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 .

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>> the two largest bridges in the road, symbolizing pioneer and courage in the conquest of space and time. between these two great bridges, in historic san francisco bay, here's tribute to the achievements of our time. he's a dream come true, golden gate international exposition on manmade treasure island. >> the 402 acre artificial island was build by engineers from 1936 to 1937 on the neighboring buena island. 300,000 tons of rock was used to build a seawall around an existing sand ball then followed by filling the interior with dredge material from the bay which was consistent of modern sand. the federal government paid for construction ask three permanent buildings which would serve as a potential future

airport. treasure island was constructed at the same time as the bay bridge and it was a project of works progress administration to construct this island, which was initially used to host the golden gate international exposition. >> carnival gone big. it was busy. >> it was going to become an airport after the exposition but it was turned over to the navy and turned over to a military base for the next 50 years. >> 1941, the united states army moved to treasure island as america prepared for world war ii. the island was a major training and education center with 4.5 million personnel shipped overseas from triangle. after the war ended in 1945, treasure island was slalthed to be an airport -- slated to be an airport but aviation changed and the clipper were no longer in

regular service, and the island was never developed as an airport. the navy continued their presence on treasure island. during the cold war years, the island was a myth training center and for military efforts throughout the pacific and asia. personnel trained on and shipped from treasure island and supported military activities in korea, vietnam and the persian gulf. >> the base was listed for closure by the navy in 1993 and the city began a process in 1994 under the redevelopment agency, forming a citizens reuse committee to look at potentially plans for the island, island's future. after the base closed in 1997, the treasure island development authority was created to develop and implement a reuse plan. >> the navy has completed their environmental cleanup in that area and last week, the

california department of public health issued a radiology unrestricted recommendation for that portion of side 12. it's a big milestone for the project. >> the treasure island development facility was setup to implement the master plan that was adopted by the board of supervisors in 2011. >> given the importance of housing in the city, both the affordable component and the market rate housing, we felt that it was important to review what the housing plan is at treasure island. >> the development facility and (indiscernible) that oversees the implementation of the master plan to make sure that the master plan, which was adopted by the board of supervisors and adopted by the city and after

meeting, that's plan that the city approved. the members of the board was appointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors. [multiple voices] >> the (indiscernible) is very detailed plan. looking at the ecological aspects of the island, looking at the geotechnical aspects of the island, but also making sure that there is an ongoing of development that's in keeping with what the original plan was, which is that we have up to 8,000 rooms of housing and there's retail and hotels. but also that there is open space that's created so it's an overall plan that guides the whole development of treasure island and the buena island. >> materials used during the construction of treasure island severely compromises the integrity to build structures.

in today's geotechnical engineers standing, treasure island soil is being readdressed for soil stabilization for future development. a mechanical stabilization process is being used to consolidate the liquid fashion of the mud and sandy soil. >> because treasure island is a manmade island, we have to do a significant amount of soil improvement before we can build new infrastructure and new buildings on the island. in the foreground, you see here, it's a process called surcharging we we import additional topsoil to simulate the dead weight of the future buildings to be constructed at that site. so this is causing bay mud that underlies island to consolidate over time and we can monitor that and as that consolidation primarily consolidation is complete, then this soil will be removed to the intended finished floor elevation of the new structures.

♪ [ music ] ♪ ♪ >> in the 1989 loma earthquake, the ground level of this island dropped by four inches. pretty much uniform across the island. loose sand material used to build the island, whether it gets hit by a seismic forces, the sand moves and consolidated. >> one of the processes to further stabilize the loose granular ground, a dynamic rate is used to densify the soil by high frequency mechanical vibrations. >> the rig in the background has four h-piles that goes down through the upper 50 feet of sandy material and as they vibrate, they vibrate causing that san material to consolidate and settle so as we do that process, we observe about 18 inches in settlement so the ground level around that equipment will drop by 18

inches, so this causes that same type of event to happen through mechanical means rather than through a seismic event. >> the dynamic vibrant compaction rate vibrates the soil every four square meters and moved along to the next section. to further assure stability, tamping is followed around the site, compassion takes approximately three to four months to complete 12 acres. once the compassion and tapping is done, it's settled ask using laser alignments to assure a level service to build on. >> i think that every city when they have the opportunity to do something that is as large as treasure island because treasure island is five hundred acres and it depends on their needs at that time and in 2011 to now,

the most important are thing for the city is housing. there's two aspects to that master plan. one, was the new district for san francisco. 8,000 units of housing, which is all levels of stability. the other (indiscernible) is 300 acres of open space and parks. and actually, it's the largest addition to the park system in san francisco since (indiscernible) 300 acres and this is a tremendous gift to the public, both the housing, which we desperately need in san francisco as well as an open space and park system which really is going to be worm class and it will attract people in san francisco but attract people locally as well as

internationally. >> cmg architecture was brought to the project once they award the agreement between the city of san francisco and the united states navy. cmg has earned national recognition and numerous awards for merits and design, social impact and environmental stewardship. >> we were a part of the project in the beginning when the developer initially was awarded the exclusive negotiation agreement or the ena with the city and they partnered with the planning and architecture group and we joined that team to work with the developer around the city and community to come up with a plan for treasure island. >> so there's quite a lot of open space in the master plan and there's a couple of reasons for that that's pragmatic. one is that the amount of area that could be converted for private use on treasure island was very limited, actually it wasn't allowed at all because treasure island was previously public open waters and protected by the

tidal and trust act to be redevelop for public use. but there was a land swap that was allowed and approved by the governor of california, governor schwarzenegger to be put on a public trust for a one to one swap to be taken out of the trust to be developed for private use such as residential and that amount of land was 89 acres which leaves a bunch more space that can't have housing on it and the question was, what to do with all of that space? there could be other public uses that allowed such as conference centers or museums or universities or things of that nature but what made the most sense for this location was to have more parks in a really robust parks and open space plan and that's what led us to the plan we have now. >> planting strategies for treasure island and buena island are to maximize habitat value in the park areas wherever

appropriate and where we can to create comfortable at the pedestrian scale. there are these diagonal lines that go across the plan that you'll see. those are wind row trees like you see in agricultural landscapes where they are tall tree that's buffer the winds to create a more calm areas down at the pedestrian scale. so of course, we do have some areas where we have play fields and surfaces where kids need to run around on and those will be either lawns or like you see in norm at sports field. >> related to where the housing is on the island and its convenience to the walk to the transit hub, i mentioned we're trying to create high-quality pedestrian -- and the innovations of treasure island is called the shared public way and it's a road that runs down the middle of the neighborhoods. it's a curbless street, cars are allowed to drive on it but pedestrian can walk down the middle of the street and the

cars are to yield the right-of-way for pedestrian and it's intended for streets where there's a low traffic volumes and the traffic speeds are low so while car was allowed, there's not a lot of reasons for cars to go on that street but it's to create a social street that's much more pedestrian-friendly and prioritizes pedestrians and bikes. one of the interesting things is working with all architects that have been designing buildings in the first phase to encourage them, to create architecture that welcomes people to sit on it. it's wlm like sticking its toe out and asking someone to sit on its toe so buildings integrate public seating and places for people to hang out at their base, which is really, the opposite of what you see often times in this city where there's defensive architecture that's trying to keep people off it. this is architecture that's trying to invite people to come and inhabit it at its base. >> incorporated in the landscape

architect of treasure island are wetlands, which are designed to factor in coastal erosion control from incoming sea level rise and natural animal habitation and stormwater runoff treatment. >> there's different kinds ever wetlands planned for treasure island and they have different purposes. they are stormwater wetlands that's treating the runoff from the island and filtering that water before it's released to the bay to improve the water quality in the bay and the ocean and the first phase of the large wetland infrastructure is built on buena island to treat the storm water from buena island. we might see that when we go out there. there are tidal wetlands plan for the northern side of the island where the sea level rise adaptation and flood protect for future sea level rise is held back away from the edge of the island to allow sea level rise to come onto the island to create future tidal wetland which is helpful for the bay in the future as we see sea

level wise flood out existing wetlands and there are some natural vernal pool in the wetland that's captured rainwater and capturing certain habitat so there's three purposes of the wetland primarily around water filtration and habitat creation. >> consumable sustainability was incorporated in the redesigning of treasure island. innovative urban farming is included in the plans to foster economic viability, conservation of water, and to promote ecological sustainability. >> the urban farm is 20 island. and it's a commercial farm to produce food. it's not community where the volunteers and neighbors grow their own, it's commercially run to maximize the food production and that food will be distributed on the island. and interestingly, the urban farm is tied into the on island wastewater treatment plan

which creates recycle use for water on the island so water used to grow the island will be a sustainable force and we're trying to close the loop of water, food, and create a new model for sustainability. >> part of the design for sustainable landscape was incorporate natural form water garden filtering systems, the first of three natural stormwater gardens is here on buena island. and a total of ten will be on treasure island. water from storms, street runoffs from neighborhoods has the possibility to collect toxic materials as it makes its way back into the surrounding bay. this garden has been a model for future, natural filtering systems through out the bay area. >> whenever a storm comes through, all of the water, you know, it lands on the streets, it lands on the top of the buildings, and at times it often collects a lot of heavy metals

and greases and it needs to be cleaned and before sent back into the back. it goes into the pipes and stormwater drainage and put into our stormwater basin and then all of the plants and soil you're seeing in there, they are acting as a filter for all those oils and heavy metals and greases and all things that's coming off the roadways, coming off the development and so it's treated here in the storm water basin and then it's sent out into the bay as a clearer product and cleaner water which increases our water quality here and throughout the bay area. so the structure in the center of each basin is what we call the for bay. that's the point at which the stormwater exits out of the storm drainage system and into the stormwater basin itself. so the for bay is shaped as almost a gate to kind of push all water out through the pipes, all of those rocks

help to disburse it before it's sent into the stormwater basin itself. the storm water basin was designed to fill up to the height of the berm of the side you're seeing here. so this is juncus and these are well-known fresh water grasses found in any place around the bay area that you find standing water or in a drainage channel, you're going to find a lot of these junket species. this is a leave a lifter in the bio treatment. it soaks up a lot of water, to soak up the contaminants and heavy metals, so it's kind of our backbone species. this one is called douglas siana and the common name is mug war. it's a beautiful plant but doing the heavy lift and pulling, those contaminants out of the storm water and pulling oil to help treat the water before its sent back into the system and back into the bay. this plant is

known as salvia or hummingbird sage. it has a lot of habitat value in that it's a strong pollinator plant. obviously, you can see the pink and purple flowers which come up in the springtime and attracts a lot of hummingbirds, a lot of bees which help to pollinate the other species within the garden and throughout the rest of the island and all of those native plants. all of these plants are designed to be able to take a heavily inundation of water over a several day per like standing water for a long time. all of the plants can withstand that and honestly, thrive in that condition. so all of these were selected based on the ecological and habitat value but also their treatment and functional value for stormwater. >> this is super tiny. >> it's very much a big part of our design and master plan for the development of the island. it was a navy base and a lot of navy housing on this island

specifically for around 80 years and during that time, a lot of innovative species were introduced on the island, eucalyptus, a lot of different european and algerians plants were on the island. we wanted to bring in the native eye college here on the island before the navy started to redevelop it and introduce some of those invasive species so the species you're seeing in this stormwater garden in the basin and the upland area was a part of those types of ecology s that's trying to be returned to this side of the island but different other spaces through out the islands development. so whenever we started this process, we identified a number of species of native plants that seem applicable to the ecology that

we're trying to grow. there's 45 species, so a -- there's 15 species so they are hard to find in the nursery trade so we needed to grow it ourselves to achieve the biodiversity that's in the design here. as a part that have process, we brought on a nonprofit group called ledge, l-e-g- which is literacy for environmental justice. they grew those plants and put together the plant palates you see. >> most of landscape was inundated with invasive plant species eradicating species and having the plan on buena island and treasure island. literacy for environmental justice, a community volunteer educational program involved with restoring local habitats and preserving

san francisco's unique bio tie varsity, teamed up with the redevelopment group to grow the 50,000 native plants to -- to repopulate treasure island. >> the city of san francisco set up meetings between leg and they came in with high expertise and urban design, and architecture, and green infrastructure, but they really hadn't worked with flytive plants -- worked with native plants at scale and they were also kind of scratching their heads, like how are we going to grow 50,000 native plants from remnant native plant populations. it was a unique partnership of figuring out what plants can grow, what plants will function in stormwater gardens. not all native plants are ascetically pleasing to landscape architect, so we kind of worked around what plants are going to be pleasant for people, what plants are going to provide

habitat, what plants are going to actually be able to sequester carbon, deal with erosion, preserve the island biodiversity as well as be able to manage all of these stormwater treatment on the island. >> there's about 33 naturally occurring native plant species that survived the last one hundred years on yorba buena island. we were able to go in and get the seed and salvage plants in some cases, some of the development work that occurred was actually going to destroy native plant habitat and we went in before the bulldozers and before the roads were build and the new water tanks were installed and dig them up, divide them, hold them, of the 50,000 plants we grew 40,000 of them in-house and the other ten,

we had to rely on our partners to do it. with the 50,000 plants we did, we did 100 species and 95 of them are from the county of san francisco. about the other five are from the state of california. but the other 95 species really are the native plants that have been here for thousands of years. we used collection sites such as angel island, the presidio had genetics for the projects in san francisco. we used remnant plant habitats at hunters point and we used a lot of genetics from san bruno mountain. just to collect and process all of the genetics was a two-year process. and then it was about a two or three year process to grow all the species. >> this is the infamous -- it's

a low, growing sprawling native herb and it's in the mint family and i'm rubbing my hands on this and it's extremely aromatic. it feels like a flush of peppermint just came across my face. it's edible. you can make tea out of it. it's a great digestive plant for settling your stomach. it has been cool to introduce yerba buena to yerba buena. this plant is called dutchman's pipe. when in bloom, the flower looks like a dutchman's pipe. and another thing that's unique about this plant is, it's the whole specific plant for the pipeline swallow tail butterfly. so some

butterflies are able to adapt to other species and can use larva and food from different species. in the county of san francisco, there's only about three or four healthy populations of this plant. these particular plants were going to be destroyed because of the green infrastructure project needed to put pipes in and needed to demolish all water tanks and build new water tanks for the island, so we were able to go in, dig them up, cultivate them, extrapolate dozens of plants into hund hundreds of plants and restore it through the restoration process. one day one of my nursery managers was down here and she found the pipeline butterfly have flown over from yerba buena island and came to our nursery on treasure island

and was breeding on this plant. and successfully did its life cycle inside of our nursery. so, it? how that butterfly knows it's out there and find it, this is one of those unique things that we can't explain why butterflies can find this species but if we grow it and put it in the right location, they will return. so the plants we're looking at here is faranosa known as just dedlia or live forever. the construction is it work happen nothing that area, it's likely to be destroyed. a unique thing about this plant and the unique succulents we have in california and the live forever plant can live to be 150 years old. recently, the state of california just did special legislation to protect this

plant. i think in its intact population on the island, there's less than 50 of them, so to be able to grow several hundred of them and have them be a part of the plant palate of the stormwater gardens that was installed recently is an increase of biodiversity and a step forward towards protecting the natural legacy of the island. >> i moved to treasure island in 1999. i believe i was one of the first residents on the island. i have seen how the island has been destroyed and reconstruct since its beginning to restore the island to its native form is extremely important to me because that will help all the animals come back to the island and make this place even a better place to live. >> i want to be here because

these are people i know, so that was my first thing is just, like, i wanted to come here to help out and be with (indiscernible) and to actually put my hands in dirt. i feel like we as people don't work in army -- we don't see the benefits of plants, like, but i just learned about a plant that if you rub it enough, it turns into soap. that's cool. and we need those things. we need to know about those things. >> one really unique thing about this project is the scale. to use 50,000 native plants over 7 acres is a scale we have never seen. it really is trailblazing when we think about the 350 or 400 acres of open space that is planned for treasure island, it sets the stage for what is possible. there's a way to use nature-based solutions at scale

to meet the needs of climate change, sea level rise, the crisis of local extinction and create natural environment. the first phase of the project sets a stage for what is possible and i just feel really blessed to have been a part of it. >> one of the main focus on triangle is keeping vehicle traffic to a minimum. for residents and visitors, public transportation is highly encouraged and will be the center point of keeping the island pedestrian-friendly, retaining an open space sent and providing an eco system that reducing carbon emission >> we need the transit to be successful because if we had 8,000 homes here and everybody was trying to use their car to access the bay bridge every

month, it will overwhelm the system. new on and off-ramp are being constructed but all over the focus of the development is to be very transit oriented. triangle itself is very flat and very bikeable and walkable as a result and so there's a focus on using both bus and ferry service to get from the island to san francisco in the east bay. there will be a number of transit demand management tools that will be employed of the two new ramps to and from the -- to the island and allowing a limited number of cars to access the bridge and there will be a management toll to encourage the use of transit. >> all the market rate housing on the island, the price for residential unit whether that's a rental apartment or a for sale condo, the price of the unit is decoupled from the price of the parking spot. so people can buy a condominium without paying for

a parking spot. they choose to have a parking spot, they would pay an additional price. market rate residents are required to purchase take transit pass each month through their hoa fees or through their rent so the residents will begin the decision of driving or taking transit with a transit pass in hand each month. that transit pass will function as a muni fast pass allowing people to take muni and transfer within the muni network and function as an ac transit allowing people to take ac transit to the east bay and transfer within the ac transit system and it will also provide unlimited access to the treasure island ferry. >> treasure island is going to take decades to be fully build out. it's going to take some time for it to reach the

envelope that was passed by the board of supervisors and maybe there will be changes to it as well. we don't know what is going to happen in 50 years but i'm confident by the fact that the plan that was adopted was fully, fully thinking even for its time and the building the island to a way it's sustainable, it addresses sea level rise, but also gives the public the open space and parts that are so necessary to fill treasure island. there's economic, certainly, challenges and whether we're going to be able to build out all of what was desired in the master plan, it will -- time will tell, but i think that the last ten years, we've been coming to this point.

we are seeing incredible progress and the infrastructure is being finished by the island. market rate housing is being finished. affordable housing is being finished. and so, we feel within the next five years, substantial part of what we had envisioned is going to come to fruition.

>> once i got the hang of it a little bit, you know, like the first time, i never left the court. i just fell in love with it and any opportunity i had to get out there, you know, they didn't have to ask twice. you can always find me on the court. [♪♪♪] >> we have been able to participate in 12 athletics wheelchairs. they provide what is an expensive tool to facilitate basketball specifically. behind me are the amazing golden state road warriors, which are one of the most competitive adaptive basketball teams in the state led by its captain, chuck

hill, who was a national paralympic and, and is now an assistant coach on the national big team. >> it is great to have this opportunity here in san francisco. we are the main hub of the bay area, which, you know, we should definitely have resources here. now that that is happening, you know, i i'm looking forward to that growing and spreading and helping spread the word that needs -- that these people are here for everyone. i think it is important for people with disabilities, as well as able-bodied, to be able to see and to try different sports, and to appreciate trying different things. >> people can come and check out this chairs and use them. but then also friday evening, from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m., it will be wheelchair basketball we will make sure it is available, and that way people can no that people will be coming to play at the same time.

>> we offer a wide variety of adaptive and inclusion programming, but this is the first time we have had our own equipment. [♪♪♪].

>> (music). >> the ferry building one of san francisco most famous that as many of 15 thousand commuters pass through that each gay. >> one of the things that one has to keep in mind regarding san francisco is how young the city we are. and nothing is really happening here before the

gold rush. there was a small spanish in the presiding and were couriers and fisherman that will come in to rest and repair their ships but at any given time three hundred people in san francisco. and then the gold rush happened. by 182948 individuals we are here to start a new life. >> by 1850 roughly 16 thousand ships in the bay and left town in search of gold leaving their ships behind so they scraped and

had the ships in the bay and corinne woods. with sand the way that san francisco was and when you look at a map of san francisco have a unique street grid and one of the thing is those streets started off in extremely long piers. but by 1875 they know they needed more so the ferry building was built and it was a long affair and the first cars turned around at the ferry building and picking up people and goods and then last night the street light cars the trams came to that area also. but by the late 1880s we needed something better than the ferry building. a bond issue was passed for $600,000. to build a

new ferry building i would say 800 thousand for a studio apartment in san francisco they thought that was a grand ferry building had a competition to hire an architecture and choose a young aspiring architect and in the long paris and san francisco had grand plans for this transit station. so he proposed the beautiful new building i wanted it wider, there is none tonight. than that actually is but the price of concrete quitclaim two how and was not completed and killed. but it opened a greater claim and became fully operational before 1898 and first carriages and horses for the primary mode of

transportation but market street was built up for serve tram lines and streetcars could go up to the door to embarcadero to hospitals and mission street up to nob hill and the fisherman's area. and then the earthquake hit in 190 six the ferry building collapsed the only thing had to be corrected once the facade of the tower. and 80 percent of the city would not survive the buildings collapsed the streets budges and the trams were running and buildings had to highland during the fire after the actuate tried to stop the mask fire in the city so

think of a dennis herrera devastation of a cable car they were a mess the streets were torn up and really, really wanted to have a popular sense they were on top of that but two weeks after the earthquake kind of rigged a way getting a streetcar to run not on the cable track ran electrical wires to get the streetcars to run and 2 was pretty controversial tram system wanted electrical cars but the earthquake gave them to chance to show how electrical cars and we're going to get on top this. >> take 10 years for the city to rebuild. side ferry use was

increasing for a international exhibition in 1950 and people didn't realize how much of a community center the ferry building was. it was the center for celebration. the upper level of ferry building was a gathering place. also whenever there was a war like the filipino war or world war two had a parade on market street and the ferry building would have banners and to give you an idea how central to the citywide that is what page brown wanted to to be a gathering place in that ferry building hay day the busiest translation place in the world how people got around transit and the city is dependent on that in 1915 of an

important year that was the year of our international exposition 18 million living in san francisco and that was supposedly to celebrate the open of panama differential but back in business after the earthquake and 22 different ferry boats to alamed and one had the and 80 trips a day a way of life and in 1918 san francisco was hit hard by the flu pandemic and city had mask mandates and anyone caught without a doubt a mask had a risk ever being arrested and san francisco was hit hard by the pandemic like other places and rules about masks wearing and what we're supposed to be more than two people without our masks on i read was that on the

ferry those guys wanted to smoke their pipes and taking off their masks and getting from trouble so two would be hauled away. >> the way the ferry building was originally built the lower level with the natural light was used for take it off lunge storage. the second floor was where passengers offloaded and all those people would spill out and central stairway of the building that is interesting point to talk about because such a large building one major stairway and we're talking about over 40 thousand people one of the cost measures was not building a pedestrian bridge

with the ferry building and the embarcadero on market street was actually added in and in 1918 but within 20 years to have san francisco bay the later shipbuilding port in the world and the pacific we need the iron that. as the ferry system was at the peak two bridges to reach san francisco. and automobiles were a popular item that people wanted to drive themselves around instead of the ferry as a result marin and other roots varnished. the dramatic draw in ferry usage was staggering who was using the ferry that was a novelty rather than a transportation but the ferry

line stopped one by one because everyone was getting cars and wanted to drive and cars were a big deal. take the care ferry and to san francisco and spend the day or for a saturday drive but really, really changed having the car ferry. >> when the bay bridge was built had a train that went along the lower level so that was a major stay and end up where our sales force transit center is now another way of getting into the city little by little the ferry stopped having a purpose. >> what happened in the 40 and 50's because of this downturn we were trying to find a purpose a number of proposals for a world

trade center and wanted to build it own the philly in a terrible idea objective never gotten down including one that had too tall towers a trade center in new york but a tower in between that was a part of ferry building and completely impractical. after the cars the tower administration wanted to keep americans deployed and have the infrastructure for the united states. so they had an intrastate free plan the plan for major freeway systems to go throughout san francisco. and so the developers came up with the bay bridge and worked their way along embarcadero. the plans

were to be very, very efficient for that through town he once the san francisco saw had human services agency happening 200 though people figure out city hall offender that the embarcadero free was dropped and we had the great free to no where. which cut us off from the ferry building and our store line and created in 1989 and gave us the opportunity to tear down the free. and that was the renaissance of ferry building. >> that land was developed for a new ferry building and whom new embarcadero how to handle

travel and needed a concept for the building didn't want- that was when a plan was developed for the liquor store. >> the san francisco ferry building has many that ups and downs and had a huge hay day dribbled adopt to almost nothing and after the earthquake had a shove of adrenaline to revise the waterfront and it moved around the bay and plans for more so think investment in the future and feel that by making a reliable ferry system once the ferry building will be there to

surface. >>

>> i don't think you need to be an expert to look around and see the increasing frequency of fires throughout california. they are continuing at an ever-increasing rate every summer, and as we all know, the drought continues and huge shortages of water right now. i don't think you have to be an expert to see the impact. when people create greenhouse gases, we are doing so by different activities like burning fossil fuels and letting off carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we also do this with food waste. when we waste solid food and leave it in the landfill, it puts methane gas into the atmosphere and that accelerates the rate at which we are warming our planet and makes all the effects of climate change worse. the good news is there are a lot of things that you can be doing, particularly composting and the added benefit is when the compost is actually applied to the soil, it has the ability to reverse climate change by

pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil and the t radios. and there is huge amount of science that is breaking right now around that. >> in the early 90s, san francisco hired some engineers to analyze the material san francisco was sending to landfill. they did a waste characterization study, and that showed that most of the material san francisco was sending to landfill could be composted. it was things like food scraps, coffee grounds and egg shells and sticks and leaves from gardening. together re-ecology in san francisco started this curbside composting program and we were the first city in the country to collect food scraps separately from other trash and turn them into compost. it turns out it was one of the best things we ever did. it kept 2.5 million tons of material out of the landfill,

produced a beautiful nutrient rich compost that has gone on to hundreds of farms, orchards and vineyards. so in that way you can manage your food scraps and produce far less methane. that is part of the solution. that gives people hope that we're doing something to slow down climate change. >> i have been into organic farming my whole life. when we started planting trees, it was natural to have compost from re-ecology. compost is how i work and the soil biology or the microbes feed the plant and our job as regenerative farmers is to feed the microbes with compost and they will feed the plant. it is very much like in business where you say take care of your employees and your employees will take carolinas of your customers. the same thing. take care of the soil microbes and soil life and that will feed

and take care of the plants. >> they love compost because it is a nutrient rich soil amendment. it is food for the soil. that is photosynthesis. pulling carbon from the atmosphere. pushing it back into the soil where it belongs. and the roots exude carbon into the soil. you are helping turn a farm into a carbon sink. it is an international model. delegations from 135 countries have come to study this program. and it actually helped inspire a new law in california, senate bill 1383. which requires cities in california to reduce the amount of compostable materials they send to landfills by 75% by 2025. and san francisco helped inspire this and this is a nation-leading policy. >> because we have such an immature relationship with nature and the natural cycles and the carbon cycles, government does have to step in and protect the commons, which

is soil, ocean, foryes, sir, and so forth. -- forest, and so fors. we know that our largest corporations are a significant percentage of carbon emission, and that the corporate community has significant role to play in reducing carbon emissions. unfortunately, we have no idea and no requirement that they disclose anything about the carbon footprint, the core operation and sp360 stands for the basic notion that large corporations should be transparent about the carbon footprint. it makes all the sense in the world and very common sense but is controversial. any time you are proposing a policy that is going to make real change and that will change behavior because we know that when corporations have to disclose and be transparent and have that kind of accountability, there is going to be opposition. >> we have to provide technical

assistance to comply with the state legislation sb1383 which requires them to have a food donation program. we keep the edible food local. and we are not composting it because we don't want to compost edible food. we want that food to get eaten within san francisco and feed folks in need. it is very unique in san francisco we have such a broad and expansive education program for the city. but also that we have partners in government and nonprofit that are dedicated to this work. at san francisco unified school district, we have a sustainability office and educators throughout the science department that are building it into the curriculum. making it easy for teachers to teach about this. we work together to build a pipeline for students so that when they are really young in pre-k, they are just learning about the awe and wonder and beauty of nature and they are connecting to animals and things

they would naturally find love and affinity towards. as they get older, concepts that keep them engaged like society and people and economics. >> california is experiencing many years of drought. dry periods. that is really hard on farms and is really challenging. compost helps farms get through these difficult times. how is that? compost is a natural sponge that attracts and retains water. and so when we put compost around the roots of plants, it holds any moisture there from rainfall or irrigation. it helps farms make that corner and that helps them grow for food. you can grow 30% more food in times of drought in you farm naturally with compost. farms and cities in california are very hip now to this fact that creating compost, providing compost to farms helps communities survive and get

through those dry periods. >> here is the thing. soil health, climate health, human health, one conversation. if we grow our food differently, we can capture all that excess carbon in the atmosphere and store it in unlimited quantities in the soil, that will create nutrient dense foods that will take care of most of our civilized diseases. so it's one conversation. people have to understand that they are nature. they can't separate. we started prowling the high plains in the 1870s and by the 1930s, 60 year, we turned it into a dust bowl. that is what ignorance looks like when you don't pay attention to nature. nature bats last. so people have to wake up. wake up. compost. >> it is really easy to get frustrated because we have this belief that you have to be completely sustainable 24/7 in

all aspects of your life. it is not about being perfect. it is about making a change here, a change there in your life. maybe saying, you know what? i don't have to drive to that particular place today. today i am going to take the bus or i'm going to walk. it is about having us is stainable in mind. that is -- it is about having sustainability in mind. that is how we move the dial. you don't have to be perfect all the time. >> san francisco has been and will continue to be one of the greener cities because there are communities who care about protecting a special ecosystem and habitat. thinking about the history of the ohlone and the native and indigenous people who are stewards of this land from that history to now with the ambitious climate action plan we just passed and the goals we have, i think we have a dedicated group of people who see the importance of this place. and who put effort into building an infrastructure that actually makes it possible. >> we have a long history

starting with the gold rush and the anti-war activism and that is also part of the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s. and of course, earth day in 1970 which is huge. and i feel very privileged to work for the city because we are on such a forefront of environmental issues, and we get calls from all over the world really to get information. how do cities create waste programs like they do in san francisco. we are looking into the few which you are and we want innovation. we want solutions.

locals. >> (music). >> the work go ahead offered i didn't the rec and park friday's local young people between 14 and 17 to be part 6 the workforce and eastern responsibility and professionalism and gain job skills and assignments in neighborhoods parking and recreation centers and includes art and crafts, sport, cooking, gardening and facility support and so many more. >> (multiple voices). >> i think we're part of the this is the fact we're outdoors and it is really great to be in

nature and workreation is great first step to figure out what you would like to do workreation covers real life working skills and expansion can be allowed (unintelligible) it is a really great program because um, students get placed all the time for what they like. join us in the experience and opportunity and i really like the workreation program it is fun to workout at the summer camp with all the kids each is different and the staff is really nice. >> why? is because i used to go to the local park often when i was a little kid. with my mom i often had to translate for my mom i applied in the hope to

provide assistance for other people with first language was for the english. >> i like this job we have fun and working and i feel welcome. >> hi. >> like how a job actually works like maybe before then i didn't know like all the jobs i don't know any of that now i do. >> it has to be self aware of things and independence of value of this taught me how to be progressiveal but still learning as i go on. >> i learned a lot like a got to adapt and challenges and obstacles come up everyday and . >> i like that we're able to

really work with other people and gaining experience like how in the real world hoe how he work with other people. >> if you're looking to develop your live skills as well as cash and working in the parks, and meeting great people and working with great staff i definitely recommend the corporation. >> it is fun. >> i definitely do the scombrifrm again that the workreation and park and i'll do that again. that again.

hi, i'm chris and you are watching san francisco rising. this is about rebuilding and reimaging the city. we will talk about revitalizing downtown. >> thank you for having me. >> the initiatives in the downtown area and enjoy businesses. perhaps you can tell us about your plan. >> yeah, sure. well, you know, first i'd like to acknowledge we are here visiting union scare. this is the heart of the city and people come to celebrate life's greatest moments whether it's the holidays or buying your prom dress or getting married.

you always think about union square as a place to celebrate. we would like to continue in that celebration especially postpandemic. this is a great place to celebrate life. we want to be creative getting people outdoors. we are still coming out of the pandemic and enjoying what we have to offer think about the beautiful hotel and historic district. we have world class shopping destinations and theater here we are using our strike thattic plan there was a time when weus people want r want a bit of everything appeared experience.

one of the newest initiatives is union square. in you come down you will see blooms cascading from hotel awnings and blooms on historic building fronts. you will see them on bus stops. you can go to many of our restaurants and they have cocktails. they have food and of course, being connected withification we have our bloom gown that's behind me. so, a announcement f ways to celebrate blooms. this is another great time of year for union square we are kickoff the holiday celebrations. they bring out the animal window. we have ice skating. music is another great way to

come and enjoy union scare. we are a recipient of the latest grant. this is bringing it into the public life. we are doing it here. this is in our park. it's really show this is great when it comes to music. >> we have been ignoring the fact for the districts it's a pretty common place across the country and opportunity to transform our spaces. >> yeah, i agree with you

100%. >> we have 13,000 hotel rooms. what if we had a school or soccer this is something we couldn't do before. our rates prior to the pandemic was under10%. we are higher now. >> we have businesses like cable car a lot of history and innovation here as well. we want to be ready for the opportunities. this is where some office spaces will come. we are seeing office leases in union square. the cable car comes through it. why not come to work in a vibrant space. >> a lot of the businesses have been remarkably resilient. can you share success stories

and talk about how they have been supporting them. >> this aligned with what i just said about historic neighborhoods. they have seen everything from the great depression on. in fact, the earthquake of 1906. we have been around for hundreds of years. celebrating 116th birthday. open to the public in october. they are not gone. they are just down the street a beautiful store where people find great fabrics. contemrare just here on powell street. a lot of the luxury retailers are expanding neighborhood

print. >> we talk about the area with a rich history. what about the spaces and stronger sense of community. >> yeah, you know. i have to say these challenging times brought the community together. we had a unique opportunity here. was an opportunity to look at the district and assess where we might need something. we need a bit more of everything. we broke it down into different categories. we looked at economic development and change offering. people were accessing, you know, nightlife, food, or shopping differently out of the pandemic. we wanted to look at marketing and what it meant to get the news out about what we were doing in the district. looking at our own organize as well and what we would need to

get that out there. also creating a safe space. we are creating a safe and secure area. our locals in particular you can go shopping anywhere in the bay area. any of those places will look like any other place. in san francisco, you are somewhere special. this is a unique place and we needed to get it right. we have done that work and continue to support our district and see different ways to do business here. to be creative and innovative. we were able to change the planning code to make it more flexible to do business here. we are the c3r. we have three floors of retail

maybe today we don't want two levels maybe we just want one level instead of too much retail we need a school or something else. very exciting times and really interesting people and ideas. >> that's great. >> so, i guess, finally, what do you have for san francisco residents and businesses to be apart of this. >> this is the gateway of san francisco. it only drives. right now, we are so many and still love our great city and what we would like to see. this is san francisco and the residents. look around, have a coffee. listen to music on the

weekends. we have so much to offer union square. with that, support these businesses. we have a number of openings, a number of businesses betting on union square. in fact, we have a new hotel. the owner is from back of house, that's the name of the organize. they brought us several other residents and now this wonderful restaurant, i italian restaurant. this is on top of the old restaurant. it will have a rooftop and one of the largest in san francisco. it's a london based business abdomen and betting on n square. we have a great bar scene

popping up and speak easy and pch. hawthorne, school. this is the place to come down and enjoy. come, don't forget union square is the place to be. certainly in the years to come. a very difficult time of course for any major city. we are dealing with the same thing. explore and support our businesses here. we'll continue to thrive. come on down, you will be wildly, also surprised at how beautiful it is since we are still blooming. >> thank you, that's great. it's great to hear your optimistic outlook on restoring this part of time. >> thank you for having me and taking a little time to showcase our heart of san francisco. >> thanks again. >> thank you. >> that's it for this episode. we'll be back with another one shortly. thank you for watching.

[music] so, can you tell us what it was like for you during your first encounter with the san francisco fire department? >> yep. it was super cool! i got to learn about the dry standing pipe correction. it is actually called, dry sand piper just stand pipe. tomato. you know. yea. >> so, what is coming up next for what is that for? >> oh , firefighter backsterinvited mow to a fire station to see the cool stuff firefighters use to put out fires. you have seen the had doors open like a space ship from out of nowhere. i close my eye its is like i'm

there right now! wow! whoa. watch out, man. what is that for? >> what is this? these are fire engines they might look alike they are both red. white top and red lights on top. this is a new 2021 fire engine and this is an older 2014 fire engine. if you can't tell, this one is shorter and narrower than our older fire engines. they have cool things like recessed lights. roll up doors. 360 degree cam ares and more that is important as the city is moving toward slower and safer streets adding parklets and bulb

outs and bike lanes we need to decrease our footprint to keep us and the community safer on emergency scenes. >> what's back there? >> when is not guilty fire engine. great question. i want to see, sure. >> let's go back and look at the equipment and the fire pump on the fire engine. >> this is a fire pump. it is cool all the colors and all that. this fire pump and this engine holds 500 gallons of water that is a lot. >> a lot of water. >> it is push out 1500 gallons a minute of water. we can lose our 500 gammons quickly. why we use hoses like this to connect to a fire hydrant and that gives us unlimited amount of water to help put a fire out temperature is important we have enough fire engine in san francisco to put fires out. so we can reduce the injuries

and minimize loss of life and minimize property damage. [music] >> mr. will. mr. will. will! >> oh. daydreaming. thanks, everybody for watching! bye! [music]

>> i am supervisor melgar. i am the supervisor for district 7. [music] i am a immigrant to san francisco. my family came when i was 12 from el salvador during the civil war. this place gave us security, safety and an opportunity to thrive, so i love the city

deeply, and as a mother of three kids who have grown up as city kids, i'm grateful for everything the city has to offer for people like me and families. i have been politically involved my whole life, either in government or a non profit worker and i care about the community. i care about people around me, and i want to make sure that as the world changes around us, other people have the opportunity that my family did. >> we are back in san francisco post pandemic. so important to be out supporting our businesses, supporting our neighbors. >> i'm the first woman to represent the district, believe it or not. i'm the first latina elected to the board of supervisors without an appointment first ever, so i do think that (indiscernible) i want immigrants to be represented, women, moms, people that have different experiences because

that brings richment to our decision making and i think it makes for betting decisions so that inspired me to run. district 7 is one of the most diverse districts in san francisco both in economics and ethnicity. it spans north from golden gate park. it includes all the institutions in the park, the wheel. the music concourse, mew seem to the south to the daly city boarder and west to the organization. includes the zoo (indiscernible) all those fun things and to 280 oen the east. includes city college, san francisco state. i had ucsf parnassus so very large geographically. it is mostly single family homes, so it is the place where

for generations family (indiscernible) nice parks, lake merced, mount davidson. >> this is like a village within the city, so we are very close nit community. we tend to band together and try to support one another and it is a friendly place and families and people to have a cup of coffee and check out the park. >> ocean avenue, which is the southern end of our district is vibrant commercial corridor that mostly cater tuesday the local neighborhoods and the students. as you go further west you have the mall which has some of the best pan asian food offerings in the city. if you haven't been there, it is really fun. as you go up a little bit further, there is west portal avenue, which is a very old school commercial district where you can still find antique shops and cobbler shops and as well as like more modern restaurants. it is

definitely hopping and full of families on any weekday. >> i'm matt roger, the coowner or (indiscernible) >> carl, other coowner in west portal. >> we are a neighborhood hardware store. been a community institution since it was founded in 1936. we had a little bit of everything. (indiscernible) to gardening or gift buying. >> my entire experience in san francisco is this community. it is a very small town feel for a big city. the community is caring and connected. >> what makes me excited doing business in district 7 is i know it sell well. i grew up here. i knew a lot of customers, parents of friends. it is very comfortable place and feels like home. >> if you go up north, you have

the innerpz sunset commercial corridor which has a awesome farmers market on weekdays and plethora of restaurants. there is everything you need. >> friendly and safe and (indiscernible) i love they bring their kids with them. they teach them how to use their money, and it is something you dont see in too many markets in other communities. i love to see the kids come and talking to you. it is something different then i see from (indiscernible) >> the ev access to transit in inner sunset and ability to do a lot of shopping on foot, and now the improved biking with jfk closed to cars, because we have a 4 and a half year old who rides her bike. we now have a safe place to go and ride bike jz don't have to to worry about traffic. >> graffiti continues to be one

of these things that during the pandemic just got out of control everywhere in the city and i do think that it is hampering our recovery of commercial corridors, so some of the volunteers on west portal avenue, some of the merchants got together with interns at our office to do some hands on abatement and we have been doing it regularly. we are doing it once a week and we have a wonderful neighbor, carrie organizing and storing the paint and supplies in her office on west portal, but this needs more then just a volunteer efforts. >> i'm grateful for the collaboration. we passed legislation at the board and put $4 million in the budget over the next 24 months to help the department of public works hire laborers and labor apprentices to abate the graffiti on private property on

commercial corridors. i think that for a couple years this recovery strategy so we can get back up as normal after this awful pandemic. participatory budgeting is a pot of money that is available every year for district 7 neighbors to propose projects that improve the neighborhood and the district. anyone, any organization in the district can propose a project and then it's a vote. it is popular vote. we have 14 projects just approved and they span from you know, a vegetable garden at aptos middle school to pedestrian safety projects on (indiscernible) it runs the gamut, but it is wonderful because it allows people to be engaged in a real way, and then to see the outcome of their energy and

work, because the things get improved in front of them. >> i like it is really close to the parecollect parks and bunch of businesses as well as a calm feel. it is a very peaceful feel even though it is close to a lot of things. (indiscernible) also not boring. there is stuff to do too. >> so, there is lots to see and experience in district 7. [music]

>> bring up person that [laughter]. for me it was we had neighbors growing up that were fold my dad he is raising me wrong for having me pursue the things that are not traditionally female roles. and i think the biggest barrier to anyone in general is when you have cultural norms that make you feel like you can't do something that make you doubt yourself and make you feel you should not be there i don't belong. those other big efbarriers i think that is the thing to focus

on the most is belong everyone should belong here. [music] >> wishing we trained women grow in production. and recording arts and so we have everything from girls night classes for middle and high school girls. we have certification academy program. that would be women and gender [inaudible] adid you tell us. progress in the internship frm program where they are working in the studios. they are helping to mentor the youth in the youth programs and the job place am component. most of the time we hire interns

instructors in our programs and engineer in our studios here. we have conferences we do all overnight country and we have concerts that we feature bay area women and gender artists. [music] [music] >> an education forward organization. and so advocacy organization. dedicated to closing the gender gap and the audio and production industries. >> started out of the lead answer, why is there a critical gender gap in this industry that

started at city college. why are there so few in this

class i was ashamed i did not have the answer being a feminist. why have i never thought of this i have been in the industry for decades and why have i accept today of all people. it was out of that and unraffling it. actually started the infernship last fall and just fell in love with all the things about women's oshg mission because we are diverse and so many aspects of audio i did not know and i feel like eyes opened up and i gained a lot of confidence in myself and other fells and queer people in the industry i felt there was more connection and community. ironically my time in the industry is all pretty good. i think what happened is i was raised by a father who is an engineer. i was comfortable being strounlded by men all the time in his lab i was used to technology. when i got in industry my mentors were men and i saw i had a unique importance that got mow in the place i could be fluent and navigate something difficult and it was the norm for me. what if it was not woman was createed provide it for everybody. have this environment you are surrounded by technology and people that are going to support you and get you in this industry in a good way. i have been interested in audio i was never trained in music took piano when i was a kid. i never pursued it because not a lot of women doing that. and my family is not musically inclined. when i want to davis the first

time i took a music class there were few females in the class. like a rodey for my dayed was load you will the mixers and monitors and the giant speakers and gigs and help run out the cables and take things down and set up mics i did all of that growing up and never occurred to mow that that was a field they could at all. and then one i could pursue i didn't nobody else was doing temperature my dad and then i go with him to studios and see -- the men in the studio. dj for 5 years now and comments you get like wow you are a girl dj that is crazy. that is wild. and i have great moments where it does not happen.

and they treat me like easy. telling mow what to do they correct mow in ways that make me feel less i sprjs the opposite and i notice hand's on like you don't know what you are doing rather than asking me. not consistent times it happens. it is like when i talk to other females they are like say the same things it is like funny i know that nice men don't experience tht main thing triggers me when i experience different treatment and that happens a lot in the audio world. industry is changing slowly. there is still that issue making the places that are places belonging for everybody. i don't think so. having a studio where it is not all run by white men like most

studios. the studios are only in the word built and run by women. it has been super normalize thered are opportunity for girls and nonbinary people. you go in school and middle and high schoolers know that this is a field. this is a thing there are many jobs you can have in this field. some producing pod casts to setting up live shows. there are so many things you can do >> wee go in and teach the audio skills and give them equipment. i pads and then teach them how to make music and they get to come in here and will getting the tools to people who don't have t. that is really important to me. that's why i was like wow. i want to be there for other fell and queer people who don't have the opportunity and also to be a mentor for them to really push them to experiment and not

going to break it. does not matter if it sounds bad that is the point to try it. i think it is the goal to see confidence what they are doing and passionate and asking for hymn and excite body learning and excited about making music and it changed my life to realize i'm callented in the field i can make music without being trained to it it is amazing to be able to be part of that process and -- ushering women to the field. we can entirely transform how -- the technology part of what you hear every day. we can put xhg something in women's points of view in this every time. it affects the store and he messaging. think our best example is how we

transformed an entire city. place that major artists on tour one of the men looks likeip don't get it there are woman every where i go and the person was like you are in san francisco. you like oh , you are right it is here. most venues have graduates we are grateful to the city for that reason because than i supported us at the beginning. following your curiosity and interest and don't let anybody get in the way what is presented to you, go for t. no matter what! we are here for a reason. find what it is. don't let somebody else tell you what it is. you are the oldsmobile one that have been can know when you are supposed to do. go do it.

>> i don't want to be involved in the process after it happens. i want to be there at the front end to help people with something in my mind from a very early age. our community is the important way to look at things, even now. george floyd was huge. it opened up wounds and a discussion on something festering for a long time. before rodney king. you can look at all the

instances where there are calls for change. i think we are involved in change right now in this moment that is going to be long lasting. it is very challenging. i was the victim of a crime when i was in middle school. some kids at recess came around at pe class and came to the locker room and tried to steal my watch and physically assaulted me. the officer that helped afterwards went out of his way to check the time to see how i was. that is the kind of work, the kind of perspective i like to have in our sheriff's office regardless of circumstance. that influenced me a lot. some of the storefronts have changed. what is mys is that i still see some things that trigger memories. the barbershop and the shoe store is another one that i

remember buying shoestrings and getting my dad's old army boots fixed. we would see movies after the first run. my brother and i would go there. it is nice. if you keep walking down sacramento. the nice think about the city it takes you to japan town. that is where my grandparents were brought up. that is the traditional foods or movies. they were able to celebrate the culture in that community. my family also had a dry-cleaning business. very hard work. the family grew up with apartments above the business. we have a built-in work force. 19 had 1 as -- 1941 as soon as that happened the entire community was fixed. >> determined to do the job as

democracy should with real consideration for the people involved. >> the decision to take every one of japan niece american o japanese from their homes. my family went to the mountains and experienced winter and summer and springs. they tried to make their home a home. the community came together to share. they tried to infuse each home are little things. they created things. i remember my grand mother saying they were very scared. they were worried. they also felt the great sense of pride. >> japanese americans. >> my granduncle joined the

442nd. when the opportunity came when the time that was not right. they were in the campaign in italy. they were there every step of the way. >> president truman pays tribute. >> that was the most decorated unit in the history of the united states army. commitment and loyal to to the country despite that their families were in the camp at that time. they chose to come back to san francisco even after all of that. my father was a civil servant as well and served the state of california workers' compensation attorney and judge and appellate board. my parents influenced me to look at civil service s.i applied to

police, and sheriff's department at the same time. the sheriff's department grabbed me first. it was unique. it was not just me in that moment it was everyone. it wasn't me looking at the crowd. it was all of us being together. i was standing there alone. i felt everyone standing next to me. the only way to describe it. it is not about me. it is from my father. my father couldn't be there. he was sick. the first person i saw was him. i still sometimes am surprised by the fact i see my name as the sheriff. i am happy to be in the position i am in to honor their memory doing what i am doing now to help the larger comment. when i say that we want to be

especially focused on marginalized communities that have been wronged. coming from my background and my family experienced what they did. that didn't happen in a vacuum. it was a decision made by the government. nobody raised their voice. now, i think we are in a better place as country and community. when we see something wrong we have change agents step up to help the community affected. that is a important thing to continue to do. you talk about change and being a leader in change and not knowing whether you have successes or results. the fact of the matter is by choosing to push for change you have already changed things. through inspiration for others, take up the matter or whether it is through actual functional change as a result of your voice

being heard. i think you have already started on a path to change by choosing that path. in doing that in april of itself creates change. i continue in that type of service for my family. something i hope to see in my children. i have a pretty good chance with five children one will go into some sort of civil service. i hope that happens to continue that legacy. >> i am paul, sheriff of san francisco. [ music ]

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>> this is an exhibition across departments highlighting different artworks from our collection. gender is an important part of the dialogue. in many ways, this exhibition is contemporary. all of this artwork is from the 9th century and spans all the way to the 21st century. the exhibition is organized into seven different groupings or themes such as activities, symbolism, transformation and others. it's not by culture or time period, but different affinities between the artwork. activities, for example, looks at the role of gender and how certain activities are placed as feminine or masculine. we have a print by uharo that looks at different activities that derisionly performed by

men. it's looking at the theme of music. we have three women playing traditional japanese instruments that would otherwise be played by men at that time. we have pairings so that is looking within the context of gender in relationships. also with how people are questioning the whole idea of pairing in the first place. we have three from three different cultures, tibet, china and japan. this is sell vanity stot relevar has been fluid in different time periods in cultures. sometimes being female in china but often male and evoking features associated with gender binaries and sometimes in between. it's a lovely way of tying all

the themes together in this collection. gender and sexuality, speaking from my culture specifically, is something at that hasn't been recently widely discussed. this exhibition shows that it's gender and sexuality are actually have been considered and complicated by dialogue through the work of artists and thinking specifically, a sculpture we have of the hindu deities because it's half pee male and half male. it turns into a different theme in a way and is a beautiful representation of how gender hasn't been seen as one thing or a binary. we see that it isn't a modest concept. in a way, i feel we have a lot of historical references and

touch points throughout all the ages and in asian cultures. i believe san francisco has close to 40% asian. it's a huge representation here in the bay area. it's important that we awk abouk about this and open up the discussion around gender. what we've learned from organizing this exhibition at the museum is that gender has been something that has come up in all of these cultures through all the time periods as something that is important and relevant. especially here in the san francisco bay area we feel that it's relevant to the conversations that people are having today. we hope that people can carry that outside of the museum into their daily lives.

shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of san francisco. by supporting local services within our neighborhoods, we help san francisco remain unique, successful, and vibrant. so where will you shop and dine in the 49? >> my name is ray behr. i am the owner of chief plus. it's a destination specialty foods store, and it's also a corner grocery store, as well. we call it cheese plus because there's a lot of additions in addition to cheese here. from fresh flowers, to wine,

past a, chocolate, our dining area and espresso bar. you can have a casual meeting if you want to. it's a real community gathering place. what makes little polk unique, i think, first of all, it's a great pedestrian street. there's people out and about all day, meeting this neighbor and coming out and supporting the businesses. the businesses here are almost all exclusively independent owned small businesses. it harkens back to supporting local. polk street doesn't look like anywhere u.s.a. it has its own businesses and personality. we have clothing stores to gallerys, to personal service stores, where you can get your hsus repaired, luggage repaired. there's a music studio across the street. it's raily a diverse and unique

offering on this really great street. i think san franciscans should shop local as much as they can because they can discover things that they may not be familiar with. again, the marketplace is changing, and, you know, you look at a screen, and you click a mouse, and you order something, and it shows up, but to have a tangible experience, to be able to come in to taste things, to see things, to smell things, all those things, it's very important that you do so.

2, 1 you innovation on or was on over 200 years they went through extensive innovations to the existing green new metal gates were installed our the perimeter 9 project is funded inform there are no 9 community opportunity and our capital improvement plan to the 2008 clean and safe neighborhood it allows the residents and park advocates like san franciscans to make the matching of the few minutes through the philanthropic dungeons and finished and finally able to pull on play on the number one green a

celebration on october 7, 1901, a skoovlt for the st. anthony's formed a club and john then the superintendent the golden gate park laid out the bowling green are here sharing meditates a permanent green now and then was opened in 1902 during the course the 1906 san francisco earthquake that citywide much the city the greens were left that with an ellen surface and not readers necessarily 1911 it had the blowing e bowling that was formed in 1912 the parks commission paid laying down down green number 2 the san francisco lawn club was the first opened in the united states and the

oldest on the west their registered as san francisco lark one 101 and ti it is not all fierce competition food and good ole friend of mine drive it members les lecturely challenge the stories some may be true some not memories of past winners is reversed presbyterian on the wall of champions. >> make sure you see the one in to the corner that's me and. >> no? not bingo or scrabble but the pare of today's competition two doreen and christen and beginninger against robert and others easing our opponents for the stair down is a pregame strategy even in lawn bowling.

>> play ball. >> yes. >> almost. >> (clapping). >> the size of tennis ball the object of the game our control to so when the players on both sides are bold at any rate the complete ends you do do scoring it is you'll get within point lead for this bonus first of all, a jack can be moved and a or picked up to some other point or move the jack with i have a goal behind the just a second a lot of elements to the game.

>> we're about a yard long. >> aim a were not player i'll play any weighed see on the inside in the goal is a minimum the latter side will make that arc in i'm right-hand side i play my for hand and to my left if i wanted to acre my respect i extend so it is arced to the right have to be able to pray both hands. >> (clapping.) who one. >> nice try and hi, i'm been play lawn bowling affair 10 years after he retired i needed something to do so i picked up this paper and in this paper i see in there play lawn bowling in san francisco golden gate park ever since then

i've been trying to bowl i enjoy bowling a very good support and good experience most of you have of of all love the people's and have a lot of have a lot of few minutes in mr. mayor the san francisco play lawn bowling is in golden gate park we're sharing meadow for more information about the club including free lessons log

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>> my family's starts in mexico in a small town. my parents are from a very, very small town. so small, that my dad's brother is married to one of my mom's sisters. it's that small. a lot of folks from that town are here in the city. like most immigrant families, my parents wanted a better life for

us. my dad came out here first. i think i was almost two-years-old when he sent for us. my mom and myself came out here. we moved to san francisco early on. in the mission district and moved out to daily city and bounced back to san francisco. we lived across the street from the ups building. for me, when my earliest memories were the big brown trucks driving up and down the street keeping us awake at night. when i was seven-years-old and i'm in charge of making sure we get on the bus on time to get to school. i have to make sure that we do our homework. it's a lot of responsibility for a kid. the weekends were always for family. we used to get together and whether we used to go watch a movie at the new mission theater and then afterwards going to kentucky fried chicken. that was big for us. we get kentucky fried chicken on sunday. whoa! go crazy! so for me, home is having something where you are all

together. whether it's just together for dinner or whether it's together for breakfast or sharing a special moment at the holidays. whether it's thanksgiving or christmas or birthdays. that is home. being so close to berkley and oakland and san francisco, there's a line. here you don't see a line. even though you see someone that's different from you, they're equal. you've always seen that. a rainbow of colors, a ryan bow of personalities. when you think about it you are supposed to be protecting the kids. they have dreams. they have aspirations. they have goals. and you are take that away from them. right now, the price is a hard fight. they're determined. i mean, these kids, you have to applaud them. their heart is in the right place. there's hope. i mean, out here with the things

changing everyday, you just hope the next administration makes a change that makes things right. right now there's a lot of changes on a lot of different levels. the only thing you hope for is for the future of these young kids and young folks that are getting into politics to make the right move and for the folks who can't speak. >> dy mind motion. >> even though we have a lot of fighters, there's a lot of voice less folks and their voiceless because they're scared.