businesses. so again, thank you, rick, for coming up with this idea. yeah, thank you. um oh,

commissioner herbert. sorry well, yeah, thank you very much. and, um, has. has there been any conversation about the timeline or the, um, how how long the legacy business needs to be existing like it's been, is it always been 30 years for the. yeah. that would be pertaining to the legacy business registry. so that would be 2a2 42 in the administrative code and we wouldn't be would not be making any changes to that. okay. this would just be pertaining to the grant program. got it. but yes, 30 years, there is an exception for businesses that are between 20 and 30 years. if the business is at risk for immediate risk of immediate displacement and getting on the registry would help them. so one of the businesses that came before you in item two today was to 35 years old and eligible for the

registry. great. okay. thank you, commissioner ortiz, cartagena thank you, rick, for that. that was great. and i love that, you know, article got your brain working and trying to like live up to the intent and the spirit of what we initially, you know, try to work with the legacy business. my question is just just because, you know, like as a commissioner. so i know you said the city attorney said it's okay to do and then we're going to bring it up to the mayor and the board of supervisors. i ask because i don't know, but like, is this kind of standard practice for things? i just you know, because if the voters even if it's wrong, i just some kind of responsibility to make sure that we are following the voters wishes wrong or not. you know, more on that. i'm with it. i'm with the whole thing, you know, but i just commissioners i just want to make for due diligence purposes. we feel this is consistent with what the voters wanted because they wanted two grants, one for the businesses

and one for the landlords. and so when the business one dropped out, it was a little bit one sided. so we feel that this is, you know, going with the will of the voters, which is to have some of the money going to the businesses and some going to the property owners as well. thank you. um, i guess my question is so right now, this is kind of like the conceptual framework of the legislation on how else i mean, can we be helpful, i guess, is this helpful for you to kind of just see like how i don't know how we feel about it? what is the next step? i guess is um, yeah. yeah, this is not an action item, but if you definitely have any problems with it, you know, i would expect that you would say so. so we would definitely take that into consideration. so, you know, feel free if you have any issues to let us know at this point. and we are going to bring this off to create rules for the

grant. and we'll have a ten day notice period for that and we'll bring that to the january 22nd meeting. um, so it'll be identical to the rent stabilization grant, except for those two items that we mentioned. so that would be an opportunity where you can approve the rules. and if you need to make a motion, okay. um, vice president ziziunas, thank you. thanks for that, uh, really helpful presentation. and like my co commissioner said, thank you for always thinking about this program and taking it so much to heart. um, i know we, we had some, you know, political involvement from our board and at different points in time with this program. and i want to make sure that if we are asking for them to reauthorize funds at one point or if we're asking the mayor to authorize more funds at one point, that we're also, um, you know, keeping them updated

so that we don't get more bad press or whatever. um, so how can we, um, like we said, make sure that, you know, there's alignment with, with how we intend to get this funded? uh, i guess. i think katie could see him, like, trying to figure out the answer to that. but i just actually, i think it also goes to the previous question, but so in addition, rick mentioned the rules and regulations and having you all see that. but actually, i just want to reiterate, it does require a legislative change. so this is going to be an ordinance that will be drafted, that will be before the board of supervisors that then also needs to be signed by the mayor. so it's going to have a robust public process for it to actually take effect. i mean, it's good it's good that people are vocal and passionate about this program, but i just know that our commission has been in

the position before where we've had to you know, i want to make sure we're getting ahead of their political will, you know what i mean? so that we don't get have to do too much back and forth on this. and our ideas are in line. that's all. that's great. also, you know, early on when i first started seven years ago, you know, i was making regular presentations to the commission just reporting, i think it was like every other month. um, so, you know, now that everything's, you know, going smoothly, you haven't made those presentations. but if you ever want me to make a presentation on, you know, like an update on everything that's going on, i'm always happy to, to do that. um, i'm really big on transparency and appreciate great communication with the commission and feedback from the commission, so i'm always happy to do that. likewise, if there's something we need to relay that you can't, we're, um, all hands on deck for this. thank you both . great. well seeing no other commissioner questions, is there a public comment? any public

commenters in the room? please stand up. seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. thank you very much, rick. next item, please. uh, item seven approval of draft meeting minutes. this is a discussion and action item. the commission will discuss and take action to approve the september 11th, 2023 draft meeting minutes . commissioner is any questions or comments on on the minutes seeing no seeing no questions. all right. any public comment on the any comment on the meeting minutes? none seeing no comments , public comment is closed. commissioners can we take a motion to approve the draft meeting minutes? i'll take a motion to move moved by

commissioner dickerson is there a second? i second seconded by commissioner herbert. i'll read the roll. commissioner benitez. commissioner dickerson. yes, commissioner herbert. yes. president huey. yes. commissioner ortiz. cartagena. yes. and vice president ziziunas yes. motion passes. great. next item, please. item eight general public comment. this is a discussion item allowing members of the public to comment generally on matters that are within the small business commission's jurisdic ation, but not on today's calendar and suggests new agenda items for future consideration. any members of the public who would like to make comment on items not on the agenda see seeing no public comments. public comment is closed. next item please. item nine director's report. this is a discussion item providing an update and report

on the office of small business department programs, policy and legislative matters. et-cetera thank you and good evening, everyone. so of course i would like to join everyone in welcoming our newest commissioner, commissioner benitez, welcome. welcome. so since our last meeting, i know it's been a while. we had a few cancellations. just wanted to officially recognize former commissioners tricia gregory and tiffany carter, who have since left the commission. but of course, i know we all want to join in thanking them for their service here on this commission. and of course, we will also work on getting the remaining vacancy filled. the other update i wanted to share with everyone and you probably read in the news as well, is that we did have a requirement for midyear budget reductions from the mayor's office. this year. this is on top of additional budget cuts that were asked of us in preparing for the budget, going into this fiscal year. already i know there was a lot of talk

about our legacy business program earlier in the agenda, and i wanted to note that the office of small business is portion of that reduction was $95,000. we have a very small budget. it's about $3.3 million, which is mostly for staff, but there is a million of that for the legacy business program because we have nowhere to cut it. meaning even if i were to cut all the money for staplers and paper, it still would not have met our reduction target. and so we had to cut from the legacy business program. but the good news is there was some unspent funds from previous years. so our legacy business program was still whole, but we did have to take originally for the fiscal year 23, 24, roughly $395,000. and then for fiscal year 24, 25, approximately $400,000. so again, this is not something that we wanted to do,

but there really was nowhere to cut or else we would have to cut our services, essentially our staff. so we wanted to make sure you're aware of that. and we are hearing that there will be more cuts that will be required of us heading into the next fiscal years if things don't improve. so we are anticipating some instructions on that on that part. next, in terms of a legislative update, i just wanted to share good news that the small business permitting legislation that we worked on with the mayor who sponsored this legislation and we ended up with six co-sponsors. this would is the one that would make over 100 changes to the planning code to make it easier for people to get through the permitting process. just one of several efforts i want to say this is not the only thing that will make things better, but it's this legislation is up for final vote at the board of supervisors tomorrow, and it already obtained 11 zero votes last week. so this is really

exciting. we're hoping for this to be signed into effect shortly and hopefully take effect in mid-june, be the next legislative item is something that supervisor preston introduced recently. and this would waive permit fees for banners if there if it's applied for by a nonprofit organization until the end of 2026. i want to say. so that is new legislation that was just introduced last week. so it'll still take some time to make its way through the process. and then also so again, i know it's been a while since we've been here, so just wanted to do a very, very quick high level review or recap of apec, which as you all know, took place here in san francisco during the week of november 12th, the largest global event hosted by our city since the united nations charter was signed here in 1945. so, of course, along with it came a lot of challenges as our office,

along with food, try to work upfront with the us secret service to really understand the impacts that would be caused, especially to small business owners due to the security perimeters. so we try to understand it, convey that as well as try to promote the small businesses throughout the entire city and in particular those impacted by the security perimeters prior to and throughout the event and even afterwards. we have done merchant walks and also corresponded with other businesses that have reached out to us through other means to talk about what it is that we can do to better support them. not like apec aside, but really we know so many businesses are still recovering from the pandemic. so what can we do to generate more foot traffic for them and with a lot of people not going into the office, it's really hurt a lot of the businesses in those areas. so that's ongoing work for all of us. and if you have any ideas, suggest questions, recommendations. we'd love to

hear that in our office. and then lastly, just more on a fun note on behalf of ric, i wanted to share some heritage happy hour events that are coming up that you're all invited to these are events put on to celebrate legacy businesses. so they are held in legacy businesses. so the one coming up this thursday, december 14th, is at leap lounge in chinatown, down at 916 grant avenue. and rick, i forget what time they start. i apologize. 5:00, 5:00 pm they start so again, december 14th, leap lounge, 916 grant avenue and then the next one after that is january 11th at pop's bar, and that's at 2,824th street. and then i'll just give a third one here. february eighth, in case you want to mark your calendars. it's at the irish bank bar and restaurant at ten. mark lane so those are all my updates and happy to answer any questions. thank you. commissioners. any

questions. commissioner ortiz, cartagena. two comments. thank you for the work on the legislation with the mayor. i know you did a lot of work, especially in my community, so i appreciate you for that. director and thanks to kerry, i forgot to say that. kerry yes, appreciate you both. rick. thank you for those heritage. they're fun alcohol and getting to know each other outside of here. it's always fun. so awesome. vice president ziziunas thank you, director. i know that different community groups have put out their own surveys around apec. is there a central place in which feedback is being solicited? is it, um, in terms of, um, i, i think a lot of small businesses are under the impression that there will be like a mitigation fund or something like that. is there a way we can more clearly relate

to the small business community? what um, you know is being solicited from them and where that information will go? yeah. thank you for that question. we have actually received through our office and in general several surveys or feedback from all sorts of businesses in the area. so we do have those on hand. and i know supervisor dorsey had also solicited feedback as well. i will say this, this was a very challenging event, but there was no money set aside for mitigation. i also i want to remind the commissioners that every day our office hears about challenges in all parts of the city. so whether it's an mta project that has impacted an entire corridor for months and months and months to, let's say probably a lot of mta, but there are lots of impacts. again also i mentioned pandemic earlier, right? and a lot of people still have not been recovered fully from that. we hear across the

board in average of sales being down 30. right depending on where you're at. so um, although again, i recognize how significant it was for the businesses that could not stay open during apec. there are so many needs out there for. so we're constantly thinking about how is it that we support all the businesses throughout the city and we just don't have enough money to go around for everyone? and i just mentioned the budget cuts that are coming, right? so um, all that to say that, you know, all the money that was set aside by the city and that was privately raised by donors was mostly to meet the requirements from the white house and the state department around all of our obligations as a city to host apec. so security for the venues that had to hold all these meetings and events, but really mostly security. um, the fencing, you know, all those things that really, you know, allowing the first amendment activities to occur. but keeping everyone safe that that's,

that's what costs the city a lot of money. and so all that to say those costs, you know, aren't are the fund isn't available at this moment not to say i don't know what will happen in the future if they are able to find some funding. but that's the status at this moment. commissioner herbert so thank you. and um, so, uh, was the overall thought that apec was beneficial for san francisco or is that too is too much of a pointed question? i think it depends on who you ask. i think from city government leadership standpoint, it certainly was really meaningful just to see the tone of how international countries, you know, how they view san francisco and what they reporting back in their home country. media outlets, really important in terms of drawing tourism here, not just for the short term, but really the long term. and that perception of what san francisco is has really

hurt us quite a bit. so in that standpoint, from that standpoint, that's really important as well as the leaders was. and there was also a ceo conference that happened at the same time. so trying to draw investors to san francisco as well. so from the broader perspective, yes, it was helpful for san francisco, but of course, this is not to say that it was terrible experience for the small businesses within the security perimeter. like we totally recognize that. thank you. so, um, i just had a couple of comments. one was also to welcome commissioner ron benitez . and i don't know what would be an appropriate time if he wanted to say a few words. i know that maybe he i got to say a few words when i first started. i don't know if that's something

that we can do that at the commission or reports item. okay next one. just one. yes just to give them a few minutes to prepare, uh, address to the public. yeah. the state of the nation, according to commissioner ron benitez. um i also wanted to reflect my deepest gratitude for our co commissioners, commissioner tiffany carter, and for tricia as well. so, um, yeah, i'm. i'm glad that they're, you know, they have, i know everybody has other things to do. and so i appreciate all of you also to give your time to this commission. um, and, oh, you know, i wanted to say on apec that i appreciate the way that you've been looking at this, because i, you know, it it's an

indicator to me. obviously the concern around apec as well as concern around transportation mitigation, concerns about any other sort of like out side kind of larger project in impact kind of thing. like what? how those impact small businesses. i think the biggest indicator for me is that that means that we're so close to the edge right? like small businesses are not working with a big buffer there. and so things like that, you know, one weekend, one week of revenue is a really important. it's important to their bottom line. it's important for their survival. and you know, i think it's good to look at it in the bigger picture because this was one of the questions that we asked in our survey during pandemic was really how much of a buffer do you have? how much cash do you have in the bank to get you through the next week,

the next month, the next six months? and ideally, i mean, you should have several months on hand, right, of cash on hand to be able to cover your payroll expenses like all these different things. there are best standard practices. but if you look at like our san francisco businesses, many businesses, and it may not be even across the board, but many businesses are living with very little cash on hand. and that may be same for residents as well. right. and so i think for us, like these are all you know, it's hard to see because oftentimes it's like people come at us with a lot of like their own issues. right and for us as a commission, it's really seeing kind of the patterns and where what are the bigger levers that we can enact in order to help, uh, you know, create more long lasting change versus being a help desk for everybody. i mean, i appreciate that. that's what you, you guys do for everyone. but i definitely see that that's something that you consider in your thinking. did you want to.

oh, yeah. actually i just want to thank you for raising that because let's just say that there was a mitigation fund for apec, right? as an example. but there might be some structural issues with a business as, as you alluded to with many of the small businesses we encounter. so we give them a stipend for one month to cover rent. is that going to help them long term? right. we want to make sure that whatever the structural challenges are, we can assist them with that so that they can be here for the longer term, not just so that we can help them survive one more month. so i think that was, you know, that's that's part of my point of we want to make sure that, yeah, we're looking at holistically what can we do to drive more foot traffic, to get more of that presence of the business out there so that people will support them and how do we bring back, you know, with the lack of office workers, how do they generate new customers then or maybe rethink and pivot their business a bit so those are all the things that we want to help

businesses with and i think are more important for the long term stability. right. well is there any public comment on the director's report? no. public comment. public comment is closed. next item, please. item ten. commissioner discussion and new business. this is a discussion item allows the president vice president and commissioners to report on recent small business activities . make announcements that are of interest to the community and make inquiries of staff. um commissioner ortiz, cartagena. thank you, president hui. i wanted to report regarding the street vendor van that went into effect on november 27th from 14th street to cesar chavez on mission street. um, i want to give a thanks to glitch event. cuatro. they were not part of the band. however, they reacted to find accommodations for the vendors that were affected and the glitch team. they worked

through thanksgiving, actual thanksgiving to get a space ready in time for the band. so there's two locations. one indoor location at 2137 mission, which is in between 17th and 18th. and then gaia has another location on 24th and capp street, the former vaccination site. um, and there's still tunnel space. it's not full despite whatever the media says. and i want everybody to support the vendors shop there if you can. we had an awesome event on sunday. it was packed. it was fun. we had cookie decorations. santa claus, snow, you know how to throw a party so it gets lit. and also supervisor ronen is also providing some financial assistance, direct financial assistance to the vendors that were affected. so it's a lot of community work with the supervisor there and we're trying to mitigate the impact it's had on street vendors. and the ultimate goal is just to gain control of our streets again. i mean, the mission, i

grew up there and it was never like that. it was never like that. and our brick and mortar merchants, they're just they're thrilled. like the street is clean. our elders could walk. you could get off the bus. now you know, children are not scared. so i also want to thank the mayor and department of public works because they've thrown a lot of resources behind it. and it's working and it's working. and quality of life in the mission is improving. so i appreciate everybody. if i haven't named you on this, sorry , but i appreciate you to. bless you any other commissioners? um i guess i will go with my. oh, actually, you're. oh you have your state of the nation. sorry i'm very happy to be here. no, well, you know, this is my. my first meeting, so just obviously soaking it all in, um, kind of getting the gist of how everything works. but i really,

truly am excited to be here. you know, i've known about the commission for a long time. and finally being able to represent rent the neighborhood or represent now, you know, help represent the majority of the corridors from a different perspective. is something both really exciting and engaging and a challenge that i'm willing to take on. um, so yeah, i'm just really, really excited to, to be here and learn from all of you and work with all of you collaboratively, you know, on this commission, um, trying to think if there's anything else, you know, as you guys know, i work closely with our divisadero merchants association, so we just got a new president on there. so just trying to reestablish and revitalize that neighborhood. and so really excited to partner with them again to get everything really excited in that corridor. so that's a big news. oh, yes. also went to the white house this weekend. for a reception. it was

a holiday reception with vice president kamala harris. our relationship with her, though, has been, you know, we were fortunate to meet with her for a small business roundtable with other aapi businesses back in february. and from then on, it's always been a really great relationship with her staff. um we were invited to apec, obviously to watch her keynote. we were recently invited to a reception at the white house holiday reception, which turned out to be a california delegation really did see jenkins there. supervisor stephanie from district two and just a few other people that i recognize from san francisco. and then i realize, oh, this is a california get together. so while it was fun and exciting, it was great to just kind of get to know everybody on from a different perspective in a less, more formal setting. so it was really fun. but, you know, there's still a lot of work to do and so, you know, that's where i was this past weekend, turned it into a fun little weekend getaway, too. so we had to take our daughter out of school. but we said, hey, we'll take pictures in front of all

the monuments and show it to your teacher. so she's got her own history lesson that she's excited to share. it's amazing. see, this is what small business can do. you can go to the white house. this is amazing. run list, run list. well, my news sounds really not that exciting. no i you know, i think going back to what we were talking about, i don't want to go back to another agenda item, but presenting a new agenda item, looking forward into the new year. i'm wondering if a survey or something like that might be possible to put on kind of like new agenda items. i know, you know, for the past couple of years we've been doing the small business survey, but now i'm thinking perhaps we can hone in on not having so many questions, but we can get like five questions or something where it's like. for us to be able to

take a pulse on how small businesses are doing and that way we can see year over year change because i love making goals that are like, you know, lofty, you know, why should we not dream big and think like, can can 99% of businesses or whatever, 100% of businesses like, you know, i don't know why i left out the 1. i assume a 1% maybe doesn't want to participate. that's why. so but a 100% of businesses, you know, they should have enough cash on hand to be able to feel really comfortable that should something happen this weekend or something happened in the next week or two, whatever it is, doesn't set them off course. so i think these are some goals that we can, you know, put next to best practice courses and kind of see, you know, i think there should be a line moment, i think, between what we want for the businesses in our city with like overall best practice is

and oh vice president susan did you want to go now or after her or did you have a comment? i actually had a response to oh, sure. oh, good. you're making me think also about how we maybe should survey unless this is already happening. but at the success centers, the renaissance centers, you know, our sbdc. i'm curious, like if there's a space, maybe the sbdc does this convening or is there a way that we're getting a pulse from our small business service providers . to and maybe we can, you know, better identify, um, how we as a city can support those in the field that we're referring small businesses to. i don't know, maybe there's some trends we can pick up from that angle. i would, i think would be

interesting. yeah. um, director tay, i'd be happy to look into that. that would be our colleagues over at wd within the community economic development division that holds the contracts with the technical assistance providers. so would be happy to ask them as well as our colleagues at the small business development center. and any other things. i don't have any other things to report. i think that's it. okay, great. oh, public comment. is any anybody here want to make public comment? no public comment is closed. next item, please. item 11 adjournment sf govtv. please show the office of small business sli we will end with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small

businesses in san francisco. if you need assistance with small business matters, continue to reach out to the office of small business. this meeting adjourned .

>> okay, good morning, every one. this meeting will come to order. welcome to the december 11, 2023, regular meeting of the land use transportation committee of the board of supervisors. i'm imelda melgar. and jason is our staff person for sf tv.