tv Municipal Transportation Agency Board SFGTV May 31, 2024 12:00am-3:01am PDT
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present. kinsey. present. vice chair. kahuna here. kahuna. present. directors eakin and tarlov are not expected today. for the record, i note that director kinsey is attending this meeting remotely. director kinsey is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting, and in order to speak or vote on any items, places you in item number three the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound producing electronic devices are prohibited. at this meeting. the chair may order the removal from the meeting room. any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or other similar sound, producing electronic device places you on item number four, approval of minutes for the may 7th regular meeting directors. are there any changes to the may 7th minutes? seeing none. a point of
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clarification. secretary silva, there seems to be some confusion about from the public about what was actually approved for item 10.4, can you confirm that the item as approved by the board at our last meeting does not add an additional annual allotment of $200,000 per year, but instead caps the annual disbursement of funds to 300,000 annually for a possible five year term of the agreement. that is correct, the amount you approved was, not to exceed amount of approximately 1.5 $1.5 million over a three year initial term, with two options of one year each. so that would be five years potentially total. and then in the calculation of charges in the contract, costs are not to exceed 300,000 per year. okay. thank you for that clarification . then, we'll now open item for public comment. is there anyone that would like to comment on
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item four. and this is the approval of minutes seeing none. do we have anybody on the phone okay. we'll now close public comment, colleagues, is there a motion to approve our minutes move to approve second secretary silva, please call the roll on the motion to approve the minutes. director heminger heminger i director henderson a henderson i director hinsey i kinsey i vice chair kahina i kahina i the minutes are approved places you on item number five communications. i have none. all right, directors, are there any communications? just real quick. i wanted to, just acknowledge and thank the staff that i, had the pleasure of meeting with on friday. i got to tour because i won't be able to make the tour tomorrow of the portrayal yard. i got to do it on friday, and so i was went around with michael henry and
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met a number of staff members, and also got a chance to speak with the peer counselors that work with the staff team. and i was really, really excited to be there. i think that, of the tours that i've been on so far, this one was really interesting because i was able to see just why ■that facility needs to be rebuilt. it is historic and, and a blast from the past. but also, you know, the improvements are sorely needed and i appreciate the staff really accommodating me and helping me see that family feel that they have there and how they've made it work. and i think that, i think that everybody will be, whether they're, you know, in their first year or they're, you know, retirement year. i think that they'll be really, really excited to attend that ribbon cutting once the new facility is built. so i just wanted to thank mr. henry and the rest of the team that i met with for that
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tour, and then also encourage people to go on the tour tomorrow. thank you, director anderson. any other directors that want to offer some comments for item six? i'm sorry, item five communications. excellent. well now open it for public comment on item five. and this was communication. and you could respond to what director henderson shared. we do have one accommodation request. all right. let's hear from them. speaker, you've been unmuted. hi, before i get started, please tell me, how much time i have. is it 2 minutes or 3 minutes? two minutes? two minutes. okay, i'll start my clock now, hello. my name is michael petrilli's, and i am disappointed that, no one has spoken about the, issues at jane warner plaza, myself and
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other members of the castro community have been attending your meetings. we've been writing to sfmta, officials about jane warner plaza, asking for attention on, in terms of keeping this plaza clean. also, we have no idea when a muni shelter is going to be rebuilt, there's no information at the f car turnaround for, the tourists about when the f car will depart and head back down to fisherman's wharf, we've also been very concerned about the, cracks and potholes in the surface there. which is a serious pedestrian hazard. and yet, today, no members of your board have mentioned anything
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going on about jane warner plaza. and and i was hoping that especially since, we attended your meeting last week and submitted comments in writing that, this would have been a concern. 30s today, lastly, i, i did not get the chance to talk about the minutes, but i would like to point out that the minutes from last week's meeting , they, miss bell, my surname, and i hope that you will correct that. thank you, thank you. no other callers. thank you, secretary silva. and thank you, mr. peralez, for your comment. as a reminder, this is for item five communications. and if you do have any comments about items not on the agenda, please save those for general public comment . and now we'll close public comment on this item. next item,
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the next one is item six. yes. places you on item six. introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. i see director hemminger. thank you, madam chair. i request, jeff. and you have a better sense, i'm sure, about how to get it into our workflow, but, given the fact that the so-called portal project, just scored, i think, over $3 billion in commitment from the federal government, it seems to me we might want to treat that project a little more seriously. or at least i should. and i was hoping we could get some kind of briefing just on the overall project. the fact that it still needs to raise a bunch of local money in an environment where we don't have enough money to run the system, we have. so i think it'd be good to get the board, up to the next
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level on this project since it's going to be with us for a while. yes. i think it is time now for adam vandewater, who's the executive director of the transbay joint powers authority to come and give all of us an update because it has, a large impact on many of the things that we'll be trying to do over the next decade. thank you. thank you, director hemminger. any more, directors that want to add to new or unfinished business? seeing none, and i just echo, director emminger's comment, i think it would be great to have a briefing. so thank you for getting that on the books, okay. we will now open public comment for item six. i do have one accommodation request for item six. okay, okay. speaker you've been unmuted. this is for item six. hi this is michael petrilli's
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again. so this item is about, the west portal issues. and if we can all if we can save that for. sorry, if we can save that for general public comment, right now we're just, this is item six, the introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. and this would be a direct response, an opportunity to respond directly to director hemingers, comment at. no other callers. thank you. all right. so let's go to the next item. secretary, item number seven, the director's report. thank you. board members. i have some brief updates on our budget on the west portal project, on our folsom project, and a variety of other minor issues. but our most important item is, is some long due recognition to nicole bond. nicole has served as the director of the mayor's office
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of disability since 2017. she is a big transit fan and more than probably anyone else in city government. nicole has helped the sfmta to understand how to use our resources and authorities in order to improve access to people who need access the most. she's also played a key role in helping us implement several of our projects, including the essential trip card early in covid. putting together our mobility management steering committee, helping us with rulemakings for ride, hail and autonomous vehicles, facilitating joint agency standards across multiple departments on accessible passenger loading zones, and helping us, but particularly the recreation and parks department, on figuring out how to improve accessibility in golden gate park, particularly alongside side jfk promenade. she's also helped us with critical design details around our protected bikeway network so that they can
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be designed in order to make sure that people who need accessibility have access to the curb. she has been a problem solver in parts of the law and of infrastructure codes, where there's no perfect answer, and she has helped us figure out how do we get to an optimum place that prioritizes the people with the greatest need? and we are very sad for us, but very happy for nicole that she will be leaving the city in order to serve as the next executive director of the disability rights, education and defense fund. this is a critical position, not just here in san francisco, but for the whole country. and we are grateful for all the work that she has done for community and for us here in san francisco. and with that, we have, both, a little a small gift. and of course, we would like to invite her to say a few
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words. hi, director kate torin from the taxis access and mobility services division and my team works very closely with director bond, and we will really miss her, as you said. and so it wouldn't be an honoring without a street sign. we have, director bond way and of course it's accessible. and of course it is from her beloved family at the mta. and we have really appreciated working with nicole for so many years. and i have to say, when so many people wanted to add to the honoring of nicole and many, many people talked about nicole's sense of humor. so that really came across and she's really pushed us to do better. and and we really value working with nicole. we will miss her, but we
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know she is going to do amazing work at a national scope. so we're excited for that. to thank you so much. pointing the right direction. oops. i'm sorry. are you okay? yeah. i'm fine. it's okay. all right. i'm going to go this way. okay. hi thank you so much for taking some time, for this honor. i think it's flattering. and affirming, there's not many times in your life when you when you list, when you hear your accomplishments listed out like that, and when i think about as
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a 27 year resident of san francisco with a disability who truly does, ride transit and, appreciate the work that we are doing and still need to be able to do in all forms of accessible transit. it just it means a lot, a lot to me. transit is important, and i guess what i hope to impart, besides the acknowledgment that this particular accessible services team is one of the most robust, accessible teams in the entire country. so i encourage the board as they come forward with recommendations and solutions for deaf and disabled people that those are taken into consideration. and i also challenge all of you as directors was as you're thinking
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about the next decisions and every decision that you make related to transit, we need to remember that people with disabilities are transit riders. they ride cabs, they're and transport nation, as i know this group has heard, is a true lifeline to persons with disabilities and i think that it is one of our responsibilities. and if there's one principle that i hope that i've been able to impart in my time here, specifically towards transit and the way we think about disability and the disability community in the city, is that ask yourself every time you're making a decision, how does the decision that i'm about to make impact deaf and disabled people? and if you're not sure to find out, because folks will tell you
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you've got experts in the city that could help support that. and if the perspective is one that might be of the minority opinion, i also challenge you to ask yourself why that is. and it is an anti ableist strategy to allow for more weight and more attention as an equity issue, to disabled people in the way that you're making your decisions. so i know that sfmta's takes accessibility very seriously, and we need to continue to do that in all of the decisions that we make as a matter of equity, we are transit first city, but also we need to be and continue to be disabled people first as a matter of equity. and i hope that we continue to, pay that attention to deaf and
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disabled people as you continue to make, accessibility decisions around transit and transportation. and i'm still a resident of san francisco, and so i wouldn't be surprised if you still hear from me from time to time about, transportation things. and thank you, thank you . jeff, you've been a wonderful colleague. thank you. kate. matty all the other folks from sfmta who are here today, i just i really appreciate the opportunity. and i'm really glad that we've had a chance to work together. so thank you very much . doctor vaughn, please don't go too far, because we do have some directors that want to say some words, we can unmute director hinsey, please. thank you. adam, madam. acting chair, thank you to kate and the team for putting
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this together on on short notice, when, the news became public that nicole was, leaving, city service, this is this second, commendation for nicole that i've, been privileged to witness. and i think that, highlights her, service and setting an impact that you've had. and in the chat, i want to personally thank, director bond for being a personal mentor to me and for being a supportive. i've taken on this role and sort of, helping me worried about the intricacies of the city and how that works, in the context of taking this role, but also continuing to be an advocate for, disabled people. and i think i wanted highlight for my
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fellow directors how, director bond is also, done the technical work of making sure we, you know, follow all the laws. and as director tomlin said, i think actually she's a problem solver, but she also makes sure that, community is at the center of all of the city's thinking, both in transit and in other city programs, and i think that that will be really her legacy of not only, making sure the city is in barebones compliance, but also really centers the opinions of people with disabilities. and i know that as the accessible services team works on the accessibility strategy, which i
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believe will be caring more about, i know that those perspectives will be centered. and i also know that, director bond knows where to find us. so so she will not she will not be going far and won't be, continuing to west to have her perspective. and i know that dradis is, famous for their transit work. so i know that we'll continue under her leadership. and so with that, madam chair, i hand it back to you. thank you. so much, director hinsey, director bond, i also just wanted to share some words, congratulations on your new role. and on behalf of the board of directors, i thank you for your incredible years of service, your internal advocacy, which is hard to do in government. so i really do applaud you for doing this, on behalf of so many people in the disability community has transformed countless lives and
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ensure that our city is truly a place for all. i don't. i share this from time to time, but my mother is visually impaired and so because of your critical work, many families like mine can worry a little less about how their family members are getting around and engaging meaningfully in the city. so i thank you deeply. you leave behind an incredible legacy and i know that your work by no means is done at all. and you leave an incredible team. also a testament for just the amazing work that you've done. the leadership is, you know, it's hard to leave sometimes. and i know that this was probably a hard decision for you to make, and i do hope that we continue to honor your incredible work and your commitment to the city, i do thank you deeply, and i wish you the best of luck in your new role, i will take some public comment. so we're going to do a little something a little bit unorthodox right now, but we're going to open up our session for public comment so that i understand you also have a recognition with the board of supervisors. so i want to make
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sure you hear your flowers, so if there are folks in, in the audience right now that do want to share some kind words about director bond and this recognition, please come forward. do we have folks, no. okay. excellent. thank you so much. thank you. thank you for this opportunity. thank you so much, nicole. and i'm glad you'll have time to go visit the board of supervisors, where i'm sure they will give you a beautiful certificate, but it won't be nearly as awesome. no way. as an sfmta's street sign. that's street sign is amazing. director tomlin, please continue. all right, continuing with my director's report, i want to give a quick update on the budget last week. on wednesday, we presented our budget to the board of supervisors budget and appropriations committee. we heard a variety of comments from committee members who are eager
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to work with us in order to help close the mta budget gap, they asked us about, federal funding through grants, opportunities for more vending, leasing, redeveloping our land, as well as merchandizing our brand, bree mcwhorter will be back for the second hearing tomorrow at the board of supervisors committee. and then, our budget goes forward for an up or down vote at the board of supervisors, and then onward to the mayor, next up, a quick update on west portal. as you all know, mayor breed and supervisor melgar asked us to make some very rapid traffic safety improvements at the intersection of west portal and yolo, staff quickly put together some proposals that focused on left turn restrictions at that intersection. while maintaining all the parking and traffic access to west portal avenue.
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we've done a bunch of public outreach events and have had a lot of response, and we are very grateful now to supervisor melgar, that she has helped to form what is called a welcoming west portal committee in order to dive deeper into fine tuning the different options. this committee has had two meetings so far. its next meeting is june 2nd. all of those meetings are open to the public, and the goal is finding ways to make sure that we help to support the vitality of all of the merchants in west portal. while emphasizing safety and accessibility, not just at the west portal yolo intersection, but throughout out the district. we are planning to bring an informational presentation back to this board on june fourth, and we are also looking at not only taking more time for analysis, but some more time for
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implementation so that the implementation can come after our el terrible rail service resumes this fall. our next up and we've got a slide, last week we had a kickoff or a groundbreaking, for a very important multi function street improvement project on folsom street, this is folsom street from second to 11th street. and like, so many of our projects, the easy part is upgrading the transportation stuff. the hard part is the water and sewer upgrades. this is another street where parts of the water system are 135 years old, and the sewer is 100 years old. and so our friends at the public utilities commission will be doing the most disruptive work in partnership with the department of public works to repair this
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critical infrastructure. for that is way past the end of its useful life. the mta component includes a lot of safety upgrades. it includes a transit only lane from fourth to 10th to serve the eight and the 27, and the 12 includes new, parking meters, a two way protected bikeway from 12th to 11th with raised crosswalks at various alleys. and finally, thanks to the success of our quick build project, being able to attract outside grant funding, we've been able to demonstrate that our quick build, cheap projects help pave the way literally for outside funding in order to do the project right with concrete buffers, with landscape upgraded traffic signals that will allow us to improve the bike signals, new lighting and a whole lot of
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other improvements, again, because the bulk of the work is dealing with the underground utilities, the project will take quite some time, about two years with our part, the work coming last. and like our other projects, it will move one segment at a time, next up we had on may 16th, we helped to sponsor the bay area's bike to wherever day here in san francisco. so i was able to join the new community leadership foundation, which is a partner in our biking and rolling plan, to ride from the western tradition to city hall, where we had the mayor, many city supervisors and so many of our community partners able to speak about what it would be like for san francisco to make it safe and joyful, to be able to bike from any neighborhood to any
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other neighborhood, and for people of all ages and abilities. finally, and speaking of merchandizing, as you know, the muni brand is one of the most valuable brands anywhere in the world since walter landor created our werm logo back in the 1970s. it is both highly recognizable, recognizable. it also carries with it a tremendous amount of emotional attachment. we have long wanted to, offer merch with our logo, but we've wanted to make sure that we did it thoughtfully. we are not going to solve our budget problem either. through a bake sale or through merch socks with the muni logo on it. but we can help get a two thirds vote by tapping into san francisco's deep, deep emotional attachment to muni and everything that is wonderful and problematic about
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it. and so we agreed to do a one time pilot to see how this might work. and it is working even better than we had hoped, we established a one time partnership with the san francisco city football club, our local soccer team that has been struggling and has been struggling in many ways that, many san franciscans can relate to who have experienced struggle here in san francisco. and we licensed our muni logo, and they've created a variety of artful jerseys. but more importantly, they have created, without, i think, any involvement from us this extraordinary video that i would like to cue up.
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football. safaí day. commemorating the life that i resonated on the first day. they come upon it at night. it all. it is a night that i did a lot. la la la la la land. give by god if i'm saying something. if i stop, i never say nothing. you backed up. yeah hi, guys. to order your own muni themed jersey, you can go to sf city fc or google san francisco city football club and, get in
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the queue. and that concludes my report. that's it. okay. thank you so much, roger tomlin, what a video, all right. directors, do we have any clarifying questions on the director's report? seeing none. i just want a brief comment on the video, i love the idea of seeing a lot of our local small businesses there. i recognized a lot of excelsior businesses there, too. so, really appreciative that those businesses were getting recognized, in terms of the folsom streetscape project, that two year window is quite significant. and so i do wonder, like how we're partnering with the business community there around any sort of disruption and what the outreach and engagement strategy looks like there? do we have any folsom project partners that can speak to the details of our engagement process? we may want to get back
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to you on those details. i know that you know, that is a routine part of our work, again, this is a project that is not being led by us, but where because we are out in front more than other departments are, that once again, we will carry a burden, even though we do not have responsibility. so perhaps one thing that we can do is have the department of public works that's leading the work, come and speak regarding their their outreach and engagement program. what i do know is that we have worked, of course, to ensure that all of the major special events that occur on folsom street will be allowed to continue, regardless of the construction schedule. thank you, director tilghman. yeah, that would be great to have at least a briefing, just to understand what that looks like, i appreciate you making that space, so, secretary silva, let's open item seven, which is the director's report up for
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public comment. if there's anybody here that would like to comment on the director's report, this is your time. seeing none, we do have one accommodation request. all right, let's let's hear from them. speaker. you've been unmuted. this is for item number seven. the director's report. hello. this is michael petrilli's. again. i want to address, matters related to what jeffrey just said about, west portal. first of all, it's been two months since the tragic death of four people, at this intersection. and we have not seen, a serious commitment by the mayor or the, merchants and, supervisors, melgar, to implement necessary easy changes regarding the traffic flow, setting up this welcome committee is a delaying tactic.
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and there has not been enough advance publicity about the first meetings that were held. i'm not sure that there was enough in, input from from, bicycle riders and pedestrians. there really needs to be some urgency on the part of jeffrey tumlin, the mayor, the supervisor, and the merchants to implement safety changes that will keep people alive. and, i find it very distressing that, we were going to have changes made in the traffic flow until, it was decided to set up this delay of the welcome committee. we don't need a welcoming committee. we need implementation. 30s will protect everyone who uses the streets around west portal. and i fear
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that there will be more deaths on at this area because, the sfmta is not acting with urgency, let us remember that four people have lost their lives because of bad traffic engineering on our streets. thank you, thank you. one more speaker. let's hear. speaker you've been unmuted. herbert weiner, my concern about the west portal project is that there has to be sufficient input from the businesses and also the people patronize these businesses. there has to be a balance between the safety and also the interest of people in that district. what is the problem with mta? planning is so many small businesses have gone by the wayside because their
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voices were not heard, and i hope they are heard in this. and thank you, thank you. no further callers. thank you so much for your comments, we can now close public comment and move on to the next item. places u on item number eight, the citizens advisory council report. we have no report. places you on item number nine. general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction and are not on today's calendar. thank you, secretary silva. we will now open general public comment for matters not on the agenda. any public comment today? no. okay. you do have accommodation. all right. let's hear from them first. speaker. this is for item number nine. general public comment. hello. this is michael petrilli's again . jane warner plaza is an embarrassment, we are at the start of gay pride season, and
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thousands of visitors to the castro, come via the f car line to jane warner plaza, and it's filthy. the, boarding island in the middle of the plaza is not regularly cleaned@9, and there s no information posted there about when the next departure is to head downtown, we need, this sfmta board to agendize jane warner plaza and what can be done today. way to improve it. we cannot wait for a ten year plan from dp w to, bring about some improvements here. we took two months to get sfmta to finally fill in the potholes.
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these potholes were at least three years existed and created a pedestrian safety in jane warner plaza. that was unacceptable, we would very much like to have sfmta meet with us. we are the friends of jane warner plaza 30s. we have requests via email to have a meeting with sfmta, and there has been, no indication from your agency that you will meet with us to hear our, concerns that take more than two minutes of public comment to improve the situation at jane warner plaza. thank you, thank you. next speaker. this is herbert warner. now i wish to express my concern
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over the mta budget. now, i feel that the bicycle coalition should not have any funding because it is nonprofit corporation and that basically, if they need the money, they should get it from silicon valley, from individuals like ron conway. there is one one reason why there might be such a fiscal crisis with mta right now is because if you are funding private entities and it really makes no sense, and then on top of it, you're expecting the muni riders to foot the bill. they're being punished for riding muni, and they didn't have to pay their bus fare for, it's not really it's not really fair. riders to be balancing the
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budget. and at the same time, the bicycle coalition gets funding. it's a really wrong. and i hope the board supervisors reject that budget proposal. this is ethically wrong. what you are doing and the public should not have to suffer for it. so you really have to think this over and i hope you reflect on it. perhaps you 30s tonight. thank you. thank you so much for your comment. no further speakers. thank you. we will now close public comment on item nine. secretary silva, please call the next item. director is that places you are on item ten your consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single vote. unless a member of the board or public wishes to consider an item separately for all speakers providing public comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to. item 10.1 amending transportation code
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division two, section 201 to add designation of on street vehicle electric charging parking spaces and amending section 301 to add a fine for parking a vehicle on an on street vehicle. electric charging parking space unless the vehicle is actively charging . item 10.2 authorizing the director of transportation, or designee, to execute the required certifications and assurances, and authorized agent forms for fiscal year 2023 2024. low carbon transit operations program for the purpose of obtaining funds from the california department of transportation for the free muni for seniors, people with disabilities, and youth and transit signal priority programs , and authorizing the sfmta to comply with all conditions and requirements as set forth. set forth in the certifications and assurances and applicable statutes, regulations and guidelines. item 10.3 authorizing the director of
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transportation to execute contract number sfmta 202450, llc. scheduling system maintenance and support services agreement between the city and county of san francisco and trapeze software group for proprietary scheduling, system maintenance, and software services for a total contract amount not to exceed approximately $4 million and a term of five years commencing on november 1st, 2024. that concludes your consent calendar. thank you so much, secretary silva. directors do we have any clarifying questions on the items on consent? no. okay. we will now open public comment for item ten on the consent calendar . i have one accommodation request. let's hear them out. thank you. speaker you've been unmuted. this is for item number ten. okay. no further speakers.
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all right. thank you, secretary silva, let us now close public comment on item ten, directors may i have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar? so move second. thank you, secretary silva, please call the roll on the motion to approve. director heminger heminger i director henderson a henderson. i director kinsey i kinsey i vice chair. kikina. hi kahina i thank you. the consent calendar is approved. let's call the next item. very good places. you on item number 11 consenting to the proposed development agreement between the city and county of san francisco, the city and stonestown inn and w parcel llc, a delaware limited liability company. storm surge stonestown shopping center, lp, a delaware limited partnership and stonestown anchor acquisition lp, a delaware limited partnership. the developer for a 30 acre master plan, multi-phase mixed use community development located at 325 1/20 avenue surrounding the stonestown galleria shopping mall. as it
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relates to matters under the jurisdiction of the sfmta, including but not limited to the transportation sustainability fee, components of the infrastructure plan, the transportation exhibit, including a transportation demand management plan, and agreements related to the publicly accessible private streets, transit access and operator restrooms, and transportation related mitigation and improvements. improvement measures from the california environmental quality act, sequa environmental impact report, and authorizing the director to execute the sfmta consent to the development agreement and adopting fines under sequa. okay. good afternoon, board of directors. i'm cronenberg, i'm a senior planning manager in the streets division. i'm joined today by my colleague adam smith, who will be doing the bulk of this presentation. my colleague from jonathan cherry and actually a whole slew of city staff and folks from our development partner who are here to present today on the stonestown development agreement that's in
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front of you today, so i'm just going to give the sort of biggest picture here. i know this is new to some of you all. and just to remind us, development agreements are contracts that are set between the city and developers in exchange for, you know, any number of public benefits, and changes to land use code in that area. and they're really clear and specific, and they're set over many years of time in this case 25 years. and so we expect the benefits not to be realized tomorrow, but over, you know, my kids lifetime, as an example of a few recent development agreements that have come before you, balboa reservoir, i know, is top of mind because you all got to talk about it a lot in the context of the frida kahlo bikeway. and so the complete street improvement that we're all looking forward to is lee avenue. but of course, because the development timeline is not set in stone, you all agreed to the frida kahlo bikeway while we wait for lee avenue to come online and i hope you've all
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been out to china basin because through the development agreement with mission rock, we have one of our best new protected biking facilities in the entire city. and so that's just one of the types of things that these contracts can do for us as a city and for the public, the four main categories of things that you all have to make a decision about that come with the development agreement, is the transportation sustainability fee, which is a policy we had a lot of conversation about in 2015. and i know there's colleagues in the room who worked really hard on it, and we're starting to realize the benefits of that effort, public realm improvements, which include pedestrian facilities, bikeway designs, transit reliability improvements, mitigations that are set forward through sequa, which can be big or small, but they're really 100% tied to the environmental assessment that was completed. and lastly, this is part and parcel of the transportation sustainability fee policy that you all agreed to ten years ago. our
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transportation demand management plans that allow us to ensure that we are advancing transit first goals over the life of a development. and so i'm going to ask my colleague adam to come up and talk about how these categories are realized through the stonestown development agreement in front of you today. so, adam. all right. thanks. hava, afternoon board director tumlin, so for context, probably most of you know where stonestown is, but, it's located north of san francisco state university, lowell high school is just to the west of stonestown. 19th avenue is to the east, and then directly to the north of the project is saint stephen's church and school, the ymca and the merced manor neighborhood. so the stonestown development was built
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in the 1950s as a shopping mall surrounded by 27 acres of surface parking lots, and much of the transportation has not been updated since then. it has outdated transit facilities, poor and disconnected walking conditions. 20th avenue traverses through the mall parking lot, and most people don't even realize that that's 20th avenue in the in the parking lot. there it has inadequate bike infrastructure where there is bike infrastructure. and so this project will update, stonestown for the 21st century. so the project will replace the surface parking with new housing, parks, office and retail. it includes
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3500 residential units, including up to five towers, a new 20th avenue, six acres of parks and plazas, surface parking moved to structures and then new connections for people walking and biking. so the project also includes financial obligations in addition to the infrastructure improvements that are part of the project, there's a $50 million transportation sustainability fee, that can be used for transit and other improvements, and payments for that fee would be made, over the six phases of the project, over many years. there are also. oh, let me go back. sorry there are also several public realm
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improvements, including bringing streets up to better street plan standards, protected bikeways, improved connections to sf state, lowell and the surrounding neighborhoods, bus priority improvements including bus bulbs and operator restroom upgrade for the transit lines that terminate in the area, and then a third set of obligations are sequa related, and those include tdm and then a related trip cap program. so first we'll go through the public realm improvements that the project sponsor will implement as part of the project, and all of the improvements that will go through here, will be constructed and paid for by the developer. so 20th avenue will be the project's main street and will be redesigned so that it no longer feels like a mall parking lot. intersections will be
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signalized, sidewalks, trees, lighting, and other improvements will bring the streets up to better streets plan standards and it will include sidewalk level protected bikeway on the east side of the street. the bike network includes class four protected bikeways throughout, connecting to the existing bike network. it also includes improved walking routes to lowell high school to ralph nickel playground, eucalyptus avenue, saint stephen's ymca, and better connections to 19th avenue, as well. so the bike improvements in stonestown on, are critical additions to the bike network that will make biking much safer and pleasant throughout the neighborhood, the bike network or the bike improvements are also aligned with larger efforts that are
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happening through our biking and rolling plan. the stonestown development will connect to the existing bike network to the north, connecting to stern grove , the 20th avenue, neighbor way, and golden gate park to san francisco state to the south, on the east side to city college. the winston holloway and the new frida kahlo way. quick build and to the west it connects to winston drive, lake merced boulevard, and the great highway . the transit network includes abundant service with several lines serving the site, the m line and 2828 are serve the project via 19th avenue just to the east. the 57 parkmerced travels north and south on 20th avenue through the site. the 29 sunset runs through the site on
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winston drive, and the 58 lake merced. the 1846 avenue and the samtrans 122 terminate just south of the site on buckingham way, south. the project will also include bus bulbs, lighting and shelters at some of the stops along 20th avenue to improve transit operations and provide a better customer experience. this. and moving on to some of the details of the development agreement. the streets and stonestown are a mix of publicly and privately owned. the existing private streets, street network within the site that serves the mall will remain private and because of this unique arrangement, that the sfmta has on these private
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streets, the development agreement will include provisions for mta operate operations. it formalizes transit operations with an easement on 20th avenue for the 57 parkmerced. it requires advance notice for street closures, provides transit shelters and power at key transit stops, and requires the project sponsor to maintain infrastructure on the private streets, including traffic signals, bikeways, signage and striping. there are several mitigation measures required by the eir. the most significant one is mitigation measure tr4 a, which requires the project sponsor to implement a trip monitoring program and implement a tdm program in tandem with the trip monitoring, so it requires trips to stay below 90% of what
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was modeled in the eir, and requires the project sponsor to then implement a tdm program, a transportation demand management program developed in conjunction with the sfmta. and if the trips exceed that 90% of eir, modeled volumes, then additional measures can be implemented or required to be implemented, to help bring those trips under the 90. and now i'll turn it over to my colleague jonathan cherry from the office of economic and workforce development to tell you about some more, benefits from the project. thanks, jonathan. thank you. adam. good afternoon. directors. jonathan cherry, project manager with the office of economic and workforce development. so i will provide a summary of the overall community benefits package in the
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development agreement, which has been negotiated by cdd, working with the planning department and with numerous city agencies, including sfmta, this project is a bit different from many of the city's other large multi-phase projects. this one is unique and that we will see a new community surrounding the existing stonestown mall, rather than replacing what is there. building on this existing asset that is an important resource for the community. we want stonestown and the services it offers the community and its economic activity to be strengthened while we build new housing and improved public realm around it. so so starting with the physical transformation of the site, you heard from adam a description of the overall project master plan, and a more detailed summary of the transportation related benefits in the agreement, all of which have been developed with the active involvement of sfmta staff, as you heard, that transformation begins with the redesign of the existing parking lots into a new street network,
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including a retail corridor along 20th avenue, new bike infrastructure and everything designed to maintain convenient access to the site while improving the pedestrian experience and connections to the surrounding neighborhood. the project will also provide six acres of new, publicly accessible open spaces, including new privately maintained parks, new plazas, including a new permanent location for the neighborhood farmers market, and also mid-block pedestrian connections throughout the site. as part of phase one, a of the project, which is the northwest part of the site. the project will provide improvements to rec parks adjacent rolph nicol playground, including two new accessible paths that adam mentioned to improve access, within and through the park, and the project will also provide a new southern arrival plaza at the park at the future greenway park. the project will also make a financial contribution to the city for future improvements to rolph nicol playground, and the
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recreation and park commission approved the project at its meeting last week. okay, two key benefits of the project are its new spaces for kids and seniors. the project will provide a new child care facility with capacity for up to 100 children. an adjacent outdoor space to be rented to a nonprofit child care provider with partially subsidized rent. the project will also replace the existing ymca annex facility at 20th and buckingham with a new 7000 square foot on site senior center to be rented for $1 a year to the ymca or another nonprofit operator. and of the almost 3500 new housing units that will be permitted as part of the project, stones town's affordable housing plan has been designed to facilitate development of 20% of all units built as part of the project as affordable, including both on site and in lieu fee units. at
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least 300 of those affordable units will be built on the project site, either as inclusionary units that are part of market rate buildings or as 100 100% affordable buildings on parcels donated to the city or a nonprofit developer, and i'll just mention of those, land dedication parcels. one of those would be programed for a 100% affordable senior housing projects, with up to 199 units and the housing plan also prioritizes in lieu fees collected by the city to support housing planned at the neighboring sf state educator village that would be affordable to low and moderate income households, like all of the city's development agreements, this one includes a workforce agreement between the city and the developer. that agreement provides for a first source housing commitments, local hiring for work within public streets or within the rolph
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nicol playground, and a local business enterprise plan. the development agreement, as adam mentioned, will last up to 25 years or more with construction occurring over multiple project phases. that investment. will create hundreds of jobs within san francisco, both during construction and on an ongoing basis. after completion of the project. the project will also help secure the existing stonestown mall as an ongoing community asset. okay. the community played an important role in shaping the design of this project over the past five years to address community concerns, the project has evolved in a number of ways. during that time, for example, portions of the project have decreased or increased in height to respond to the site's topography and the context of the neighborhood and the northwest corner of the site. parcels were reconfigured to create a more direct connection between rolph nicol playground and the site, and with townhomes and buildings with lower heights
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located adjacent to the park. taller buildings are proposed along the edge of the sf state campus. changes were also made to the proposed circulation network to address concerns around on street parking and loading for several adjacent schools, and to create safer pedestrian crossings throughout. and as adam mentioned, mitigation measures were developed along with the transportation demand management plan to address traffic concerns raised by the community. okay, here is a snapshot of where we are in the project right now. the ordinances that would approve the development agreement and updates to the planning code, which are sponsored by the mayor and supervisor melgar, were introduced at the board of supervisors on april 23rd. as you can see, today's meeting is one of several boards and commissions that will consider approval of the project. on may 9th, the planning commission certified the project's final environmental impact report and adopted ceqa findings and approved several other actions,
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including recommending the development agreement to the board of supervisors. and we are working toward consideration of the project by the board of supervisors this summer. i have been asked to wrap up just by summarizing the actions that we're requesting your support for today. so first we are requesting that the board consent to the transportation related elements of the development agreement, including the transportation exhibit and the transportation components of the infrastructure plan. second, to adopt the planning commission's findings and the and the, the transportation related mitigation and improvement measures. and third, to authorize the director of transportation to execute sfmta's consent to the development agreement pending approval of the board of supervisors. so with that, thank you for your time, directors. that concludes the staff presentation, and i will be here, along with mta staff and planning department staff, for any questions. thank you so much for your presentation, jonathan,
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adam and hava, colleagues, do you have any follow up questions for the team director hemminger? thank you, madam chair, i do have a couple questions about parking, so whoever the parking person is, you might want to make your way to the podium, the first question is, what's going to happen with all the parking that's there today? director hemminger, we've actually requested that the developer come and answer the questions specifically around parking. so and i know that the person in charge is actually out sick. so is there a representative? sure, sure. and so your first question is what happens to the parking there is currently there. right. okay. hi julia adams with brookfield. the project sponsor, so most of the, parking is a surface parking lots, and that
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will be transformed into the housing development that surrounds the mall, there is an underground garage currently, and we are maintaining that. so that's 250 spaces and also extending it as part of our, parking plan. so is it fair to say that all the parking that's there now is going to be preserved in the new development in some form or fashion? you're not reducing the total amount. we are reducing the total amount. we're putting, parking into the base of the residential buildings that we're building, we also have a garage in the north of the site, but all of the surface parking lot goes away and will be rebuilt as housing and structured parking instead. so it's being converted from. if i may jump in, if we're
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talking about residential parking as well, there is an increase in the what's out there today. how much of that will be preserved and how much new parking you're building for the housing development. that's what i'm after. yeah. so, we have let me pull up the numbers and i can clarify a little bit, i think director hemminger is asking about the commercial, parking specifically. and so if there's 250, commercial parking spaces now, how much commercial parking spaces, will there be at the end of this project? okay. so it is flexible with how much we, build, but the maximum, parking spaces that we can build in the future is, 4861. and that includes both retail and residential. and we have flexibility to rightsize the
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amount of parking, that we build over time. so that's the maximum that we studied in sequa, but that will continue to be studied. and you know, we want to make sure that we continue the long term success of the mall. so we'll continue to analyze how much parking is needed in the future. but that is the maximum that we studied under sequa. and you're under not a minimum but a maximum parking amount. correct that's the city's approach. yes. okay. yeah hello. sarah jalandhari, counsel for the project sponsor. so the way the study is set up is that, there's a there's a total cap site wide, which is the 4861 number. but there is a ratio that's applicable, it's a 1 to 1 residential ratio and up to 3400 spaces, but it's subject to flex during the phased construction of the site to kind of accommodate. i think as julia mentioned, we want to ensure
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that the mall remains, successful throughout the phased construction of the site. and that would require certain replacement parking to be provided throughout the construction of the site. and so in order to accommodate that, the numbers are permitted to flex as the building as the site is built out with the final numbers being the 4861 total, with the 1 to 1 residential ratio and a total of 3400 commercial. right. and at our at our last board meeting on this subject, where we were or maybe it was one, i received a briefing about it. i mean, the number 4800 is very large, it seems to me, but i have a hard time judging, whether that is the right amount or not, and what i'd really like is an assessment from city staff about why that number got picked and whether that maximum number is too high. okay, so i think you
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know, there's a lot of factors in play here. and so sequa has to analyze for the worst impacts. right. and so often developers come with their biggest plan and their biggest goals. and then there is a multiple phase segment. and i think we talked a lot about the transportation demand management plan. and so the goal here, you asked for my assessment and i'm like, i'm not. i also don't know whether that's like the right number or the wrong number. is it? it's certainly more than we currently have on site today. but we also expect, you know, people to be living there and sometimes they just need car storage. and that's different than creating a new trip every day. and so the goal here, i mean, i don't know whether that's what you're trying to get at is, is the parking going to induce new traffic or is it just the quality of the amount of parking? i guess maybe if i can ask one of the challenge we we've had with, transit of all
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kinds is whether we're overbuilding, parking and thereby by giving people an incentive to drive, and this is a very large redevelopment of an existing, commercial use. and so it seems to me now is the time to fix that problem if we've got it, but i don't know how to. well, maybe i can give you two answers. so i think it's not about the total amount of parking, but how are we dealing with transportation demand management? right. so first of all, there's a pretty strict rule about our transportation demand management plan that i know we kind of glossed over, but our planning department is actually required. and being funded out of the transportation sustainability fee to monitor the number of trips. and i think we said this, if it exceeds the 90% that is modeled, then there must be more mitigations applied and one of those choices includes reducing future phases
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of parking. right. so we all know that reducing the amount of parking reduces the number of trips made. and so that's why it's like high in that tdm toolkit. and so we can work with the developer through the phases to ensure that we're not creating, you know, they don't want a traffic problem on 19th avenue and we don't either. and so that's part of that tdm plan, and then sorry, i had a second point and i sort of lost it in that first point. and maybe it'll come back to me in a second. okay. yeah. so i'm sort of we're relying heavily on that tdm plan that would reduce the amount of trip that says, like you can't exceed a certain number of trips. and we are we are monitoring it. and so i will tell you that we get monitoring reports for all of our developments annually. and if you're out of compliance with that, then the planning department gets to sit down with the developer to tell them that they have to apply these rules. when do you expect. and maybe this is a question for the developer. when do you think they're going to actually build the thing? well, that is certainly not a question for me.
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yes okay. hi. julia adams again with brookfield. our intent is to begin design and construction for the first phase as soon as possible. but it will depend on market conditions, but the da was, negotiated with the city to help us get a shovel on the ground as soon as possible. right. but market conditions could mean ten years from now, right? we don't have an exact timeline at this point. sorry okay. well, my sense of it is. and the 90% is attractive, but it's probably going to be a while before we endanger that 90% threshold, which means that we really don't have a trigger there. that's going to be pulled anytime soon, let me ask if i could just add another. i think this is my last question of the developer. this unusual status of 20th avenue, which is i, i'm
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hearing privately owned, did the city request that that be handed over to us in these negotiations ? yeah. i mean, of course, you know, there's like a deep bench and this actually took five years, but the answer is yes. the city did request, to take on the ownership of the street. and maybe i could ask the developer, why did you say no? because that's where we're ending up. at least we're getting an easement onto a street. so thank you, director, you know, i might try to answer that a little bit of a different way. so we in the process of developing this project, analyzed both public
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and private ownership of the streets. i think unlike most of our other projects, these are, you know, existing, as, you know, existing mall access roads , so it's not like we're just building new streets on a private property. so 20th avenue, buckingham way north, buckingham way west are all existing functioning mall streets. this project will do. we have a phasing. i think we have a you have a nice pretty picture of it. i mean, the odd thing to me is that, the project itself is turning 20th avenue into something that looks more like a city street, but its legal status is unchanged except for the easement, so why can't we just. true the two up to each other? well, i have the legal status reflect the physical appearance, i think so. there there are a few different reasons why the decision was
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made to keep that street as a privately owned but publicly accessible street. one of those decisions has just has to do with the project phasing, because the existing, you know, there's a one of the challenges with this project is that parking field is encumbered to existing tenants, different tenants sort of have the right to parking. it's a mall, because that street will actually be improved in phases, as it would be challenging to have a segment of that street that's public in the middle of sections that are private. i think, given that is an existing street that will, although redesigned, maintain its existing function, the decision was made to keep it as, you know, private maintenance, but we have a, we're recording a public access restrictions on all of the streets so that 24
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hours a day, the public can use them just like they are public streets. we're allowing some enforcement where the city wants the ability to enforce parking or transit access. so you know it. i'll just say it was a back and forth. and for a variety of reasons, in particular phasing, it was determined to leave those mall access roads under the current ownership. okay. well, that's an oddity to me. i don't think it's a fatal flaw, but, it's a very unusual thing that we're doing. i think, as i recall, reading, you have the ability the developer has the ability to close the street for certain special events, and that's something that we would normally permit. under our own authority. but in this case, we wouldn't, i think the parking question to me is more serious,
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and i guess it gets to this issue about how do we deal with these development agreements versus a project that we're going out to build ourselves, and, and i think the information that we have available today, or at least has been explained to me today, is really not i don't think, state of the art sufficient, when you bring an item to this board, i would expect much more detailed answers about how much parking are we having in the maximum, how was that determined, etc, etc. and i think today i just got some fairly vague answers, so again, not a fatal flaw, but i think it's maybe a little learning experience that when we're going to bring these items to the board, we treat them a little bit more like it's one of our own and get through the whole drill, instead of, having
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to hunt and peck for answers, if i, if i respond to a couple of those issues, yeah. s so one of the learnings that you in particular, director hemminger, have tried to teach us repeatedly is for these large projects to come to you. well in advance, rather than just at the very end of the process for some of these large developer agreements, they've been effectively stalled for my entire tenure here as a result of covid and economic impacts. and they've reawakened. so one of the things that i've asked the team to do is an inventory of what else is out there waiting in the wings that needs a check in with all of you so that we can get feedback in time to inform other departments, second point that i would make is for these issues of particularly parking ratio, that is the jurisdiction of the planning department. so we play a strong role in partnering with them on transportation demand
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management. so that it doesn't overwhelm the transportation system, but that that is there. and the planning commission's jurisdiction, and, and at the same time, i agree that it's probably time to revisit the city's approach to transportation demand management and that connection that we have with the planning department and the planning commission and how we work together. the final comment that i would make is, the fact that these streets will remain private is not, in fact, unusual in san francisco. according to the department of public works, there are 264 private street segments in san francisco, including a lot of mission bay, parts of treasure island. this is a case where the developer very much sees 20th avenue as the core to their mall function, and desires to be able to maintain that street at a higher level than the city. typically the department of public works would be able to,
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while at the same time providing the benefits of public access. so i think this is it's an unusual case in that it's a mall . but like other campus like environments in san francisco, where we have also granted many private streets with public access, i think there's actually little that is unusual about it. well, i like your first two answers. your third one just makes me more curious, you've got 200 of these private streets. are you comfortable having it that way, or is that an item of unfinished business that we ought to be attending to ? i mean, for the most part, the private or non mta, generally speaking, transportation infrastructure is owned by the public. it's not owned by private interests, it's true, except where in places like mission bay hospital, the, the goal was getting access through a private campus. so our, our goal is public accessibility less less than always public
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ownership. but i'm certainly happy to have a larger policy conversation, including other tricky issues that we face, like the number of streets that are controlled by, for example, the port or or the recreation and parks department, the mta, doesn't have jurisdiction over many streets in san francisco. yeah. and look, as i indicated, jeff, it is a curiosity. i don't necessarily have a fixed view one way or the other. what's better? but it's a fairly large exception to a rule that we have with so many private roads. yeah. again i think it would be worth exploring that. yeah. this is a case where not only will are we confident that the street will be maintained to a higher standard than the city is able to do, but we also get some state of the art infrastructure without us having to pay for it. so i think there i am not finding areas where in the current way we divvy up
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jurisdiction over streets. i'm not finding ways in which it is significantly getting in the way of the larger goals that this policy body has established. well and i i'm looking at our council, but i can imagine assuming the tort liability for somebody else's road is not something she's looking forward to, so, look, i'll leave that as it was. and, madam chair, thanks for the extra time here. absolutely great questions, director hinsey. thank you, madam chair. i had similar to, my line of questioning is. and the issues i wanted to raise are similar to director hemingers, i guess, however, since you answered his first question about parking, is there a and then the other question was about tdm. so i think if it's stay up there, isn't there a
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certain ratio of retail parking? i parking for folks who will be coming to the mall as a mall versus residential parking or do we know how that's all going to work? sure, okay. so i'm going to ask our colleagues at brookfield to come up again. but i think the key takeaway is that it's supposed to be flexible over the long term, right? these are big developments. the future is unknown. and so they've requested and they have flexibility to swap between different land uses and parking ratios. but if they can answer their specific questions around the ratios that exist in this plan, when they're ready. hi, so the current ratio today is 4.5, and that will go down over time,
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in our tdm plan we have between 1.4 and 3.5 spaces for every 1000ft!s of commercial space, ad also just wanted to reiterate that we need the parking in order for the mall to thrive. it's a thriving asset currently, and we want to ensure its success through providing parking for the customers. right? yeah and i did just have a follow up, if you could elaborate more on you know, one specifically besides a reduction in parking supply, the tdm plan, the goal seems quite lofty and something we're going to have to deal with in the future. so what else? what else is in the tool kit other than just, reducing the a number of parking spaces
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because it seems like we're going to we may need to think creative win out of the box here specifically because because of what the developer just shared about parking for the mall. yeah, that's a great question, and i'm glad you asked it, because i remembered my second point. and so my second point to director hemminger is that this is a mixed use development. and so empirically in the research, what we actually know is that the best way to reduce car trips is to put things near the places where people live. and so what this is actually becoming is a walkable community. when i got to brief many people in our agency and you all, i was like, well, i mean, i can imagine a lot of 19 year olds who are going to move in here and, and i shouldn't be like publicizing any of these businesses, but they're going to go straight to uniqlo and get some sushi and they're going to get their boba tea, and then they're going to walk home. and so that's a
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walking trip, right? this is not a trip that creates a car trip. and so we've certainly modeled these new car trips. but i wanted to say that the biggest thing that's going to reduce the number of car trips is creating a walkable, mixed use development where people have the opportunity to walk and bike to the things that they want to do and to the places they want to go. and so i think on the whole, that's what this is proposing, and that's why this is this is a part of the tdm plan. and so then our second biggest tool is reducing the on site parking in any location. that really helps to reduce demand management. and then, director hinsey, you really asked about what else is in the toolkit. and so i think there's dozens of things in the toolkit, and i know my planning department colleagues will save me when i start flailing up here, but it includes, bike share, bike share passes, in-unit bike parking, bundled muni passes. so i think that's all in this toolkit. and then the idea is like, there's no right answer for any problem. and so to give these developers flexibility, we when we are starting to realize, if we ever
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start to realize the issues that we're identifying in the model, they will have the flexibility to pick among them. and there's always research that's being advanced that sort of tells us what is more effective than others. and also we don't want to just prescribe a solution without certainly understanding the problem. so if someone from planning does want to come up and add to that or but if you can also say like that was good enough. yeah. you want to come up. sure. very quickly. hi. good afternoon, directors. kay zushi, planning department staff, i just wanted to quickly address the question of the variety of tdm measures that are being proposed by the developer at this point. i mean, i'm going to have developer dive into those, but, you know, there are a bunch of measures that that are intended to keep that, project generated vehicle trips below 90% of estimated, number of vehicle trips and there is flexibility in choosing exact measures, right, that would be
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implemented. and that's the sort of how the mit measure mitigation measure is designed. so the planning department doesn't dictate what measures need to be implemented. it's up to the developer to select exact measures to be implemented. but they must keep that, trip count below 90% of estimated vehicles. that's how the mitigation measure is designed, so i'm going to hand it over to developer. thank you. hello. sarah jalandhari, counsel to the, project sponsor, so, so it's true that you know, there's a there's a tdm plan that provides for a menu of options. and i think this is fairly standard, the menu of options includes things like parking reductions, transit subsidies, child care plan, bicycle, additional bicycle facilities, things like that. and the
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developer does have the ability to choose from this menu and kind of create a tailored program for the site, and the city has the ability then to monitor the reductions and ensure that the project sponsor is meeting this 90% reduction. and that is how the city will ensure that that that's met while still providing the developer with the flexibility of implementing these options that work for the site. as mentioned, this is a unique site in that there's an operating mall, and we're going to be building housing and, you know, some commercial around this operating mall. so i think this flexibility is necessary to ensure that, you know, everything kind of works together in a seamless way that ensures the that the mall continues to thrive, while also accommodating the new development. and then the this is probably not for you, and so when will the initial data be collected, for drip counts and,
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and things that will inform if these measures are to be taken, i imagine that's years out, but just curious. qc planning department staff again. so i think the question was when the developer begins monitoring after construction. so the way the mitigation measure, tr4 is set up is that the developer would be responsible for starting monitoring after, the operation of phase one. combines with construction of phase three. and since that time, the developer will continue monitoring annually. okay. so it's an annual thing. all right. yes. that's correct. okay, i, i am generally supportive of this
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project. i think it's going to be a great project for, west side. and i appreciate everyone's work on it. i sort of, from a general policy perspective, i share, director hemminger sort of, thoughts around the whole idea of 20th avenue. being it sort of being a unique arrangement, and i do think it's worth, bringing the, the requisite city departments together to sort of look at how we handle, private street segments in the city. but i am, ready to support what's before us for today. thank you, madam chair. thank you. director henry . thank you. okay, i do have
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some follow up questions, i'm going to focus on parking since that's where we landed this particular plane right now. all right, so. so let's see, perhaps this is a question either for the developer or pwd, can you give us some insights on how much parking has been committed via leases to anchor tenants? yes. and if, to help illustrate this, perhaps staff can pull up page 46 of the staff report, because i think that has a neat little diagram there that shows all the different parking lots that exist right now. yeah. how many? i don't know if i can share this precise. yes yeah.
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so, the exhibit that you referenced, is, all of the surface parking spaces are not tied to particular tenants. and we aren't able to share the specific details of the leases. ms, it'll be something that will work with the tenants over time as we build out each phase. i think the challenge, that i'm hearing from my fellow board members is that we don't have great insights right now based on this presentation, of what the baseline is really for, the parking demand and what has been really committed to the what the i guess parking commitments are for the tenants there. as a baseline, i would assume that that should be a, a, a good baseline to start from, and, and there's a lot of vagueness right now around parking and, and that's always challenging for especially a transportation board to, to hear. right. and so, i, i echo, director hamburger's concerns about that,
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just that the vagueness of this. all right. and it doesn't sit right with, with me either, and i do wish we would have had a bit more details, especially because one of the actions that we have today is to consent to transportation related elements of the development agreement and parking is a big part of that, you know, and so it's challenging to move forward with something like that. if we don't have the clarity that we need to really assess what that what that really looks like. so i just want to, you know, vocalize that because it is, it puts us in a tricky spot when we don't have the right information, to look at the full transportation implications of a development agreement. so i'll move on from there, unless director tomlin, you want to. yes. so i would refer you if you pull up the staff report file, on pages. 47,
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46, 47, 48, there is a good deal of detail about parking that we did not go into in the staff presentation, but i hope that it answers most of your questions. and again, i just i want to emphasize the that the distinction between the planning commission role and the sfmta board role, that our role is really making sure that the transportation demand management program is robust and that the, the, that we can manage the impact on the total transportation system that the planning commission's role is really is the parking ratios. right. and there there's a connection. correct? yeah, there's connection because you can't talk about a system if you don't talk about parking and i think it's a factor for sure.
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and so but that's also why that this ratio is the maximum with no minimum. and we maintain our authority as a city to shrink the parking supply. if, if the developer is not meeting their goals along the way, right, but it is it is troubling that, you know, we are at a board meeting and we don't have basic answers about what, you know, what do we currently what's the baseline? right now for tenants, unless we do have that answer, sarah galadari, counsel for the project sponsor and i apologize, the point person is six, so she's not here today. but i just wanted to clarify that i think something that's important to note here is that the parking ratio for the commercial right, which includes the existing mall parking, which is going to, you know, calling it replacement parking, is going to go down as this project is constructed. so we're actually are going to be getting less parking, as a ratio for the mall, as the project is constructed, and so it's going
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to go down from, julia mentioned it from 4.5 spaces per 1000ft!s to between 1.4 and 3.5 spaces per thousand square feet, and the reason why that it flexes so much is because it depends on how much residential parking is built out. so the way that the entitlements are set up is that the total cap is 4000, around 800 parking spaces, but the ratios for residential and commercial are allowed to flex to, to accommodate kind of market conditions. you know, the fact that there's a lot of encumbered parking lots here. i think we can't tell you the exact amount of encumbered parking, but there is a lot of existing leases that require parking at the site that they're going to have to negotiate and address as this as the site is built out. and so the entitlements have been set up strategically to allow for that flexibility during the build out of the project, while at the same time ensuring that it is
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reduced as a ratio as it's built out. so there will be a parking reduction that occurs from current conditions in terms of, a ratio for commercial use and those, those tenants, those leases are will survive the length of this development. is that accurate? i believe there are. yes. there are some long term leases that will be in effect. okay. and i assume that a lot of the parking ratios are mostly associated with, the anchor tenants and that's why, you know, that's that's the detail that i want to focus on a little bit more, in terms of the tdm program, it's i just wanted to make sure i was tracking, when does the program actually start or when does that countdown actually begin? happy to try to answer the question, kazushi. again, planning
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department staff. so when does the tdm program, implementation begin? right. is that the question? so the sponsor must start implementing tdm program itself or plan in your pocket. that implementation has to begin immediately. immediately. yeah. but the assessment starts in phase one from phase one to phase three. is that i just want to make sure i understand when they start assessing, the 9,090% threshold, like when do they start that analysis? i mean, there are a variety of measures that, can only be implemented, you know, when the project gets to a certain point. so it's a little complicated. but the short answer is that the program implementation needs to happen immediately, but the monitoring side wouldn't start until phase one operation combines with
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construction of phase three. okay. and what clarifies what baseline are they using to assess that 90, it's against the eir estimated auto trips. yeah. so it's modeled, numbers as adam mentioned. excellent. thank you. thank you. now i'm going to move a little bit into, this is not transportation related, but curious because this ends up, the housing issues around the area tend to come to the board in indirect ways, so i just wanted to, to spend a little bit of time, if you'll indulge me on housing, and particularly on, we've heard a lot from folks that are renting out rvs on winston drive that one of the reasons they're doing that very practice is because of the challenges they have. as students to get adequate housing in the surrounding areas. and so
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i just wanted to take a little deeper dive on the housing piece of, of this, development agreement and understand the student housing component of it, is there a student housing component for sf state students, and what does that look like? thank you. director jonathan cherry. so, there, the student housing specific component of the project is that, the any in-lieu fees collect bid from the project, as part of the affordable housing obligation, the first priority use for those fees by the city would be to dedicate those fees to, assist with the construction of the educator village project that is proposed, just to the west of the project, along winston drive, the there is not a specific student housing project
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, i mean, of the affordable housing projects other than that, none of them are specifically student housing. but, you know, as you know, students will be a target population for, you know, in particular rental housing built on the site. but the educator village is the, the place where any fees would be collected would be first dedicated. and we've built in also flexibility so that, you know, if that project does not come to fruition in a certain amount of time, we're not tying the city's hands in the future, but that is the priority. use that we've designated. thank you for that. yeah, that that answers it, and then the other question i had, was about the $50 million disbursement, just to try to understand a little bit of how that functions and when we would expect to that amount of money to hit our coffers. i just don't, have a really clear picture of when do we start seeing that drip? because it seems like it'll happen in
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increments, but if you can paint the picture for me, that'd be great. so thanks. so that, that is our biggest question mark, right? we put in our capital improvement program placeholders for transportation and sustainability fee for all of our development agreements. every in our five year cip that you've just approved. right. because it's actually a big guessing game. they the tsf is triggered based on the phase and the construction documents. and so that's at the developer's discretion. and really we you know, we have no, no knowledge necessarily of, of when that next phase is going to come until, until it's really upon us , so how we think about it as an agency and not specific to this development, is that there is placeholders for what we call tsf in the capital improvement program, and just for context, we did look back and we've received about 200 million over the last seven years, to mta from the tsf, from all of our ddas. right. and that's, i think, in a slightly down market, we haven't really been seeing a lot of development. and
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so it'll be a very peaky, kind of fun source. and also, you know, we don't like to we don't like to, budget on the best years. we like to budget on the lean ones. and if we get additional funding then then that is really great. and this is i think we've talked about this is a really flexible funding source in the sense of it does go to a really big bucket and primarily transit capital and transit service reliability improvements. that's the vast majority of these dollars. but as you know, transit could use every dollar it gets to advance the next project. so as these projects come online and hit those phases where they do put into the tsf, it immediately gets budgeted. and then as we are able to spend it on the highest and best need, that's kind of lacking a dollar. or it can swap out for a dollar that's less flexible or something else. so that's really how this agency thinks about tsf in the broadest sense. and so the timing, i think we've already answered like we just don't have we don't know. we heard there's an anticipated phase one, but we're not going to see $50 million tomorrow and it's not going to solve our budget problems. but it's definitely, really a net benefit
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to us as an agency to work with these developments to, to get the sustainability fee. and i do want to just raise again that in 2015, we, completely redid this program and it used to be only some properties were even paying in. and now, you know, any property of a certain size is funding this pot. and it's done really well for us. so i hope that answers your question. it does don't count on it basically. oh, just to add on. so the just, because this is the part i can answer. so the fee is collected with each building permit, currently the building code includes, well, essentially it's either due at the first construction document or at, certificate of occupancy. but it's basically each time a building is built, there's a fee associated with that building. so it's not like a lump sum with each phase. it's built. it's building. okay. that's that's great to know, and i assume that breeze already has it on our radar. and okay, excellent, and,
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just one, one specific question on 25 between winston and buckingham, i was i think this is slide. slide 19 of the deck, i just wanted to better understand, what we were planning to do there. and thank you, adam and victoria for your briefing yesterday, but, i just wanted to better understand the circulation plan as it pertains to, that particular street, it is a very complicated street as it stands right now, really challenging for pedestrians to navigate it. i was just there this weekend, had a terrible time, almost got hit a few times , and particularly particularly the intersection of winston and 20th, it's quite challenging, could you walk me through a little bit of what we plan to do there, i see that we have a
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transit only lane. i see that we're moving bus. bus stations. i just wanted to really understand. like what? what is it going to look like for the pedestrian experience and the writer experience? sure. so currently the concept does include a red lane, and that's mostly, to ensure that the 57 is moving as efficiently as it can. that was one of the few real transportation impacts. and so this is a sequa mitigation specifically related to the reliability of the 57, my understanding is that this that intersection that you identified, buckingham and winston, it's super complicated. and we're trying to ensure that everyone has a safe experience there, while at the same time not continuing to deteriorate. the 57 and so that red line is there mostly to ensure the 57 can kind of do its runtime in a reliable way. it may not be the exact right tool for the job, and so we're still working with
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the development, and we do have a commitment from the developer to keep looking at that street segment that southern south of winston to buckingham on 20th avenue, to see if there's other ways for us to prevent general vehicle movement without using like that really blunt tool of the red line. right. because the red lane, right there it is not actually for, just to give the 57, which is, as we know, a 20 minute route reliability, it's there to preclude general vehicle traffic. and that might be too blunt a tool. and so we're open and the development is open to still, looking at that. and again, this is sort of a much out there phase. and so there might even different thoughts and different ways for us to imagine this street, whenever that phase does come online, you know, what is not there right now are sidewalks. and so there will be sidewalks on both sides of the roadway. there will also be transit stops . right now, one of the stops, i believe, is just like in the
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middle of the parking lot, and so we will actually have a sidewalk with a transit shelter. and so we have committed to up to four with a maximum of six locations that are all along 20th avenue to bus shelters, and then the sidewalk is going to be widened from a current 12ft to 20ft. and again, like, it's going to have tall or six story buildings or taller and it's just going to be a much more dynamic place than the current, sort of small building and parking lot situation that we have now. but i think the specific request is like, oh, those are some really interesting transportation engineering tools that we applied there. and that's really about the mitigation for the 57. and i don't think that's something we've 100% settled on. and we all agree that during this phase called basis of design, we might revisit some of the tools that we apply to that roadway, especially because there might be totally different circumstances 15 years from now. exactly. okay. thank you so much for highlighting that, and i just do want to know how excited
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i am about the operator restroom element of this design, because i do think it's, you know, it's always great to see that we've thought about our operators as we're, you know, designing these, development agreements. so that's that was really heartening to see, for sure, all right, colleagues, i think, did director lindsay have a motion on this item? not yet. okay. oh, yes. thank you, let's take public comment on this item. do we have anyone in the room for public comment? hello i just want to speak as somebody who has spent most of their time the last three years in san francisco, either earning an education at state, sf state, or working there either as a part time student or now as a full time employee, i have followed the stonestown development. as you know, an audience member, as
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someone who's going to be impacted by it because i intend to get my master's degree there as well. there has been a lot of silence. there's been a lot of lack of transparent f.c. in terms of how it's brought to campus in terms of how it's spoken about with the staff, in terms of how it's introduced to our bureaucracy, to our meetings , to our to our student interests. like the presentation said, a 19 year old will move to the city and visit this development y to attend state, as well as people who are, returning to the system because we have a very robust project rebound system, which encourages people who are formerly incarcerated to attend university. so they have a separate needs. so if going forward, we bring more attention to the stonestown development through our own through state's own transportation demand management committee, we can
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centralize student interests in this conversation appropriately. and i don't know how. i don't know if there has been discussion. i don't know, because i know sfmta has interests in the school, as a commuter school, as as you know, someone who has the one card, the gator pass has access to sfmta and utilizes it very, very well throughout the city. we're very encouraging our students to use this this program respectfully and predominantly because we also have a huge parking issue on campus. so i would i would like the sfmta and i would like the developers here to hear me say that there needs to be more of an interest in including as if, as if as you into the conversation because our students, while they are temporary, it's cyclical. they will be experiencing this development in various different stages. and it's going to impact not only stones town's development and transit, but ours as well. and i would like more consideration for that because i just i simply don't
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know. thank you. thank you for your comment. stephen lawson i'm a longtime san francisco resident. my question concerns the transit subsidy. when i look at what is being provided for in this project, the walkability that's great, the cycling is great, capping additional car trips, that's also good. i don't know what the targeted additional car trips are supposed to be, but as we try to transition from private car travel to transit, i'm i'm curious about the transit subsidy of about $50 million. and i wonder what sort of input
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does this have? mta have when projects like this are being planned? and, is there a way that that sfmta can get essentially more than $50 million out of one of the largest new developments in the city in many years? so i'm curious about that. and if sfmta has any, perspective on that. i would love to hear it. thank you. thank you so much for your comment. next speaker. good afternoon, directors. jake price, on behalf of the housing action coalition, our project review committee first reviewed this project at the end of 2022 and have been in communication with the project team and community members since then. as the project has evolved, we endorse the project and are
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asking for your support today as we believe that transform surface level parking lots into a mixed use neighborhood, is vital to enhancing the viability and vibrancy of san francisco. the project will include significant bike parking, improvement to bike and pedestrian infrastructure, which will help with safety, especially given the number of schools and family services near the development. as you all know, housing and transit go hand in hand and we're excited to support a project that thoughtfully incorporates both of these essential aspects of a vibrant neighborhood. thank you. thank you so much for your comment. next speaker. good afternoon, directors. my name is mauricio chavez. i'm an organizer for the norcal carpenters union local 22 here in san francisco. i represent the 4000 members of san francisco county, and i am here today with my brother to voice our strong support for this
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project, this project sponsor has committed to collaborating with the norcal carpenters union for the build out of this proposed development. in doing so, this project will directly benefit carpenters with both employment and training opportunities. this is a significant vote. directors. this development will create upwards of 800 jobs a year in the construction industry, directly benefiting our members. these opportunities are not just limited to the actual building phase, but can also extend to the maintenance and renovation works. this development will help develop and sustain the construction workforce through apprenticeship, employment and training. there will be a consistent employment demand for several years to come. the complex needs of such a large scale project ensures that seasoned carpenters and newcomers to the trade will gain from a rich variety of experiences. this project will enhance the community with amenities and infrastructure
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improvements, but those improvements will also, in turn benefit local businesses and stimulate the economy. in closing, i urge you to vote yes on the stonestown development, which is an incredible opportunity to create a lasting, long lasting economic impact that benefits everyone. thank you for your time and service. thank you so much for your comment. is there any additional folks? all right. we do have one accommodation request. all right. let's hear them. speaker you've been unmuted. this is for item number 11. okay. no. speaker. all right, and director henderson, i do see that you've requested to speak. yeah, i just wanted to quickly get a clarification. jeff, you mentioned, that you are having staff perform an assessment of the existing agreements that are
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out there that are sort of lingering. would this one be included in that that report out that you provide to us? well, i think it depends upon actions that are taken at this board today. and at other commissions. what i want to make sure is that , because of the larger disruption in the economy, there have been these large projects that have been delayed that we've kind of that are kind of in limbo, and to make sure that we bring those forward to you now, to the extent that there still is an opportunity to make sure that they still reflect the city's values and policies while there's an opportunity to change them. and so i just i want to minimize the number of surprises because in order for you all to do your jobs effectively, we need to bring projects to you at the right time. all right. so is there a motion on this particular item? i'll move the item. is there a second? second?
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sorry all right, secretary silva , please take the role on the motion to approve director heminger heminger i director henderson henderson. i director hinsey i vice chair. karina. i karina i thank you. the item is approved. well the next item please. very good places you on item number 12 a public hearing on various sfmta policy and procedure reforms. item a amendments and updates to the board of directors. rules of order. changing the board's order of business. adding article nine to establish a policy for standing and select committees of the board and article ten to set a parental leave policy for the board. item b amendments and updates to the sfmta contract approval, delegation and requirements policy, which delegates to the director of transportation the authority to approve and execute expenditure and revenue contracts, contract amendments and other agreements within
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certain limits. and item c amendments and updates to the sfmta advertising policy to revise the advertising standards to prohibit advertisements that, among other things, concern a political or public issue, contain profanity or violent descriptions or images, are intended to be insulting, degrading, disparaging, demeaning, or offensive, or reasonably likely to be harmful or disruptive to the sfmta's transit system. encourage or depict unsafe transit behavior, or are adverse to the interests of the sfmta. all right, mr. ruiz, i believe you have a hot item. i know it's a very long item, good afternoon, vice chair cajina board members jonathan ruiz, chief strategy officer, let me start off before i start rolling into the powerpoint presentation about talking, just kind of laying the foundation of this item, so this item, we didn't quite the board during the budget process numerous times said, you know, we want to talk about policy. we want to
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talk about, you know, long range planning, what the priorities of the agency are, because we were in a fiscal and continue to be in a fiscal crisis, the focus was meeting the budgetary deadline by the charter deadline, which you did as a board, we are now going to start the process of starting to have those conversations about these bigger issues that you asked, and we've scheduled a number of those through the summer and into the fall. and towards the end of the year, the first element of that was something that you did discuss at your board workshop and that director tumlin mentioned throughout the budget process. it's us as the sfmta looking at our internal business processes and how we can use the staff that we have and the hours that they have during the day most efficiently in advancing the business of the sfmta. so believe it or not, the proposals we're bringing forward to we've been working on for a year, i would really like to thank, christine silva, your board secretary, and the city attorney on the assistance on this. this was a lot of work and
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a lot of hours. and what we did was, you know, we have observed your meetings as the board of directors. we've looked at items that have been brought before the mta board. we've actually looked at areas where we made mistakes, like where we had to come to you for a contract amendment after the fact, when we shouldn't have done that in the first place. and a lot of these proposals are meant to correct those things, make sure that the board has the information it needs to make well informed decisions and also hold us, the staff, accountable. so we will start here. in addition, this is part of a new process where we will have these conversations in one meeting and then take actions in the second. so that is something that the board has continuously asked for that you know, when we need to have a longer discussion and talk it through, we don't want to talk it through, have very little opportunity to make significant changes and then approve it. so we're having the public hearing today. this is an open conversation about how you want to do business, how you
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want to interact with the staff, how we can discuss changes and amendments. and at the next meeting, we will bring forward the resolutions and any adjustments or changes you would like for approval. so we will start doing that on major items in this kind of starts that reset. so with that, i will quickly run through the powerpoint presentation which is not 60 slides. it is it is it is simple, so we wanted to start the cover here reflects the wheels of government. but outside of that those are really the wheels at our cable car barn, significant system that helps us provide transit service to people every day. so again, as a government organization, believe it or not, you wouldn't think that we regularly do this, but we should regularly review our policies, processes and procedures at the mta. so simple version, the government operations of our organization, we do in light of the fiscal crisis, have committed to look at our internal operations to more efficiently use the staff we have in place to ensure that we are legally compliant as laws
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and regulations change, that we are adaptable and that we are transparent in how we do this and in the way we do business with the public, the sfmta board and the people of san francisco, these are very important. believe it or not, they might seem like small things, but they actually do have massive impact. and the more efficient we can be as an organization, the more service we can provide to the public, so again, just the benefits of doing this and spending the time is maintaining legal compliance. so again, some of the things we're talking about today have to do with changes either to the san francisco administrative code, recent court cases, clarification around law, optimizing efficiency and cost savings. so again, we really looked at areas where staff spend a significant amount of time and simply amount of time for process. there is a better way to keep the board informed and to have a conversation on, and make decisions without spending as much staff time as we do on certain things, being
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more adaptable and allowing the organization overall wall, to respond quickly to situations and be able to do business and respond and provide service as it needs to. and then again, most importantly, and the reason we're doing this as a public hearing and two meetings is we do want to be transparent in these changes. and trust is an important component part of what we want to build with the people of san francisco. so today, specifically this public hearing will focus on three specific areas, the mta board of directors, rules of order. so those were in times new roman. and while they've been amended over time, they have not significantly had a comprehensive review, probably in a good 15 years. so one thing that we did was really look at the rules of order, update them, and we want to clarify sfmta comm, clean that up and make sure you know your board meetings are most effective and that we're using your time best. second is the mta's delegation
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policy, where you delegate authority to the director of transportation and to some extent, his or her executive team, this used to be a series of delegations, like there were numerous different resolutions for various different situations , susan's team, the city attorney did an amazing job, and we redrafted the thing from scratch from zero. we started over, and for two reasons. one, so it's very clear to you and i'll get into that what the delegation policy means. but so it's also clear for staff how the process works, how the steps work, which again, saves time, third is our advertising policy. so as you know, we do have two contracts, one with clear channel outdoor, which is for our transit shelters, a second with intersection media, which has to do with our vehicles and some of our subway stations, the central subway stations, as the law changes and there are court cases regarding the first amendment, we do need to make adjustments to the policy to be
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more consistent with the interpretation of the law. so some of the changes to the advertising policy are just making those clarifications. as in most situations, our vendors make the decision on the qualification, but more recently we've had to consult staff and the city attorney more often than we should, which makes it clear that we do need to clarify the policy which is proposed today. and again, feedback today will be taken. we will make adjustments to the policies and then bring back, resolutions for your approval. i'm just to quickly cover some of the proposed changes. so on the board of directors, rules of order, one thing that we've noticed is the board really would like us to like, as an example, you asked for two report backs today, we want to make sure that we're categorizing those and responding to those in real time , one thing that we've noticed is you often ask for this after the director's report or after you hear from the cac, because you're getting information in
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real time and you want further clarification or further information. you usually typically you have been just glazing over the new or unfinished business components of your agenda. so we're proposing we just move it after the director's report and the cac report. so if you have questions for the director of transportation or you hear something from the cac and you would like a report back, or you would like staff to brief you on a particular item, we're catching that in real time and we're responding to that in real time. so that will make it a little bit more of an important and critical part of your agenda, and make sure we're held accountable, following up on your requests in real time, so we made that specific change, we are changing your committee structure a little. i think as a couple of you know, we haven't used the policy and governance committee kosh, for months, if not almost a year, so we're proposing two different types of committees for the mta board standing committees that would be regular, i just read the
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second name. just select committees, which are temporary, so we're recommending through this action that you essentially sunset all all current committees minus two, which you've set up as select committees, the vision zero committee and the train control project committee. again, if you'd like to set up other committees, there's a clear process to do that. you can either make it standing, i.e. permanent or select for a period of time and what we've set up with the board secretary is that you review this annually. right. so again, as an example, continuing to have pag means we have an assigned staff person ready to comply with the brown act who checks if their agenda items every month. so we're spending staff time on something that to date you have not found useful. and we're spending staff time that could be used for other items. if you want to have a committee, there's a process to set it up and we will follow up and staff it accordingly, there are a few changes around public notices, cfo, i can tell you that susan and i had some very late night conversations
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about getting things posted at the last minute for the budget. we have made some clarifications so we don't get into that situation. it was very antiquated language. there still will be public noticing, consistent with the administrative code, and city rules and regulations, but we've just clarified the language so we don't have those late night emergencies about posting something on like canonical.com or whatever. however we used to do it, and then lastly, there was a change to the administrative code, regarding parental leave policies. we want to make sure that that is in your rules of order. so you may access that as members of the board, other city commissions have added this to their rules of order, and we want to make sure that we're consistent with the rest of the city, so those were the general changes to your rules and order, madam chair, i can either go through all of them or we can stop with each particular one. if you have questions. yeah, we can just keep going. i think that's okay. thank you. a second one is the delegation policy. so this one's a little more complicated. so
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again this is a complete redraft. so we started off completely at zero. and we really looked at the processes that we're doing things. so first this consolidates we started this in 2019. this adds a couple more things around grants and other types of agreements that we hadn't considered or pondered in the past. so this is now essentially an omnibus delegation policy. it covers all elements that were in prior separate resolutions or separate delegations, we have included what was really important was by what authority can you do this and by what authority can we delegate certain amounts to the director of transportation, either consistent with other city commissions or policies of the board of supervisors or the administrative code of the city that is in the delegation policy, like the whole beginning of that, lays out the limits of the authority of the mta board and what can be delegated to the director of transportation. so we wanted to be very clear about
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that, streamlined approvals has to do with we looked at a series of contracts where we were always at that kind of neutral zone. like all of a sudden we were too late and there wasn't enough time for an extension. i'll give you a very good example of that. so on major commodities contracts, let's just take tires as an example. we often encumber, you know, a massive amount, let's say $8 million. but we might not use the entire $8 million. so let's say we have 4 million left on the overall encumbrance in the year. we only have the authority to extend the contract by 10. kind of made no sense. so people would sort of think, i have, you know, there's enough money on the contract, there's enough money on the contract. and then all of a sudden we would run out of time. and that 10% time was barely even enough time to get an item back to the mta board, just to extend a tire contract where we already had spending authority from you to spend it. so very often we found on those big commodity contracts just the extension time wasn't enough. the other thing is, on the
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smaller professional services contracts, we had not updated the million dollar authority for at least a decade. that was the original amount set, you know, with inflation and with cost adjustments, we are recommending to increase that by about to $2 million. that will reduce the number of calendar items around that type of thing. and contracts we have to process with you by 30. so it will speed up our ability to just move those smaller things forward and make adjustments. the larger ones will still come forward to you. so those are the two areas where we made the biggest change, real estate property contracts. so we have pole leases and other things which are minor. and like the 100, you know, a couple hundred dollars in some cases. so those were included. we've clarified the legal claims. and then with regard to specific oversight, the city attorney will continue to do their monthly report on the litigated claims. and we will provide it is written into
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the policy that we provide a regular written update to the mta board on all of these actions. i might actually consider making one additional amendment, but i want to wait for the conversation around that. i think we could make that component a little bit stronger. and you'll see here on the chart the changes, 85% of the delegations are staying exactly as they were when you approved them in 2018. so very few of them have changed. and again, those were based on situations where we observed with the board that we did an oops, like we made a mistake. we were too late, we kind of had to slow everything up or couldn't purchase something we needed because people weren't understanding the timing and the changing, and then just overall inflation and the cost of doing business for certain services. so again, 85% of them stayed the same, we made just a couple changes. again, that was based on an evaluation of the business of the organization and actions taken by the mta board, the last one on the mutual indemnity. i
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think you'll remember that this is a good example of a boo boo, where, if you'll recall, i want to say, in 2023, in the fall, we had to bring an emergency item to the board related to a grant we were receiving from caltrans because it was a mutual indemnity requirement from caltrans. clearly, you know, maybe we'll attempt to sue the state of california. maybe we won't. but again, that was a grant related to getting ready for apec. and we needed the dollars right away. so we had to take an emergency calendar item to the mta board to make that adjustment. so we're recommending a bump up just so we don't get ourselves into that particular situation again. so that's an example where we evaluated where that was a mistake. we're recommending an adjustment in the delegated authority. so we don't get into those particular situations. again and then lastly the advertising policy, there have been a number of incidences probably over the past, i'd say 14 to 15 months, partially
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because it's a political season and there are lots of hot issues going on, but we really do need to make clear what is allowable to be posted, either on our shelters or on our vehicles, i think between myself and the city attorney, the current policy left a lot to judgment, and we actually don't want that situation. we do not want to be in the situation of picking winners and losers when it comes to free speech. so we are recommending making the policy, editing the policy to make it much more clear, it doesn't change our support for private organizations through public service announcements or any way we do business or impact our ability to raise revenues through advertising. but again, it it removes the risk of either city employees and in some cases, the city attorney making decisions about what speech is appropriate and what is not. so again, today, today's public hearing is to just have the conversation with the board, to
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discuss these proposals, provide us direction on any changes you would like. we will then in turn, red line the current proposals that are before you today, with your requested changes, prepare the appropriate resolution for your approval on the june 4th meeting, the chair is not at today's meeting, so we'll be sure to consult with her and any board meeting. board member who is also not here today, in addition, any feedback today on whether or not you would like this on consent or short presentation to close it out at the june 4th meeting would be appreciated. your current rules do require a public hearing on this, so today serves as the notice and the public hearing and the last announcement, which isn't really a resolution, is that starting next fiscal year, we will be changing the board. what you used to call calendar items will become staff reports, they will be much more brief and direct and they will be included for all items. so not just ones where you have to take actions
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but informational items. so you're not just getting, you know, a powerpoint presentation. and why am i seeing this and what feedback do you want? you will get staff report memos on all items. so we have reviewed all feedback from you over the past year, feedback from staff on developing that and they will start using that likely in the august or september period. we just have to train everybody and have them ready for your meeting. so, it is me. so that was a lot, any feedback or questions that you have directors. are there any clarifying questions for mr. rogers? director henderson thank you. jonathan, i have a couple of questions just to get some background. so maybe i'll start with you said the last time that this was revisited in this way was about a decade ago or a little more. we have not done. christine your your secretary can help me, but i don't think we've done a full review revision. one of the. we've amended the rules of order just a couple pieces here and there,
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but we haven't. like, how is the mta board working? how can we better clarify things? how's the committee structure working? there are still references to committees of the mta board that have not existed for four years. on sfmta. com, okay, and then and that's for the rules of order. and then also for the delegation, the delegation policy, we consolidated in 2019 just before the pandemic, it there were clearly agreements and other things that we hadn't included, which we have now since included, like the real estate agreements, like the pole contracts and other things like that. and we had not while we did the consolidation, we didn't do a policy or business review of the proposals. those have since been done during the pandemic and over the last 12 months. okay. and i have a question about the, the delegation in particular, how many of the, what is the percentage of the contracts that
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are under 2 million? of the total number of contracts you have annually? i will respond to that in the next meeting, but i would say i'm just going to guess off the top of my head, it's 30 plus percent. okay. so most of the contracts that come that this agency enters into come. so they're they're the delegation policy and the contracts that we typically have. i'll give you an example, because you've all seen these over time. so one which you do delegate are the large commodity contracts. you know the 10 million. but those again are just for us to buy supplies to run the agency. you know, every day like the fuel contract and the tire contract. and we need windows for the vehicles and other things like that. then there are the professional services contracts. typically the reason i only said 30. in that general vein, it might even be less than that is because usually we come to you with an as needed contract, right? it's usually as needed contract for like five, eight, 10 million, usually maxing around 10 million
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for professional services in which we will engage in task orders over time against those contracts. usually when we need to do professional services contracts in the range that we're talking about, it usually has to do with we have a specific grant or a specific project where we might need to do an 800 $800,000 very specific work, where a task order would take too much of the capacity because of that particular project, where it's like a designated specific project will go out with a specific rfp for a contract in that level. okay, it would be helpful to see the or just the breakdown of how many of the contracts fall above or below that number, and then so if i understand we're right now the limit is or the sort of threshold is $1 million. and so everything above $1 million comes to us. yep. and that is and what is the term, of those
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everything over a million and or longer than there's a board of supervisors limit, which is usually the ten years. if we go over ten we have to we go to you first, then the board of supervisors. i'd say typically contracts of this vein are usually in the three years max, which with maybe a one year option to extend, so again, they're usually very project specific short term, very often they're the situations where we have a federal grant associated with a specific project, and we need to get a federal vendor. so we have to go through that process. and it's again pretty project specific. and actually to bring it up, one thing that even i noticed in prepping for the meeting is i do again, want to make sure that while you are delegating authority that we are transparent on how we're using it and the current policy lays out we already did the contract and then we tell you, i'm pretty comfortable. if you know jeff is
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also putting in that quarterly report that we're releasing an rfp for the contract at that level. if it's within the delegated authority, we have to do it anyway. we would do it anyway. and that way you would be informed before we did the execution of the delegation. if you had concerns about, you know, i'd like to know about that service or i would like to be briefed, you would be able to do that. so you mean in the regular report that would come out on the. we do not report on that now. but there's usually at least a 3 to 6 month lag even on a contract of that scale. so you would definitely be updated within the quarter. we released an rfp for this service in this amount. again, if you wanted to report at the mta board, we could report on it. if you had questions or wanted a briefing. i think we'd be fine to do that. okay. that's that's great. thank you. and then, just a couple more questions. the, i have a question around transparency. so i saw that that was, you know,
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one of the sort of pillars for, some of the changes that were made. and i'm curious about how this information then is communicated to the public. is there a simplified version of this that you present? because i know we get the reports and the, you know, the sort of tables and things and documents, but is there like a, a dashboard or some way that you would present some of this contractual, information or things that are delegated to staff so that the public are able to see it? so the first thing is all of these policy is and you'll see across all three of them, the other thing is they have a standard format, because if you were to go to our policy page today, it's like different languages, like one's written this way, one's written that way. it's inconsistent on what the authority is. so we're trying to standardize all of these, these will all be on sfmta comm after you approve them on. i would have to ask the board secretary. i know when we provide the
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report, we do. i don't know if we put it on sfmta comm, again, it's public information, so i'm not opposed to doing it. so every quarter within a fiscal year, we can set up a page on sfmta comm to make that transparent on the delegated authority used. yeah, i think, i think it would be helpful to pull it out of the, to somehow pull it out. that information out for the public to see in one place versus having it in each, staff report or in each. we can do that. yeah thank you. and then i think that might be, all of my questions, but. so the purpose of today is just to have the public hearing and give us an overview, and then you hope to return. you just gave me the feedback. i will include those in the policy and make the relevant updates. all right. thank you. thank you chair. thank you, director henderson. great questions, any other clarifying questions for mr. rogers? okay, i just had, one
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clarifying question as it pertains to. and thank you so much for preparing slide seven. it's super clear, very, transparent about what's changing and this is a great guide, i did have questions about rfp processes and just understanding if we did engage in an rfp process, if i'm understanding if i'm tracking here, if that rfp were for a, a ten year plus, term, then it would go to us and it would have to it would trigger all these different things. correct but if you're less than that and there were a $2 million rfp, if we were to approve this, yes, we would delegate authority to jeff, basically to approve the contract. i have slight concerns over that, not so much, because and i really am curious about,
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director henderson's, question about how many contracts does that actually affect? i think that would be really great information to bring back, but i also, have concerns around rfps where we just have one vendor and those are the things that, i think it's important to have a public process to really, you know, drill down on that a little bit more. and so, that may or may not be tied to a dollar amount, but it is tied to a process, and so i just want to make sure that i understand, in this list of different types of agreements, where does that type of process fall? is it in that second category here where it says original expenditure contract or task order for procurement of goods and services? is that is that the one that would. no, no, i mean, what you bring up is, is correct. and it's one of the amendments i would suggest to you right now as part of this conversation is that when we're so within the delegated
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authority. so let's take that $2 million contract as an example, i think it is perfectly fine and transparent to inform the board as part of our normal quarterly update on the use of the delegated authority that we are putting out rfp on these services, in which the director of transportation is expected to approve the contract with the delegated authority, so that that's part one. so we can tell you so if you have questions or you want to know about it in advance or while the rfp is processing and we're waiting for responses, you say, you know, we would like an update on this particular contract at the mta board. we want you to bring it to the mta board. we can do that. so that will give you your notice on the second issue. if we only get one respondent, you could write into the policy. now you know, if we only get one person, then we are going to require, you know, approval by the mta board because you want to, you know, you want to understand the process or, or we include in that quarterly report, if there was only one vendor and we awarded the
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contract, we will specifically highlight that to you. and you can come back and say, why did this occur? how did this occur? the next time we cycle through on that particular agreement, like, you know, to give it greater scrutiny. so in in kind of government operations and situations like this, the efficiency measure is there's so much volume, there's too much time to scrutinize every single action. but we move it to an auditing function where there's reporting and highlighting. and in cases where you're concerned, you have the full ability to stop us and request us bring it to the full board at any time. so i can suggest in this policy that, as you know, as part of the reporting and the reporting section, if we award a contract and there was a single vendor that responded that we highlight and make sure to inform you, that would be great, because i do, i do think those definitely merit greater scrutiny, and a greater degree of public, input
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as well. so i, i appreciate you offering to, to look into that. and it would be really great to if it's easy like if it's not easy, don't do it. but if it's well no we'll know right. we will know. so it's as simple as adding a line to a quarterly report to you. if it's straightforward, it'd be great to understand how many of our vendors have had that have gone through rfp processes have, which one of those rfp processes were awarded with vendors that just we can do one that that would be really great to see, just to understand again, how many contracts are we talking about when we're saying, like, this would be a clause that we'd like to include, in terms of next steps, i, you know, because we don't have the chair and also director, or other directors here, i think it's important for us to probably agendize this and not put it on the consent. we can do that, so i would recommend that we do that. but i do appreciate you giving us two
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bites at the apple for this, it's. yeah, it's appreciated. any other feedback? colleagues for jonathan. i have one quick question. i think this is more for you, susan. the, so when we delegate authority to the director of transportation, is that the point where then something becomes operational and not not for the board to like if we delegate authority, but then have questions or want clarification? i just want to make sure that it doesn't turn into a, the board members being involved in the operations because it's, you know, we were raising that threshold, but i imagine that there may be some curiosity or things and for projects that are, you know, within that or under that $2 million limit that, that i just wouldn't want to cross the line or violate whatever the existing policy is. thank you, director,
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for that question. i think you're talking about the administrative interference, right. doctrine. so, yes. so once you've delegated something to the director, it's within his authority. and then these reports, it's the quarterly reports will give you transparency about whether you've hit the right mark in terms of delegating the appropriate authority to the director. and in that instance, if you have concerns, the appropriate step would be to bring the delegation policy back and consider whether you should lower the amount or change the amount. you can always certainly ask the director, working through the director to explain a certain contract, or to explain the process, or why there was only one respondent, etc. but you, once you have delegated that authority, should not then try to interfere with the execution of that contract. that that's helpful, especially with, in reference to the vice chairs point. so i appreciate that. thank you. thank you,
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director henderson, i did have one more comment as we're looking at the new staff. staff reports and generally, something that i flagged in the past that i hope is, also in the calculus of how you're changing things, and i, i'm not quite sure how we would arrive at this, because there's many different ways to interpret this, but i would want to see some sort of equity consideration as it pertains to different items that come before the board, with that, we have to, i'm sure, have to establish a rubric and it has to go through a process. but i do just want to put that in on your radar as something that i would really appreciate seeing in future. structures of a staff report. and with that, do we have any public comment on this item? i do have one, accommodation request. all right. let's hear. speaker.
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you've been unmuted. speaker. you've been unmuted. okay, i guess no comment. all right. we will now close public comment on this item. thank you so much, jonathan silva, can you please call the next item? yes. places you on item number 13 discussion and vote pursuant to admin code section 67. 10d as to whether to invoke the attorney client privilege and conduct a closed session conference with legal counsel. excellent, and we have to open for public comment, i believe. right. do we. yes. correct. yes okay. so we will now, open public comment for item 13 then. is there any public comment at, let me try for one accommodation request. okay thank you. secretary silva. speaker, you've been unmuted. if
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you want to speak. and this would be for item 13. correct. okay. no additional speakers. all right. may i have a motion? well, let's close public comment, and may i have a motion and a second to go into closed session? i move the second. all right, and can we take a recess of about. let's see. five minutes and come back at 345? let me call, call the role or on that motion. okay. yes. on the motion to go into closed session. director heminger heminger i director hinsey i, i sorry, sorry, sorry. director henderson. sorry i henderson i, i heard director hinsey also say i and vice chair kahina i kahina i thank you the board will now go into closed session. thank >> item 14. >> thank you. yes. please call item 14.
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>> item 14, the board met in closed session to discuss items 3a and 3b and voted to settle both items. places on item 15, motion to disclose or not disclose the information discussed in closed session. >> motion not to disclose. >> thank you director hensy. do i have a second? >> second. >> please call the roll. [roll call] >> thank you, the motion passes and concludes the business before you today. >> thank you. colleagues staff members of the public we are now adjourned. the next meeting is on june 4. >> thank you. [meeting adjourned]
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>> hello operators, i'm jeff tumlin recollect director of transportation. >> i'm jour san francisco fire chief jeanine nicholson. >> first and formost, i like to thank you for everything you do to help our passengers get around the city. it is safety in mind we like to talk about what to do if you encounter any kind of emergency scene while on your route >> if you see a ambuljs and fire engine on the side thf street, this usually indicates there is some type of medical emergency. >> the first thing you should do is look out for emergency personnel in the area.
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if there is room to proceed, do so, if you cannot pass safely, contact the transit management control center for instructions. >> active fire scenes meanple while may appear static but can become dynamic in seconds. you may see engines trucks and vehicles with flashing red lights. >> the best course of action is call the tmc and give as much information as you can, including the site and nature of the emergency. there should be a captain or public safety officer on the scene who can tell you what is going on. then let you know whether you have permission to take a dudetore. >> if you are caught in the middle of the scene only proceed once directed by fire personnel. a public safety officer will guide through the emergency scene, tell you to wait or recommend that you go out of serveess if the emergency is prolonged. be sure in this situation to give all proper notifications to the
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tmc. >> it is important to note that if you see a fire hose on the ground, stop. do not drive over it. you never want to drive over a fire house. >> firefighters have been serious injured. >> remember the best course of action is notify your supervisor and the tmc and wait for instructions. explain to passengers what is happen. if you cannot detour you have to stop and possibly go out of service as you waitd for direction from fire personnel. >> the san francisco fire department understands and appreciates that muni has timelines to adhere to, but no schedule is worth risking the safety of our city employees and customers. >> thank you again for all you do, and are thank you for keeping muni you're watching san francisco rising with chris
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manors. today's special guest is jeff tumlin. >> hi, i'm chris manors and you're watching san francisco rising. the show on starting, rebuilding, and reimagining our city. our guest is jeff tumlin and he's with us to talk about our transportation recovery plan and some exciting projects across the city. mr. tumlin welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> i know the pandemic was particularly challenging for the m.t.a. having to balance between keeping central transportation routes open, but things have improved. how are we doing with our transportation recovery plan? >> so we just got good news this week. we're getting an extra $115 million from the american rescue plan and this is basically the exact amount of money we finally needed in order to close the gap between
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now and november of 2024 when we'll have to find some additional revenue sources in order to sustain the agency. in the meantime, i finally have the confidence to be able to rapidly hire, to restore services and to make sure muni is there for san francisco's larger economic recovery because downtown san francisco doesn't work without muni. >> quite right. i guess the other impact of the pandemic was that some projects like the valencia bike improvements had to be put on hold. are we starting to gear up on those again? >> yes, so it's an interesting case study. of right before covid hit, we were about ready to invest in quick build bike lanes. arguably the most important bike order in san francisco. that got stopped with lockdown and then as you'll recall, during covid, we invented all
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kinds of other new programs like shared spaces in order to support our small businesses as well as sunday street light events for neighborhood commercial streets where streets were closed off to cars and turned over to commercial activity. those successes now that they've been made permanent actually interrupt the draft design we had put together. so we've gone back to the drawing board and we are looking forward to having some additional community conversations about other design ideas for valencia. we're committed to completing a quick build project on this calendar year. >> that's such good news. valencia is a really great street for biking. so there are two huge and exciting projects that are about to be or have just been completed. let's talk about the bus rapid transit project on van ness avenue. how extensive have the improvements been? >> what's called the van ness transit rapid project is in
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fact more about complete reconstruction of the street and most importantly, the 100-year-old utilities underneath the street. so all of the water, sewer, telecommunications, gas lines under the street were basically rebuilt from market street all the way to lumbard. the part on the surface which provides dedicated bus lanes for golden gate transit and muni, that was relatively straight forward and we're so excited we're going to start revenue service for muni on april 1st. >> that's fantastic. i understand there were some sidewalk improvements too. >> there were sidewalk improvements. we planted 374 trees. there is new storm water treatment including infiltration in the sidewalk, there's a bunch of art. there's all kinds of things. we put in new street lights for
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the entire corridor. >> finally, the other big news is about the central subway. can you briefly describe the project and give us an update. >> yes, so the central t-line project, another stop at union square that connects directly into powell station and a final stop in the heart of chinatown at stockton and washington. that project has also run into challenges. it's 120' under muni, under bart, 120' down and out under chinatown in some unexpectedly challenging soils. but that project is nearly complete. it's at about 98% completion right now which means we're testing trains, we're testing the elevators and escalators
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and the final electronics and we're still on track to open that in october presuming all of the testing continues to go well. so fingers crossed on in a one. we're really looking forward to allowing people to have a subway ride from the heart of chinatown all the way to the convention center to the caltrans station and all the way down to bayview and visitation valley. >> it's great to see all these projects coming to completion. we're all grateful for your team's hard work and i really appreciate you coming on the show, mr. tumlin. thank you for the time you've given us today. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me. >> and that's it for this episode. for sfgov tv i'm chris manors. thanks for watching. >> everyone loves a good sunset, but in san francisco we take to a new
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level. i'm city supervisor engardio and i represent an entire part of the city called the sunset. it stretches 30 glorious avenues. welcome to district 4! the sunset is a collide scope of people culture and experiences for residents of all ages. we are a beach town, we are a chinatown, and not a town at all. the sunset is home to 80 thousand people and we love our dogs. we live in neat row houses, homes with yards, story book homes and every quirk in between. the sunset used to be sand dunes all the way to the ocean. when the city needed to grow, san francisco's future ran through the sunset. we built rows and rows of
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housing for a great irish population and welcomed a great chinese population. today home to a gowing number of families from all backgrounds and the future starts here. >> we chose sunset knauz we love san francisco but during the pandemic we needed more space and more family focused, so that is where we found the sunset. how walkable it is. we live along iving street along where diana's school is our son's day care is. >> our kids and all the kids we knee in the neighborhood are really the future here and we are really excited to live in the neighborhood. we love it so much. >> nina and alex are expecting their first baby and it first leaders of the newly formed sunset community band which bring together musicians of all ages at special events.
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>> we are about to have our first kid and met so many younger people and so many moving into the neighborhood. exciting to raising our family here because this community is awesome. >> bringing the community together and making it stronger i think a band can help with that. it is a matter of civic pride and coming together and doing something as a community that really makes like us from a collection of people into a neighborhood. >> sundays in the sunset are for worship, farmer's market and live music at the ocean. if the sunset had a town square, it would be this magical area that appears every sunday on 37 avenue. the sunset farmer market isn't just a place to get good food and produce, it is where community gathers live
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music from local musicians and cultural celebrations and [indiscernible] share ideas to shape our city. it really is the place the community comes together to celebrate the best of the sunset. >> something about it had sunset chinese cultural district is there a lot of opportunities to uplift the chinese voice and chinese people. when you look at the sunset, a lot of think of trees and single family homets and the schools, but there isn't a lot of very iconic locations that people can look at and know they are in the sunset. one thing we are working on is to unveil a new mural in the park by community and as we do more work in the sunset and uplift the unique qualities of the community, we want to do more mural s and spaces that are iconic so the sunset gets a piece of being
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unique and identifiable. >> a supermarket for everything you need for chinese home cooking and [indiscernible] the rice noodles are so good they are featured in catherine moss latest novel, [indiscernible] takes place in the sunset. there is a old school menu at the ond mandarin islamic restaurant and a item so spicy they have to warn customers. maybe bobo can neutralize the spice. the sunset has plenty options. try the bars at the beach. we also have the sunset reservoir brewing company and o'briens irish pub. cuisine in the sunset spans the world. [indiscernible] >> travel and work in [indiscernible] we have our own restaurant. and then, it was my turn to
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follow her to her country, so that's why we opened in her neighborhood. >> we are looking for more a local gentleman gem. we traveled around the world and what we highly value, a place for the community to gather. a local hang-out spot. that is why this isn't a restaurant, it is cafe, you can order a coffee, you can have a fuel full meal but it is place to connect. whether parents kids friends is why we decide to go qulose close to the beach, a neighborhood i am familiar with. i run into people all the time. i live in a big city but why i chose district 4 outer sunset. it has a small town feel. i love our neighbors. >> the sunset has everything from footwear to hardware. here is great wall hardware,
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3500 square feet of retail space. we carry about 22 thousand items and counting. it never stops because i have a thing. when a customer says don't you have this and i don't have it, it bothers me. i want to have it,s so it is just of those things about owner a hardware store, people expect you to have everything and you to fulfill that need. i like to serve my neighborhood. most businesses you want to buy this or that or eat this or buy the widget. a hardware store is different. people come in and have a problem and need a solution and they are looking for you to navigate them through that problem and offer them products that help them get to where they need to go. people are great. i love this neighborhood. there is different ethnicities here, different cultures here. we all intermingle and mix together and we get along fine and i always like that about this neighborhood. it is just a nice place to be. it is near the beach, it is beautiful
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and near the zoo and near golden gate park, stern grove. great schools, great parks. whats there not to like? we also love pizza from hole in the wall to [indiscernible] hottest restaurants in the sunset tunching vietnamese food [indiscernible] ice cream [indiscernible] this is great highway park. a great place to burn calories on the weekend. i'm here every sunday doing a long run and start with 5 miles and with this ocean view, if it motivates me i try for 10. the new york times named great highway park one of 52 places to change the world. it is that amazing and the gem of the sunset and people are finding new ways to activate the space. in halloween it turns into the
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great haunt way. >> we imagine a future from the part time road close toor to a park to welcome people all ages and activities to our coast. >> since we had [indiscernible] always looking for ways to sort of improve what is already good around us. the neighborhood is great. it will be even better with a park here. >> sunset turn to put a new sign up on our coast. open for all. >> this is the treasure of san francisco and this hasn't been discovered yet. homes are still relatively affordable, there is decent schools and a place for kids to have a feeling they can run and play and take part in things. what i'm happy the great highway has become a park for the weekend. i'm glad we share what we have with the rest of the city and people come from outside the city.
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i'm sure people come from the east bay, and i just feel like, seeing the people out here enjoying this represents the hope for the future. >> imagine the potential of an emerald necklace in the sunset for safe biking and recreation along the green belt of sunset boulevard which connects lake merced with golden gate park and great highway park. quality of life matters and we know how to take care of each other. sunset youth service helps teenagers find purpose and self-help for the elderly let's seniors shine. local artists capture the sunset experience and work is on display in cafes like java beach and black bird books. the art of conversation happens at this new barber shop called the avenue. the owner calls it a barber lounge because he wants to create a space for the community to gather beyond
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hair cuts. this corner is a hent of the future. you see new housing built for new generations and it is over a community space that everyone loves. the sunset is a place full of potential. >> the possibility is here, more then anything. you can start something here and people will get behind and the community finds there is a need for it and people support it. >> i always look around the corner, the next thing we can do to crank it up more and make it safer, make it more enjoyable. bring in new business, support them. >> i really hope we bring just joy, because ultimately music helps bring joy to the community. >> this is where people are at. this is where people want to be, so it gives me a lot of positive energy. >> my office created the first sunset night market on iring street where i'm standing. more then 10 thousand people showed up. nobody has seen that many
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in the high country of the sierra to bring a supply of fresh water to the san francisco bay area was a monumental undertaking. mayor sunny jim rafh turned to michael to mastermind the project. michael was a force of nature. air fwant in some ways but also a man's man. he supper advised the construction and it was the greatest engineering seats in the united states. >> the remow location of dam and reservoir made getting to the site a challenge. >> they had to get access to the slopes of the sierra nevada so they her to build a railroad to get construction equipment and materials into the site. they had to generate power so they built another reservoir to generate power and they did a
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remarkable amount of work with much less sophisticated equipment than what we have today. >> concrete for the dam was processed at a plant just upstream from the construction site, using sand and rock from the valley. nearly 400,000 yards of cubic concrete were poured around the clock. >> oshansee was a detailed oriented guy. he was having his man dig down the bedrock and they would dig and dig and pull, you know, out debris and they come and say, okay, we've gotten down. we're down far enough. we need to personally look at it and say, no, dig deeper. >> in may 1923, the dam was completed and named first chief engineer and behind it, an 8-mile chef of the hetch hetchy valley was flooded and holding back 115 billion gallons in the new reservoir. it would take another 11 years to finish the
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system and bring that water across california to the san francisco bay area. >> this was the moment. it was made pososososososososososososos >> sanitation and streets commission. today is monday, may 20, 2024 and it is 1001 a.m. secretary fuller, please call the roll. >> good morning. please respond with here, or present. commissioner eusope is present. vice chair harrison is present.
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