waiting patiently for this opportunity to really we celebrate selena in this way. um, because of what she does to bring so much joy and happiness and excitement to the tenderloin community and this community, more than any other community in the city, deserves joy. i know that it's been a very challenging time, and every single day with the work that we're doing to try and improve

the conditions of the neighborhood, it's become because of people like selena who really put her heart and soul in the work that she does for her restaurant, but also the work that she does in order to improve the community for the people who also live there. and that's why today is important. and some of you may already know her story. i mean, the fact that she she came here, taught herself english and used food as a way to communicate and to bring people in. and it is really a testament to what so many of you all know about her is she is a loving person. she is a good person and she loves to take care of people with food, good food. i mean, let me tell you, someone could be

really mad at you and you, you you you give them something to make them smile, give them some good food and it just changes the conversation. then it changes the experience. and we appreciate the fact that in addition to your restaurant, that you are willing to serve the city and county of san francisco. so in this capacity, and i truly believe that the work we need to do to improve the conditions of our streets, it starts with the people who are out there on the streets looking at what is happening and what is going on, and holding the people responsible for improving those conditions accountable to doing so. so that's why you are the perfect person to serve in this role. um we appreciate all that you have done and what you will continue to do to not only serve the tenderloin community, but to

serve the city and county of san francisco. so at this time, i'm going to ask you to come forward, and we are going to swear you in. i want to hear you. all right. okay. so what you want to do? wait. let's put you over here so they can get some good pictures. you want to face me? there we go. i'm going to face you. and then a little bit this way. there you go. please raise your right hand and repeat after me. i state your name. i selena yusuf, do solemnly swear. do solemnly swear that i will support and defend that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states. the constitution of the united states, and the constitution of the state of california and the constitution of the state of california.

against all enemies, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, foreign and domestic. that i bear true faith, that i bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same that i take this obligation that i take this obligation freely, freely, without any mental reservation, without any mental reservation reservations or purpose of evasion. or purpose of evasion. and that i will well and faithfully, and that i will well and faithfully fully discharge the duties. discharge the duties upon which, upon which i'm about to enter, which i am about. i am about to enter. and during such

time and during such time. as i hold the office of as i hold the office of member, member of the sanitation of the sanitation and streets and streets conditions in the city and county of san francisco. for the city and county of san francisco. congratulations. you're going to give you the official pin for the city and county of san francisco. welcome aboard. as a true public servant. thank you. yes, yes. so we're going to have you say a few words first, and then we'll get to you. carlo okay? okay. hi everyone. i can

see your face, mayor. breed, your. you are the true embodiment of san francisco. dynamic rich, resilient and powerful empowerment and grit. i am truly honored and grateful for your trust, for allowing me to become one of the commission here in the city of san francisco. i'm a little nervous. i'm sorry. uh, my story is a typical immigrant soundbite. we left our country for pursuit of happiness, and along the way, we find our community that shares the same narratives and values. um, one of the values that i always stand upon is the responsibility that we have among each other, that is, to be at service of each other. um, measurable results with a steady

momentum, collective effort, and the fairly distributed resources will bring the much needed improvement for the city of san francisco, especially in tenderloin street. and sanitation is a crucial part of our everyday life improve the residents and the businesses and the families that lives. not only in the greater san francisco, but tenderloin is such a beautiful little neighborhood that people should give more compassion and empathy to us. i hope my fellow commissioners and the department head will guide me and value my perspective. active in working together in making san francisco the greatest city on the planet, i would like to thank for everyone that came here for

spending your little afternoon, your time with us. um, your support, your generosity, your kindness is all the real talk. you know who you are. and, um, the unconditional love. and i hope i'll will be part of the san francisco and keep making the impact through my food and my story. and, like, maybe was saying joy, love and love and love. thank you. thank you. i'm going to. oh yes, of course. thank you. ah, i'm just so happy . so at this time we have a fearless leader who is responsible for public works here in san francisco. and i will say before i ask carla

short to come up, that this city is really an incredible city and it's an incredible city because we have a lot of people who work for this city, who work really hard. and the person who inspires so much of the amazing team of public works to work very hard every single day is someone who is probably the person who loves trees more than anybody else. here today, and that is the leader of the public works department for san francisco, carla short. thank you, mayor breed, for giving me an opportunity to say a few words today about about azalina usop. i truly believe that she will be a great addition to the sanitation and streets commission with her background as a small business owner who chose to open her restaurant in

the tenderloin, a neighborhood that can be at once beautiful and rough, vibrant and down on its luck, but always packed with life. if restaurants aren't just about food, then are also about hospitality and making people feel welcome and creating a good experience not only inside the restaurant but outside as well, is important. well, i first came to know about azalina through her amazing malaysian food stand at the market. the best laksa i've ever had. i got a glimpse of her passion and care for the community as she was opening her azuolynas restaurant at 4.99 ellis street, and wanted to make sure that the streets in the neighborhood were clean and looking good as you. as you all know, it's no secret that keeping the tenderloin clean is an ongoing challenge and that it takes a team effort to get the

job done. public works has cleaning crews on the ground every day and every shift every morning, every noon, every night . but our work alone is not enough. the tenderloin community benefit district is an amazing partner, as well as other nonprofits. and then there are individual residents and businesses, and that's where azalina stands out. while she asked us to do more and do better, she also took the time to get a fuller understanding of our operation. both the opportunity and the limitations. as important, she asked what she and her neighbors could do to help, and as she said in her confirmation hearing for the commission post six peacefully solving problems requires collective effort as a new sanitation and streets commissioner, i and the entire public works team look forward to hearing her ideas seasoned by her experience as a small business owner in san francisco,

about how we can do better to serve the tenderloin and all our neighborhoods. thank you so much for joining the commission. thank you. okay, azalina, it is time to sign the official paperwork and make sure that you're in there to do the job. um, last but not least, let me just say again, when the amazing, uh, public works department, uh, there are a lot of people who work for the department, and you'll get to meet them and see the work that they do. they take so much pride in what they are able to do for the city and county of san francisco. and i, i hope that they look at you and they get inspired by just what you have done and what they will continue to do and hopefully continue to do some great work in the tenderloin community and in the city and county of san francisco as a whole. uh, you're going to bring a lot of great excitement to the role, and i'm looking forward to it. so thank you for

agreeing to serve as a commissioner for the city and county of san francisco. so let's sign this paperwork. let's make it super duper, and then let's have a good time. all right. thank you all so much for coming. super. there we go. hey.

all right. now, do you want to guess? yeah. >> you are watching san francisco rising. [music] today's special guest is mano raju.

hi. i'm chris and you are watching san francisco rising the show about restarting and rebuilding and reimagineings our city. our guest is mano raju san francisco's public defender great you could be here. actual at this time us about yourself how you became the public defend and why it is important to provide legal representtation to people that can't afford council. >> i started in contra costa county graduated from berkeley and a liven deputy for you a number of years special jeff recruited me to san francisco the former elected public defender of san francisco and i began as a line department here and then asked me to be training direct and the managers of the felony unit the unit most serious case. after he passed away, i was

appointed to be the public defend and electd and recently reelected. but you know what i think about what you know the story of public to the office i like to start with my parents. they come from a farming village in india and dad was the first in family to finish high school. there were a couple people in his village who saw him and encouraged his parentses to pursue studies and move in the country when i think of what public defenders dot most person thing is to see our clients so than i can hopefully realize their full potential that is important to me and to our office and the cult usual of our office. >> you know the right to a public defender was developed in 1963 in gideon case ensuring the right to a public defender. we take this very seriously in our office. my vision is that anyone in our office should be representing

the people represent the same way they want their love 1s to representd and people think if you have a public defender representing you in san francisco you will bet better than a private attorney. we will leave no stone unturned no motion unfiled and try to perform the highest level for clients >> that's fantastic >> often when people think public defenders they jump to the idea of somebody defending somebody in court your office does more than courtroom representation. >> i'm an elected public dem felonieder i campaigned on that it is important we break the mold of what is public for our office on accomplish. fiercely defending is the core of what we do and that will never go, way. as the only elected public defender there is an elected da and sheriff in every county. in the state but one elected public defender.

it is important our office pushed envelope and engage in the national and state wide and local policy that will impact community how public safety and our clients. we have local policy directors, state policy director. we are active in sacramento in trying to make the law change in order to be more humane system for our clients. we are believer in advocating for community power. we have two 501c3's in bayview and fillmore that are be more magic under the umbrelast public defender's office. these are youth empowerment organizations that do programming throughout the summers. which back pack give, ways to kid school sflois start the school year and believe engaging youth will prevent them from become clients. and put people on the path to

thrive. we have a program, end of cycle program. culturally competent social workers going to the jails and finding out what the individual needs. we'll fight for their best legal outcome in the case. and the position of trust the fifth amendment protects the conversations that our clients can have with us. we can use that to really encourage a trusting rep and telling us what they need and be frank and connect that individual with the substance abuse or mentor or housing or employment and educational opportunities hamp that individual needs to thrive and reach their full potential. that is another piece behalf we do. 17 units across our department and you know we take collaborating across units something we try to do every tail to meet our mission, vision and values >>. a part is ensuring recidivism

does not reoccur >> of course the left thing we want to see is a client to return to be a client again. we work intentionally from the moment we start representing a client with our skilled staff and other members of our team to try to figure out what is that future going to be for the client when they leave our care? >> now, some critics argue public defenders have a heavy case load. how is your office mechanicing this and what issues are most important to you. why we have a heavy case load. unfortunately, this is a problem across the country, public defenders are not funds equal low to da offices our fund suggest 61% of the da office. and the police department has 14 time the our budget. and there is the sheriff's department and any time the entities are detaining our

cloinlt in i way it is up to us to defend this is manage we are working on locally. and alsoination wide to change that. we need more staff and every wing of our office. the logo is greater than one. so we know that we need to be greater twhoon individual in the office and use our teams effectively and strategically and skillfully and put in more hours to make sure we reveal truth and make justice happen in courtrooms. greater than one also symbolizes the fact we are collaborating with other communities organizations to try to support and help our client and move policies that will help our clients. an example of this is the pretextual stop campaign we collaborated with 110 organizations throughout the city to convince the police commission to pass the general order that stops some of the

stops traffic stops for things that don't impact public safety and lead to often con41ational interactions with the police and civil yens and. we wanted to minimize that mostly the shootings we read about and the the violence of inneraction gets in car and tragic occurrence that can happen. by collaborating we can be powerful than the sheer numbers in our organization. >> sure. so you know like cities cross the country san francisco struggling with fentanyl and homelessness, how can our office contribute to help mitigate or solve those problems? >> one thing we can do, again often times with community based organizations; is to really try and figure out how we address the demand. you know. treatment on demand. again. finding people opportunity with housing or employment

opportunity. you know mitigation or just any form of counciling that helps people. move in more positive direction in a way more inviting oppose to co hearsive. now we don't have enough beds for everyone who needs that intensive treatment. contributing to staffers to get more funding for people to get treatment they need. because the reality is there will always be someone to fill the need. we work on the demand, which evidence based there was fee of dealing with addiction will move in a more positive direction. >> then, finally, what else would you like residents of san francisco to know about you and your office? >> i think what i like the san francisco residents to know is how muchow important it is that the public defender be aggressive. right now we had a huge backlog

of cases in san francisco. there were over a housand passed the last day. a right to a speedy try and have case passed the last day. we had to plaintiff and against the court t. is important this we have an independent public defend 30 is willing to do that. and we got a good decision from the court of appeal and now the courts move quick and are honoring this and the effort from policy team to 850 bryant the courthouse is to draw attention to this issue it is important we have an aggressive public defender. had someone gets convicted for something they did not do it impacts their family. clients are greater than one, it is important we fierce low defend. the same time because when

someone gets convicted of something they did not do they are less likely to access the j.w. they need for stability or housing and then will impability a lot of people and lead to more issues on the streets and affect public safety. also to realize we are a public safety organization. we have social workers and take this social worker mentality or support facilitative prop and get cloinlts to a better place. when our clients get to a better place we are all safer >> thank you mr. raju. we appreciate the work. thank you for your interest in the development. you know i wanted to say if anyone wants to know more about a lot of the initiatives and unit in our department they can go to you tube we have a dairy defender series. and people should look at that to learn more about the different units.

also we talked about the dibilltating impact of convictions we have a clean slate program exsponging hundreds of records every year. and people can go to our website sfpublicdefender. org and move their live in a positive direction >> thank you very much. >> thank you >> that's it for this episode we will be back shortly for government government i'm chris >> ners, t >> shared spaces have transformed san francisco's streets and sidewalks. local business communities are more resilient and our neighborhood centers are more vibrant and lively. fire blocks and parking lanes can be for seating and merchandising and other

community activities. we're counting on operators of shared spaces to ensure their sites are safe and accessible for all. when pair mets, firefighters and other first responders arrive at a scene, they need clear visual access to see the building entrances, exits and storefront windows from the street. that means parklets should be transfer in the areas above inches above the sidewalk level. it's best if these areas are totally unobstructed by transparent materials may be okay. you can check with fire department staff to make sure your site meets visibility requirements. emergency response crews and their equipment need to be move easily between streets, sidewalks and buildings, especially when they are using medical gurneys, ladders and other fire fighting tools. that means that parklet structures need a three foot wide emergency feet every 20

feet and 3 feet from marked parking spaces and emergency access gaps need to be open to the sky, without obstructions, like canopies, roofs, or cables and should always be clear of tables, chairs, planters and other furnishings. emergency responders need to use ladders to reach windows and roofs to buildings and the ladders need unobstructed overhead clearance and room to be placed at a 72-degree angle against the building. clearances needed around the ladders to move equipment and people safely up and down. so not all parklets can have roofs ask canopies depending on the width of the sidewalk in your area. please make sure that your electric cables are hung so they are out of the way and (indiscernible) to the structure, they can be pulled down by firefighters. cable connections need to be powered from an outdoor reciprocal in the building facade because hard wire connections are much more

difficult to disconnect quickly. these updates to the shared spaces program will ensure safety and accessibility for everyone, so we can all enjoy these public spaces. more information is available at sf dot gov slash shared spaces.

commenced the board meeting of the board of education for the san francisco unified school district for january three, nine, 2024, is now called to order at 5:01 p.m. roll call please. thank you. commissioner alexander here, commissioner fischer here. commissioner lamb. commissioner motamedi here. commissioner sanchez. vice president. wiseman. ward. president. boggess here. commissioner did i just do? commissioner alford. that's for okay. yes sorry. gotcha. all right. perfect. so so at this time, before the board goes into closed session, i will call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda.