>> good afternoon and welcome to the mayor's disability council this friday, june 21, 2024. this is in person and virtual public meeting. this meeting is to the public

on sfgovtv. it is also captioned and sign language interpreted. if you need an accommodation, or have difficulty attending this meeting, please send an e-mail to, mod@sfgov.org or call, 415-554-0607. the disability council holds 10 public meetings. they are generally heard on the third friday of the month.

for information about past or upcoming meetings, please visit the mod website at www.sfgov.org/mod. our next regular meeting will be on july 19 at 1 to 4. it will be also hybrid meeting. thank you for joining us.

can you please conduct the roll call? >> yes. i'm going to call to do the roll call now. council member alex madrid, here. cochair sheri albers, absent. council member orkid sassouni, here, present. council member denise senhaux, present. council member patricia arack, present. thank you. go ahead cochair alex. >> could you please read the agenda? >> yes. at this time, members of the public--i'm sorry, the agenda. sorry about that.

number one, is welcome and roll call. two, is action item, reading and approval of agenda. number three, general public comment. number four, information item, cochair report. number five, information item. report from the mayor's office on disability. number six, discussion item, integrating disability access and functional needs into the city emergency planning. then we will have a break, 15 minutes break and we'll proceed with number seven, discussion item, next step implementation of leckric wheelchair charging station report. and number eight will be

information item cor spawnance. correspondence. nine, general public comment. 10, information item. council member comments and announcements. number 11 will be action item, adjournment. >> thank you. >> cochair madrid, if i might-- >> yes. it is on. >> if i might have a slight change in the agenda. [difficulty hearing speaker. microphone does not appear to be on] move their presentation

[indiscernible] right after the cochair report, and [indiscernible] after that. >> alright. any objection? seeing none, go ahead. so, at this time, we are going to action number 3, general public comment. please read the instructions. item number 3. >> at this time, members of the public may address the council on items of interest to the public within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council, which are not on

today's meeting agenda. each member of the public may address the council for up to 3 minutes, unless the cochair determines that in the interest of time, comments may be limited to a shorter time when there is a large number of public comment. with respect to today's item, specific discussion items, your opportunity to address the council will be afforded at the completion of each discussion item, before council discussion begins. a reminder that the brown act forbids the council from taking action or discussing any items not appears on the posted agenda, including those items raised at public comment. if you would like a response from the council, please provide your contact information by e-mail message to mdc@sfgov.org with the subject,

mdc comment reply request. or call, 415-554-0670. and now, let's see if there is any cards. no cards. are there any persons in the public? there is zero right now. >> online? >> online. and there is no one on the phone or the chat. we can proceed back to you council member alex. >> thank you. now we are going to item number 4, my co-chair report. since the last meeting, mdc members and

mod staff have been actively --we encourage any members of the public to contact us if interested at mdc@sfgov.org, or by calling, 415-554-0670. give me one second.

the mdc sent a letter of support recommending that the new public park located at--might be named-hf -disability advocates of san francisco. the mdc also sent a letter to department of public health

recommending to--toward a resolution to protect everyone from covid exposure at --to insure no population is left behind. the mdc also sent a letter to the board of supervisors strongly recommend keeping the annual dignity fund--allocated in the 24-25

budget. continues to focus on-hf-do inspections from the department of building inspection. now, we are going to item number 5.

>> alright. the next item is integrating our presenters andrea and jenny, you may join us, please. we are going to have the presentation on the topic, integrating disability access and functional needs into the city emergency planning and it will be presented-copresented by andrea jorgensen and jenny. >> thank you. i think these are working. okay. thank you. that working better? you can hear me? great. wonderful. thank you to mayor's office on dislt inviting us here. we are pleased to share a brief overview of how we integrate access and functional needs into our city emergency planning efforts. we will do sort of a general

overview of what it means to be setting up for planning and training and jenny has just finished our new emergency operation's plan. we are excited about so she'll talk about that a bit. first, i wanted to-- really briefly give people a idea of some of the efforts that we are doing in our department. we have the responsibility of watching over training, our exercising and drills, our credentialing efforts and then of course, our plans. there are many kinds of plans that are efforts done across the city. this is specific to emergency response plans, so just to keep that in mind. training does provide knowledge skills and abilities that are helpful for us to understand and perform tasks as we are developing our capabilities.

our exercises and drills give us a opportunity to work in a low risk environment, so we can become familiar with those plans, and it also helps to validate the plans, so we know we've-- >> sorry. >> there we go. so we have written them in such a way that people understand them and can execute the operations we documented. we do have a credentialing program, which helps us train our people to be qualified to respond to our emergency operations center and perform the tasks at hand, and the plans document, how we will implement our response, and the concept of operations. so, i will pass this to jenny to talk about emergency planning. >> next slide, please. alright. so, andrea introduced about the

emergency plan we have in the city. we will talk today specifically about our emergency operations plan or eop, which serves our the core base plan for emergency management as coordinated by department of emergency management in partnership with all our city departments and other partners across the whole community. attached to the eop we also have some 18 emergency support function plans, esf that will also speak to a bit. for the eop in particular, so we did want to lay the groundwork about what it is. it is our core base plan that speaks to how the city responds to any type of incident or event that may happen, either a no notice incident, anything from what you think about flooding to earthquakes to other type of hazards to pre-planned events like the pride parade events coming up or any city

wide event. that eop described very broadly who was involved in the city and the structure we use to coordinate activities and actions across our city departments and our whole community partners. this is very broad. it isn't meant to be a super detailed exactly how something will happen, but it does describe all the actions that different city departments take to include a big piece of it, we'll talk about this as well, but a large piece of it is speaking how we activate the city emergency operation center, eoc, which is our central coordination point for multi-agency response operations in the city. and we do activate that when there is any sort of incident or event that may have city wide impacts so we'll speak to that a bit later in the presentation, but pin a nutshell, that is what the eop describes is how we might respond to any sort of incident in the city.

and then, as i mentioned, we have these esf attached to the base plan described discipline specific concept of operation. while the eop broadly describes the who, how what of response operations, these go into more detail about different disciplines. we'll go through a couple of them as well in a bit that really describe more detail about different aspects of response operations. >> great. so, i will run through these three slides rather quickly. i don't expect anybody to capture all this in memory, but because the emergency operation base plan is detailed about authority and other things that are important to all of our response, but there's so much information in a city our size that we use a method breaking it out

into other emergency support functions,b which is also a guide that fema gives us, which is federal emergency management agency. esf1 is around transportation, esf2 is communication, esf3 is public works and engineering and esf4 is fire fighting. to continue on, we got esf8, which is our public health and medical annex. the urban search and rescue is esf9. i also will mention that esf8 and should have said esf5 are the next plans we will be working carefully on, because a lot of these plans have been languishing a bit because of response to the pandemic, so we are trying diligently to catch up and get all the plans refreshed. we learned a lot from our response to covid. esf10 is oil spells. 11 is animal response, 12,

water and utilities and 13, law enforcement. a lot i should mention, many of these annexes, we write with our partners who are the subject matter exserts so we don't do this in a vacuum and that is partly what we wanted to talk about today is how we incorporate other agencies and particularly the community. and just to continue on, esf--did i miss? esf14 is recovery annex. 15 is joint information system, which is really important plan because getting messaging to everyone is critical so that is community at large understands what the city is doing. esf16, community support. 17 is volunteer donation management and 18 is cyber-unified command are unique to san francisco. there are jurisdictions in the country and in the state that do this a little differently and have added other

annexes to their eop, but for us these have been very important to add. i think i will pass over to jenny. this is why you are here. we want to talk about how we involve the whole community. >> thanks andrea. so, to-as we talked about the emergency plans, like andrea mentioned we involve partners. it is a joint collaborative effort to update plans, to also train and evaluate and exercise on plans. when it comes to involving our part ners to include our disability access and functional need partners we do this in a couple different ways. we engage trusted community partners specific to the development of our recent update to the emergency operations plan. dem are advisory groups to

provide targeted input. we stood up disability access and functional needs advisory committee with partners at mod so thank you debbie and alicia for being on that and also being able to bring other partners into the group as well. we stood up a community advisory group that brought some representatives from different community based organizations together as well. so, we have worked with those two groups, the last couple of few months to look at the draft eop together and provide and just collaborate on what went in there to insure we are really prioritizing responding to the needs of our most vulnerable populations in a emergency. as a city thad would be is our first priority because we understand great majority of people can sort of--would be able to respond to a

incident and they would be able to sort of figure out those next steps with the resources on hand and we want to make sure we are prioritizing any communities or individuals that may face additional challenges in response in recovery. we set up the two advisory committees to insure our plans are inclusive of all these different diverse community needs. we are also meeting some california state requirements with that inclusion as well. the next way we engaged our whole community partners is through city wide efforts, so whole community also means all our different city departments that come together in a emergency. the city has a disaster preparedness coordinator program that identify individuals in various city departments to regularly meet and engage on emergency planning efforts. we also have other city lead

work groups that target and focus on specific emergency issues to include evacuation that we are working on now. and lastly we wanted to touch on how we activate our emergency operations center, eoc. as we mentioned, we activate our eoc when there is a incident or event that may have city wide impact. either no notice events, the severe weather events like major-like the winter stoms we had in the last year or extreme heat days. we also activate for the large pre-planned event like the pride parade coming up. we activate for apec last year. that was a major activation for us as a city. within our eoc organizational structure, we do include a

couple really critical positions. one equity officer in our eoc management section as well as a disability access and functional needs advisor. those two positions sit in that management cell of the eoc to insure those issues are prioritized and considered across all the kinds of emergency response activities going on in the eoc. we also have stood up a community branch within our eoc. the intention of the community branch is to have a team that really focuses establishing two way communication when there is a emergency. one was the esf16 for community support annex and that is very unique to san francisco, something i think that the city is really proud of, because it prioritizes and pushing to for front that communication and engage ment with our community members.

>> grailt. lastly i want to talk about improvement planning and one things we discovered and while jenny was talking about engaging community partners there are things when we do action improvement work, we often discover we missed things and that's the work that needs to be done, so we can correct those gaps the next time we have to respond to something. some of those things we know still need improvement. i think we have done a good job in progress towards things like language access for instance. understanding debbie and her team have been working really hard to get us to understand that durable medical equipment is priority for people if they have to evacuate. do they take it with them or leave it behind and the city helps find another resource? these are things we are having constant conversations about, because we

do this after action or improvement planning work. when we have a activation, whether it is a event or like a special event that is planned, or if it is a storm or no known event we have a after action meeting when all involved in the response can talk about things both that went well, because we also need to document the things that go well so we continue to do this, but the things that may not sl gone as well. in apec, we obviously noted there were some fencing issues that had gone up and the people that needed to access their rides for instance, paratransit or something like that were not necessarily able to do so or didn't know they wouldn't be able to get an appointment they had scheduled, so those are things we can help with through the community branch and also through documentation of the gaps that exist. we try to be very honest with those and not white wash them and make sure they are brought to the policy groups or the

departments to have some sort of authority to make change. that's really important to us. and that is called the corrective action. we document those, try to assign to a particular department to help make those changes and we try to assign a date when we expect those changes to be made. our plans are really living documents, even though we complete them, we just completed this eop is about 150 pages without the attachments. it is very involved document and it is going to be going through the approval process now, but even that document, once the stamp is on there and the director of our department, mary ellen carol says it is good tago and mayor says it is good to go, even then we can still make adjustments, so why we want to make sure we constantly do improvement documentation and adding to our plans or making changes as needed. i think that is everything for us now. i don't know if you want to do questions? >> yes, we have someone in--

>> hold on one sec. thank you. we are going to do a public comment right now. please read the instructions for public comment. >> so, we are going to unmute now. one person from the public. control, please unmute. mrs. sheila gunn, go ahead. >> is this me? >> yes. >> okay, hi. i am not well versed at webexat all. my one experience with it was horrible two years ago and i dreaded this. i never tried it on a computer though. i'm sheila gunn, the emergency

preparedness coordinator at center for independent living in berkeley. i'm working from home in my office on fruitvale avenue and i came to say hello and i came to learn about san francisco's emergency preparedness planning as regards folks with disabilities and access and functional needs, and older adults and other folks who fall into the category. assuming nothing. i didn't know where this was in the process or if it had been seen by this mayor's disability council or not. by the way, hello debbie. debbie and i worked in emergency

preparedness context regarding power outages, so haven't seen you in a while, but good to at least hear your voice. but, i stand ready to assist. i know--the center for independent living is a sister org to the independent living resource center of san francisco, which i'm sure you all are aware of. i'm not interested in taking over or any that. i feel that we can all learn from each other and maybe san francisco is doing stuff that cities in alameda county should be doing that aren't and maybe we are doing stuff that you aren't and i just think that sharing ideas and thoughts is never a bad thing.

the one thing the folks at the emergency preparedness departments probably already know is folks with disabilities and access and functional needs can very much be a resource in many ways during emergencies. we know a lot of resources, we know a lot about mutual aid- >> mrs. sheila, you have 30 seconds left. >> i just will put my e-mail and phone number in the chat and i will also send it to the e-mail recommended. [indiscernible] you are welcome to reach out. i'm done. thanks. >> thank you for your comment. do we have another public comment at this time? >> no more comments council member. >> thank you.

now we're going to ask council members questions? >> hello everyone. hello council members. thank you so much for your presentation today. i know that this is a new area for us and i have seen the content grow. one thing i still have concerns with is related with electrical power outages, especially for deaf individuals dependent on technology and cannot hear any radio or communication that way and would not be able to hear a siren and who might not know if this is order to evacuate or have that information, so it can be a real challenging

for deaf individuals in the community who are not hearing for either of those contexts. i am concerned that we don't have enough information, context, education around this, and i also feel that it might be true that it's part of equality and equity for all for us to have something set up. something as on earth day we didn't have any access and that was funny because it was a very public event put on the police department, the fire department, everyone there, but we didn't have any kind of access for a public event, so that was one thing i have a concern for. for the residents here in san francisco, and another part is i am a city employee, and the daw does require me to have that part of my job, so i'm hoping-they have not been able to provide access either, so there is nothing we can do and we are

kind in a spot where working with the city and-hf- [audio cut out] or training and i feel the deaf individuals have been left behind and how can we eliminate that and at this point it is a little murky but we need to start thinking how we can catch up and what choices we have. for example, some people are physically unable to work with dsw, so what do we do with that part and what will requirements look like for that? it is becoming a little convoluted for who is possible and what we can do versus what we are told we can't do. so, i think that might effect the policy and we might need to do

revamping, but i think dsw does not have all that information and management might need to be taken more in depth then we are looking as far as how we break down those categories, so if we have a dsw in one and the residents in a separate context, how are we making sure that those connected and we are getting that access? because, in all honesty, they said, i'm sorry, we just don't have that so it feels we are still in the dark ages with that and i wanted to put that information out there for you for thought. >> do you have a comment? >> for my part, we work with the department of human services, but i would like to bring that back and have more conversation with them. i'm not sure that the dsw

training is directly in my wheel house, but i can connect to the people who are there and orkid, i believe that you and i worked some together during the pandemic and you taught me so much, because there were things i did not know that i learned by working directly with you, so these are the kind of relationships that help make progress. so, i will bring it back to our leadership and i know that jennifer, you and i can have futher conversation about this and so this is really important information for me to hear and to bring back to the conversation, so thank you. >> thank you so much. >> the next one is denise. >> thank you cochair madrid. my information is more historical around training and outreach. years ago, pre-covid, the mayor's disability council had a subcommittee in dealing with disaster

preparedness, and on the subcommittee, we had key advocates for different agencies that provide programs and services for a variety of clients with disabilities, and at that time we were working on a communication plan. naturally depending on the disaster and where it is happening and what's going on and at that time it wasn't completed by the time i left the committee, but they were putting a key communication plan around training and how to deal with depending on the nature of the disaster how to deal with clients not only in the shelters, but the community who are deaf and hard of hearing for them to get information. i think at that time there was a national and sorry, cant remember the name, database, where people could sign up to receive text alerts or an event of any emergency that was one of the plans they were looking at to

have people register. i said this all changed. it was years ago. and some of the things we dealt with is on the plans you have drills and exercises. we had different drills for fire, earthquake, i hate to say it, active shooter and participation because i was a part that. we kind of covered drills around what disasters natural or otherwise. we also dealt with the advocates in dealing with people that would have to be placed in shelters, and the training around dealing with different people with different types of disabilities. ranging from vision impaired to mental health issues and if they had service animals or support animals, et cetera. i don't know if that is helpful. that was at the time. we also dealt with city all having evacuation chairs for people that needed to be evacuated where at that time, if the wheelchair wasn't

working or they didn't have access depending where they are in the building we had evacuation chairs. i don't know if that is helpful but i appreciate you revisiting this and coming to council and if we can help and give input more then happy to reach out. thank you for your time and listening. >> you are absolutely welcome. it really is good to know we have you a resource. debbie has brought this to light and same with alicia. i think our efforts improved greatly over theest layear. some things you are talking about pre-dated my work in this particular area of emergency work, but i am familiar with it. i know that carla johnson years ago worked on the evacuation chairs and i will say for the lifts like to be-the registrations have always been a problem, because they change so rap idly we can't necessarily count on them, but the discussion does

come up periodically. pg&e has some records of people who have rely on electricity, but honesty, with pg&e i'm not always sure we'll get that list. there are other lists. there are legal efforts that have to be gone through. department of health is usually in the lead for those type of efforts, because of health information et cetera, et cetera. having you all as a resource and be able to work as closely as we started to do over the last year or 2, it does help us, so if you look at our population, i think i was looking at the census data, i are want to say it is like a 10th of people. fairly large number of people in the city and that is just the people that live here, because we have so many torests and are visitors and you know, commuters who have issues we may not have any familiarity with but still need to support during a

emergency, so let's continue the conversation and the more you speak out and we'll try to be good listeners and carry that through and that would be my commitment to you at this moment. >>--do you have any questions or comments? >> yeah. i-this is my first introduction ever to emergency planning, so i guess my question would be on a very simple practical level. let's say someone is disabled and live in a house and they have a stair lift and all the-there is a emergency, a storm or tsunami or whatever, and they are stuck there. they can't get out of the house and they have no way to contact

anyone. could you talk about a situation like that in terms of your emergency preparedness plans? >> what -my response is that we really do need to continue to make more effort to have people prepared for themselves-there is self-preparedness we expect from our residents because we know as a city-for instance city workers could also be effected so we don't know how quickly or how many will be able to respond. there are things in place with human services agency and disability adult services that will do some wellness checks with people they are already engaged with, as far as day to day services, but i think our preparedness is really important. as many people as we can possibly get prepared in small ways to have

a cash of some water and some food. your prescriptions, to have numbers of contacts you need, those efforts will make a big difference, but you are right, there are going to be people who are stuck in their home and without help. the fire department is usually our primary go-to as they are every day if we have a fire and someone needs rescue, and it is a situation that we can't hundred percent prepare for, so the more that you can prepare for yourself, the better. but we also recognize not everybody can do that, and that even if you are prepared, like i mentioned durable medical equipment, if you are prepared but you have to leave like you may not be able to carry the heavy battery or get your wheelchair down the stairs, so there are efforts that still need to be done to determine how we respond. some of this will happen in the moment, depending on the incident. that is the other thing,

incidents are ervadifferent. a earthquake is different from a storm, very different from a potential cyber-incident that might cut off electricity, so there is still lots of work to do and the good thing is san francisco as a whole is always making efforts towards that. we dont ignore it, we keep working with it. i would offer we can come talk again or have smaller group talks to determine how to fix some of these things. >> so, just to follow-up--what if someone is disabled wants to get in touch with your office? >> we would invite you to probably talk through the mayor's office on disability and then we have work groups that might be appropriate for that individual to join for instance. you could reach out to me and our contact information i think is being shared and we can talk about work groups that are open to input.

often the work groups are mad up rather then individuals, they are made up of organizations, so connecting with a organization is usually a really good way to connect to the city. >> okay, thank you. >> before i go to the staff, i have a lot of questions. i'm going to do one by one. one basic question i have for you both is, with a emergency, as you know, shelters are not wheelchair accessibility to the city, so

how do you mitigate and what is the plan to insure that those places that supposed to be emergency-- are accessible? >> so, we work with human service agencies when they celt up a shelter and that is a requirement is they have been checked for accessibility. we are working on a new project that identifies all kinds of locations within our city that might be used for shelters, or other things, like commodity points of distribution, or when we had vaccine locations, that type of thing, and that list we are developing will have check lists on it so we can quickly go and see that they have initially been checked

with accessibility. but before hsa sets up a shelter they will do oo just in time check for accessibility. it is very much on their list. they use a red cross training when they are setting up a shelter so we are lock step with the red cross. >> so you don't do it--someone does it for you? >> to check the facility? >> yes. >> someone with better understanding of accessibility will check the facility. >> your department-- >> our department does not do that. the human service agency is the department that will check accessibility. >> okay. the second one i have is, i'm curious-- you guys-you mentioned that there is no

individual--there is only organizations that sits on working groups. how many--just curious on all kinds of people with disabilities, or all kind of types of i will say, abilities? the last thing is, i am just curious how often you guys practice--how many of those-- that involves people with disability to identify those--

like you mentioned covid a minute ago. there is always gaps. i think it would be good to identify those gaps while--correct? >> yes. your first question was about a individual, so i'll go there first. >> yes. >> we did work with the mayor's office on disability to identify organizations that represented a wide group of people, so we invited-i can't say everybody we invited joined us, but we invited those who are deaf or hard of hearing. we had invited people who were from the senior community. we invited people from you know, vulnerable populations that have different language access and that type of thing. we tried to grab a-everybody is

very busy now so grateful to have a number of people. >>-- >> well, debbie help me remember. i think we had a group that represents disability as well. we had independent living center. >> [indiscernible] >> okay. >> yeah, and we have been working closely with debbie too to try to make sure we have a broad range of people. there is always open-a open door to increase that group and the advisory group for us should be an ongoing group, so we are happy to talk who else you think should be representing that. and then the second question i think you had was about gaps and whether we've found some gaps? >> during exercise. >> during exercises?

>> yeah. >> we have. >> how many exercises do you do? >> do we do? >> yeah. >> we do many many exercises. right now we are focused on san francisco fleet week, which is coming up. that is a exercise we work with the military and the department of defense to understand when we are overwhelmed and the state is overwhelmed and even the federal government, when they need to reach out to department of defense to send the things you see at fleet week like the ships and that sort of thing. we are doing that now, but regularly exercise the plans we developed, so the emergency operation plan is the new one, so at some point next year we will probably start doing exercises to test the plan to make sure the things we put in accurate and yes, there is a opportunity to invite people who have disability to be a part that. >> going back to my question, have you guys identified those gaps?

>> we identified them during the response or the exercise. so, we go through the process of the exercise and exercise is based on a scenario, so generally we use earthquake or a storm, something that is likely to happen, and we have what we call, players who are the people who practice the exercise, and then afterwards, that after action meeting i talked about, that's when maybe a week later or two weeks later we gather those same players and we sit them down in or virtual meeting and talk about, how did this work? how did this other thing work? what did you see that was a problem and we keep them together in a master improvement plan and assign to departments. let's say they set up a shelter that was not accessible, then in the after action meeting, we would say,

look, hsa, that shelter you set up did not have access for wheelchair users and so then we would assign them to make those corrections the next time. that is a very simplified way to explain that, but that is kind of what happens. >> thank you for that explanation. next we can-- my question is-- you guys have a plan in place. i just curious, is there any information saying that if you have any issue or any questions about any type of disability, you need to call

x, y or z? >> i'm not sure i follow the question. >> you mean when the city activates the eoc to respond to incident? >> no. let me repeat the question. for example, next week is pride parade, and you mentioned that you guys work with those big events just in case if an issue or anything like that, right? with those events, are there any place that says if someone, like myself, don't know about how to access accessibility or--let's say i'm

new to the city and i have only flier, are there any information that i found that i can contact? >> yes. what we do with special events like this is, generally not our department, but another department works with the event-there is generally a event planner that is coordinating all of those activities. so, there is an event planner, and our city representative requires that event planner to put out messaging and put out information. generally it is website. i can't speak for every event, but generally there is a website that has those sort of access information that information you are looking for. that would be my answer. the city does work with these planners

to make sure and i know on the site on our city site, there are guides for special events, like what you need to set up, what pathways you need to keep clear, our that type of thing, so our city directs those event planners to follow those directions, but thereat isn't our department. >> thank you. any follow-up questions? >> yes. just short. i think my input or my suggestion, i don't know if your policy would apply to this, but i feel like after considering it, maybe the emergency department might want to consider another priority for example if the housing--perhaps we need to think about prioritizing seniors if we are concerned about the housing not able to come down the stair in a emergency, so it is hard to know without a specific number, but important we think of some

kind of priority who comes first and i xoe know that would be a challenge, and i don't know how you might be able to strategy that, but prove to be difficult, but for me it is red cross. i tend to be resisant. i know they are good and provide a lot of things, but at the same time, there are other things happening. i hear other people who do use red cross and it caused a lot of complication with the plan or. for example, if there is a housing fire and where do i go? i'm totally stuck. that's one good thing to think about or have prepared on the back-end to have that community involvement with. and i think it would be good to have the community involvement to give you the feedbacks for your plan. just putting it out there, i think it is good to invite others and i think for fleet week, it doesn't have any access, so it it is just like a last

minute thing. how are you going do do something like that? >> okay. so that's a lot of things. i think you are right, we need to continue conversation, and this-jenny and i can bring back . for fleet week there should be accessibility and should be information on the web site and because we are planning with them, i have been told there is not. i will make sure to bring that back in our next planning meeting to talk to fleet week. so, those again, these kind of connections are great for that. >> thank you. >> did i answer the question? >> yes. now we are going to go to staff questions. >> i don't have any. >> okay. thank you andrea and jenny for coming.

reach out to us for any support and help that we might do something for you. >> this has been a really good opportunity and excited to meet you all, because again, our interaction with each other will really make this work and so, we'll talk to director johnston and get more stuff going down the pipeline. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> now we'll going to item, 6. the mod director's report. before i introduce, i like to introduce the council members. you have a opportunity to meet with us. i'm going to start with

patricia. patricia, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? so the directors can know a little bit about you and why you joined the council? >> control, would you please unmute patricia. >> i'm patricia arack and been a member of the council since last september. i joined the council because i'm concerned about disability access for disabled people in san francisco and i felt there was a lot of things that needed to be done. i am retired and i spent 43 years as a teacher, the last 25 as a esl teacher at city college of san

francisco, and that's about it. >> thank you patricia. now, i'm going to--just tell us a little about us, briefly. >> hello everyone. council member. council member orkid sassouni here i'm joined because i am involved with the city board and the only one that is deaf, so i am a resident of san francisco as well. san francisco for many years now, and i joined because i believe that we need to make some serious improvements and city wide for our services for individuals with disabilities and i'm a continuous advocate for that and i believe we can make these changes and those changes will have a huge impact down the chain and for good reason. i'm happy we are making changes

to the city for better and it is not for nothing and once we are able to help the city be able to see and hear our voices, we will make this better and we will do better. that was the reason i joined the board. >> thank you orkid. we are going to denise now. >> thank you cochair madrid. i'll try to make it short, since i had the pleasure meeting the new interim director. basically i'm semiretired. i have been on the council 20 plus years . my disability advocacy background came from the private sector. i dealt with policy issues, ada implementation issues in the private sector. i was a lead steward. i worked on disability policy, reasonable accommodation, education and

sensitivity awareness for people with disabilities and on the board of a non profit i started representing employees with disabilities in the workplace and addressing those issues. the issues i'm interested on council is disaster preparedness, employment-it is a whole list and won't bore you. glad to be work wg people on the council and mayor office on disability and addressing issues and concerns important to our community. and what we can do to help make equality and better life here in the city for those populations. i did my best to achieve that goal. thank you for your time. >> thank you denise. i am alex madrid. i'm--since 2017 and i have been

self-advocate since i was in college at uc berkeley and now i work as a housing specialist in the non profit of san francisco. -- the physical aspect of accessibility and the programming accessibility. --any type of events and involving people with disability and--

the city does a lot of--issue among stores that doesn't understand that--that is a issue i'm interested in. i'm so excited to work with you and make a change for the better for the people with disabilities. maybe if you don't mind, can

i-- this is jennifer jensen and she's the new mayor's disability interim director. >> thank you very much and thank you all for your introduction. so, little about myself. i worked for the city little over 20 years. during that time, the first 10 of it i was a chief of policy for the department of human resources and then i spent a few years as executive director of the civil service commission. i know very well the city's employment processes and systems. and then for the last 10 years i have been deputy city administrator and to educate you on what the city administrator does, the city administrator oversees about 25 to 30 depending how you count them, agency programs. my carmen chui is the city administrator and has been a

few years now and she reorganized the office to have for the deputies overseeing particular functions. my function i oversee the public facing primarily public facing offices that includes, 311, animal care and control, medical examiner office, county clerk, treasure island, a number of them and mayor's office on disability. and i have oversee the mayor's office on disability during my entire time with the city administrator office so little over last 10 years so familiar with the work of the office and the staff. did you have any questions so far? okay. as you noted, i'm the interim direct, which means i'm not the permanent director. i focus on undertaking the search. it will be very difficult to find a unicorn like nicole bohn who

was wonderful, so with that in mind, it is very large focus for me. in the meantime though, i am really committed to continuing to drive the office towards change and to make sure that accessibility is incorporated into the fundamental fabric of the city and how we approach residents, visitors, employees. so, with that, i guess i can go out of order. one clarification for the agenda item that was relayed earlier. i think the meeting in july is going to be canceled, but so we can have a strategic planning with the council to really talk about you know, the focus of the plan, the list of to to-do's the council already identify and also adding new things to the list to drive towards the 35th anniversary of

the ada next july. so, i really want to focus on using this opportunity to put like i said, new things on our list, and then also talking to the council about how your time can be used more effectively, more productively so that you know, you can really help drive the initiatives we are talking about and drive what initiatives we drive. sorry, that was duplicative. we will be reaching out to you to schedule those kind of more impactful and focused meetings soon. this is all to say, the regular meeting of the mdc will be resume in september, but in the meantime, we will have a lot of work to together. and just additional administrative logistical housekeeping for the public information the mod office location we are on market street.

the permanent office will be 1455 market street but we are in the swing space. it isn't ideal for productivity, so we are doing both virtual work, and also in person work in the office. this is to say that we are currently having drop-ins for members of the public, for anybody on tuesday when everybody will be in the office and individuals wishing to come to the office during other days can certainly call, e-mail to make an apointment and we'll happily meet with them. let's see-- i think that does for the logistical administrative items. any questions? >> no. >> okay. yes? >> [unable to hear speaker] >> sorry, go ahead.

>> sorry, quick question. normally the mod has the public video phone service set up in the office, but now it seems it has been removed, is that correct? so that means the person who is deaf who needs to use a video call would not be able to go to that aufsh. office. >> i have to refer that question to deputy director kaplan. i don't know how to answer that. >> we still have the equipment. [audio cutting in and out] [unable to hear speaker] so, let's talk together with john and figure out how we can do that,

orkid. >> thank you. >> that thank you. i should say, as indicated, the space presents challenges. my hope is to--to at least be out of there before december at the latest, so really focused on driving that project. >> i have a question. the director search is coming up. -- people who are staff members that would be interviewing the

perspective candidates, are there any thoughts on potential public participation, or any council members participation on that selecting that individual by having a --? >> that is a good question. i have not had the opportunity to discuss the process with the mayor or the city administrator yet. we are focused on closing out the budget, which is another part of my presentation, and that's a good question. we do not ever allow public participation in the process, because it is confidential personnel matter. obviously, people who are candidates don't want to be outed to their

employer that they are looking for other employment. i appreciate that and i think certainly what we can have additional conversations about, at least bringing you in and at least keeping you informed, absolutely. >> thank you. >> thank you. yeah. okay. let's see-- next on my list for everybody's information--sorry, before moving on about the mdc. as you indicated earlier, focused on filling the mdc vacant positions is another of my goals and so i will really be trying to focus attention on that as well. there is just a lot happening and everybody has been focused figuring how to solve the massive budget devset. deficit. i renewed focused on that and will be pushing that. okay.

so, policy issues on which mod is active or focused. we are currently in review of recent federal rule-making on disability rights, so that includes digital accessibility, that includes access to healthcare and accessibility as medical diagnostic equipment and--insuring access to sit a ehall for persons with mobility disabilities while the lift at the plaza entrance is being replaced. we are focusing on updating our ada grievance program and that includes the creation of a new database to enable better tracking of complaints and resolution. we are focused on updating informational form consistent with roont update to the california building code, and we are also really focused on updating our website, which is i think out of date, but also i like to

focus with the council intention and assistance on making it more useful to individuals. let's see--and alicia currently is working on updating our list of sites for prioritizing plan reviews and future capital funding. okay. let's see-- less then happy news. the san francisco budget and impact on disability issues. as you noted earlier, the council sent a letter to the board of supervisors advocating for the dignity fund to include the full $3 million in this year's budget for 24-25. the mayor did include that in the budget and so that has been included. i unfortunately have to report that won't necessarily result in expanded services, so much as retaining servicess.

yeah. so it would be nice, but that is to make up for short-falls that we are dealing with. no-i will say where we are in the process for your information as i said we are going through the mayor submitted her budget. we are in the middle of negotiation with the board of supervisors to make sure they don't cut further from what we have submitted. funny, not funny. but, so as of now, the $3 million has been included. to the extent individuals want to provide input on the process this coming monday is public comment day at the budget appropriation committee, and individuals wishing to provide input, i believe it city room 250 starting at 10 a.m., there is a overflow

room downstairs in the light court in city hall. for more information you are certainly welcome to reach out to the clerk's office or to our office and we'll get you that information. and of course, it is always televised on s fgovtv. okay, other announcements. f happier things. let's see, so july is disability pride month as you know. july 11th, there will be disability pride celebration event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. hosted by the community living campaign. for more information you can reach out to staff. do we have information about that on the website? >> [indiscernible] we sent out a public announcement about it. >> great. thank you. okay. another happy news, so thank

you mrs. kaplan. the kick off of disability cultural center will be july 12. now it is just virtual. next year they aim to coordinate to have the physical center unveiled with the 35th anniversary of the ada so exciting news. there is number of activities happening, so i believe the link is going to be-it isn't active yet but believe it is disabilityculturalcenter.org. we will put the information on the website. make a note that. a number of virtual program scheduled, there is night of disability culture, the actual day the kick-off, july 12. cafe crip, july 26. disability portrait day july 27 and super fest family showcase, sounds fun, august 10. we will put some of the information on the website for individuals interested in learning more.

let's see, the community alliance for disability advocates is beginning to plan for the 35th anniversary of the ada next july. as is the city. as i indicated i will be looking to you for your advice and council and support identifying initiatives we want to drive leading up to the 35 anniversary. more to come on that. does anybody have any questions? i think i feel i went through a lot, but happy to answer questions and go over anything again if you like. okay, great. and that concludes the director's portion of the report. >> thank you director. now we are taking a 15 minute break. it is 2:22 exactly. please come back at 15 minutes.

see you guys in 15 minut >> welcome back everybody. my name is alex madrid, the cochair for the mayor's disability council. today is friday. we are going to item number 7, discussion item. next steps in implementation of electric wheelchair charging stations report. presented by deborah kaplan, city and county of san francisco,

mayor's office on disability. >> so, as you may recall, in the april mdc meeting, you heard from the san francisco fellows, who had done a project looking into the feasibility of wheelchair charging stations in the city. they have done research and i have a few slides for you to review what you heard from them in april, and they made several recommendations and presented options that were directed at you, the

mayor's disability council to determine what the next steps should be. so, what i've done is taken some of their slides to just review and remind you of what they found and what their recommendations are and then i'll wind up with some specific questions for your consideration, hoping that by the end of this part of the agenda, we'll have some direction of where we need to go next to bring this concept closer to reality. as you recall, several community members submitted requests, say it would really make a big

difference in their lives and the options that they have for being able to be out in the community to have publicly accessible wheelchair charging stations. and, i think for those of us who use mobility devices, it's no surprise that the devices don't always take you where you want to go and leave you enough electricity to get back to where you came from. battery life can be unpredictable and sometimes i had this happen to me, you go out and only then you realize, oh, it didn't fully charge last night. or, the charge is lower then i thought. so, in order to meet that need and provide for better safety for

people with mobility disabilities, this concept is under consideration. there is one producer of wheelchair charging stations, and it includes a charger and other equipment in order to make it useful for public use, and costs roughly $750 per charging station. doing case study research, fellows found that there have been successful wheelchair charging station programs in new york, oregon, bellevue

washington and mississippi. smaller jurisdictions then ours, but this idea definitely has proof of concept behind it. so, the fellows conducted outreach to many different san francisco departments. the list includes, mta, the port, public utility commission, the library, department of emergency management, department of homelessness and supportive housing, recreation and parks, department of public health, and also the fellows talked with the office of supervisor melgar. there was a great deal of interest. they also met with the community alliance of disability advocates and they conducted a survey of the

public and received 82 responses, including 45 people who are electric wheelchair or mobility device users. and what they found from their research is, people were interested in both indoor and outdoor proposed locations. there is support for the initiative widespread throughout the city, and more community outreach would be useful for making sure that all the possible locations are in alignment with the goals of particular projects.

the key take-away from the fellows research are that, because of their interest from several different city departments, it would really be ideal to have a lead agency to resolve challenges regarding ownership over instillation and maintenance, and to turn it into a cohesive program, rather then just individual instillations across the city without somebody carefully coordinating and monitoring how it is going. there is interest in pursuing legislative action and looking for support from the board of

supervisors. [indiscernible] allow for a broader platform for city departments to participate in. and there is a funding gap, especially during this time when the energy people are putting into budgets is to find money to cut, not looking for ways to add new projects, but several of the programs that exist in smaller jurisdictions made use of grants and funding for their programs, so that is a possibility. and then as i said earlier, indoor locations are preferred due to concerns for user safety, better ability

to deter vandalism, and higher potential to have staff nearby to provide assistance. outdoor locations are less feasible, however, there are people who want outdoor locations, because they might have a need for charging for recreation where it is an outdoor location or not during business hours. there are concerns that were raised by several people about safety and vandalism as something that needs to be taken into account in designing the eventual program. the recommendations that came to you from the fellows are to either

have individual agency implementation, or multiple agency implementation. individual agencies that expressed interest in the program and taking it on were the mta, recreation and parks and the public library, and individual agency leadership would allow for more discretion and control of the project without having to take into account different ways of doing things and different departments with different operations and faster implementation if it is just one entity involved in decision making, but if it is individual department running a project, there is lack of a

city wide approach, and some reinventing the wheel by individual agencies doing the same project themselves, rather then in a coordinated way. a multiple agency implementation strategy would include more departments and establish the possibility of adding more departments in order to expand the network more readily. but it would need a lead agency to oversee the project in terms of funding and maintenance.

a weakness of this approach is, there would be more meetings involved basically and need for more coordination and communication. and then, there were some slides that were in the presentation about the different commitment of specific departments. the mta is strongly committed to the project and has several potential locations to place wheelchair charging stations. recreation and parks is also interested and has several locations at different parks that would be suitable. and the public library, particularly interested in having something at the

main branch. and then, one interesting aspect of the research that was done was, the bellevue washington implementation of the project. they implemented 6 stations and it was done by their office of emergency management for disaster preparedness for wheelchair users. and similarly, the san francisco department of emergency management could be involved, possibly as a lead agency, but certainly for the emergency management aspect of a project like this. some of the departments that are interested in the project anyhow, like the library, are also acting as

emergency shelters during emergencies. pursuing multi-agency implementation could occur under the auspices of the board of supervisors. a public hearing could provide an incentive for collaboration between the different entities involved in the project, and an ordinance or legislation would insure more longevity and structure for a project. it is not likely during the current funding season that funds would be found from the current budget. all though, since the cost of

the individual units is not very high, it would be worth looking into the possibility of finding money from existing programs. so, the recommendation from the fellows for further research included, looking into additional locations, to understand the feasibility, continuing outreach with city agencies, community based organizations and looking at whether there are any other jurisdictions that have projects or considering projects like this. and then putting together a plan with predicted maintenance needs and costs and developing a funding

strategy. so, questions for you. which approach do you prefer? the individual agency implementation, or multiple agency implementation? should the board of supervisors be asked to hold a hearing, and what steps do you recommend being taken next convening a meeting of all interested departments, development of a more specific project proposal, research into potential funding sources, or other research or other next steps? and that's where we are.

>> are you looking for-- >> looking for discussion. >> for me, i think-- multiple agency-- so there is no confusion who is doing what. when it comes to funding, i think multiple agencies would be beneficial. --i think i'm very interested in

--public library sit down together and when we sit down with mod to discuss some kind of short-term and long-term ideas, implementation. i think i want to take this advantage having a-- city administrator, i think it would be beneficial to see what the

city might do or can do--i think what will be beneficial. denise. >> thank you cochair madrid. thank you for the presentation, debbie. after reviewing the different and recommendations i was trying to find a happy medium with all three plans, because i'm look ing at a legislative perspective getting buy in from city agencies and i know funding is a tabu. grant resources from agencies that may have access to alternative

funding. so, i guess if i have to pick one, i would probably think of the multiple agency buy-in, where you get city departments, such as-not speaking for them, just off the top of my head, having conversation and probably already done so, with the department of emergency management and then working with those individual agencies and? taking your recommendation into forming a partnership with them and then legislative wise to bring in the board of supervisors or any of the departments from the city who are interested in this so you have legislative buy-in and funding resource because you said this is worst possible time during the budget to ask for money, but since the agencies might have other avenues getting some sort of funding, because that will be the key

thing besides getting legislative buy-in is where the money comes from and who will provide it,b and the agencies can maybe come to agreement with department heads who says who wants to spearhead this once we% give input and have a plan in place. those decisions can come later. that is as much as i can think about it at this time. i probably will have more thought later, but thank you. >> patricia. you have any thoughts? >> thank you alex. i agree with denise. i think this should be a multi-agency pursuit. if individual agencies are responsible they are in their own little silo and there should be uniformity related to this project, so i would definitely go

with the multi-agency plan to the board of supervisors. it might take a little more time, but sense there is not a highly expensive project, it might go a little faster and might be easier to find money when you have all these agencies working together. thank you. >> -- >> say again? >> back to you, debbie. what's your next steps and suggestions to the questions? what to do next? >> i think-i understand what you said alex. i interpret it as, making sure that there's a lead agency, and that

there's one department that is overseeing and managing the whole thing. and, i think that's possible with a-and it essential with a multiple agency approach. it is really encouraging that there are so many departments that want to be involved and want to figure out how to do this, and i think you know, another reason for having a multiple agency approach is, that the way that the charging stations operate from a user perspective should be uniform because it is highly confusing if you went to one site and it worked this way and these were the rules, and you go to another one, and it is a

entirely different way to use it. and so, i think that's just another factor to take into account. i think this is also a kind of project because it is really low cost, it might be possible to implement a very small pilot with one department and work it into a larger project while that's going on in order not to wait until everything is all set in stone. >> is it possible to have a mod to be

the lead and have those three agencies part of planning? >> i differ to the interim director. [laughter] >> i'll speak to that. thank you mrs. kaplan. and thank you cochair for raising that. i do think at the very least mod does need to pull the information together with respect to how much it cost, how it is installed, because i don't have enough information to that, but it may be simple as a spreadsheet understanding where these have been deployed, where the policies shed be and setting uniform kind of guidance and then if we have agencies like the library, understanding where they lrb installed and having regular maintenance and expectation. given the fact they are so low in cost i think it is manageable trying

a pilot program. absolutely, and we are happy to pull together some resources, because frankly, the agencies are not going to be willing to implement either unless they have a better understanding of you install them, but what does this all mean. i think that is manageable and something we can try to focus on. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> are there--so, back to the presentation. do you have anymore discussion questions? >> no. we haven't yet gotten public comment on this and there may be some, and i think it would be very interesting to hear what people think. >> if you can read that information. >> we'll be happy to. if people joined recently to

make a comment, if you joined the webinar using your tablet or smart phone, webex app, click on the 3 horizontal dot icons and then click on, raise hand. the clerk will recognize you when it is your turn. you may also use the q & a feature in webex webinar to make a comment. it is located on the top part of the video after touching the screen. if you are using a desktop or laptop computer, raise hand and question and answer icons are located at the bottom of the video screen. if you joined by phone, please dial star 3 to indicate you like to make a comment. the clerk will let you know when it is your turn and now we have one person waiting her turn. control, please unmute mrs.

sheila gunn. >> thank you. i assume [indiscernible] >> that is correct and you have three minutes. >> i was laughing very hard when debbie said that bellevue had connected funding to ems. the emergency department, because i was going to say, i raised my hand to say before she said that, that the office of emergency services, oes has a program called, [indiscernible] that's the spanish word for ready, and they work with cbo's who reach folks who are adversely impacted in

emergencies. basically folks with access and functional needs or disabilities. this funding, it is pretty open or can be, and i recommend two cbo's to start with that i know about, but i'm not well versed in all things san francisco. i would recommend the senior disability action network and i would also recommend, ilrcsf. i don't know much about [indiscernible], but it would be a ally i'm certain. i think that other agencies and orgs could get the funding and or

fema related funding, possibly dhs funding state and federal, but i don't know all the if, and and buts about all those things so i guess studying would have to be done, but i would recommend that. i want to actually add public comment at the end of everything, because i agree webex is not accessible. that is for another meeting. that's all for now. >> thank you for your comment. are there any public comment at this time? >> there is another caller. control, please unmute mrs. allison lee. >> hi. are you all able to hear me okay? >> yes, we can. >> great. my name is allison and working for department of aging and adult services and very fascinated with this

topic here. i am attending as a guest. in the presentation it was mentioned that there are three agencies that were interested in implementing the implementation, which was municipal transit agency, [indiscernible] san francisco public library. i am curious, have any of these agencies started next steps or planning or anything to get this implementation started? >> not yet. >> okay. is that the plan for that of the [indiscernible] next steps are? >> this is debbie kaplan. well, mod will be working on

that and we will definitely make sure that we bring das into the loop. >> [indiscernible] >> i did-i was on the review panel for a project that received das funding that went to the independent living resource center for emergency wheelchair repair, and so, that is also something to think about, and talk with das about whether there is any synergy there. >> thanks so much for the update, debbie. >> thank you. >> thank you for your comment. do we have anymore public comment at this time? >> no more callers and i don't see any

other persons. >> anything in q & a? >> nope. >> thank you, debbie. please keep us posted. >> definitely. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> now, we are going to item number 8. correspondence. do we have any correspondence at this time? >> we do not. >> thank you. now, item number 9, general public comment. >> let me double check, because i'm waiting for clarification. apparently there is one more i cannot see here. would you please confirm or unmute the

person? the person went away. >> okay. >> thank you. >> should we have a general public comment at this time? >> i'm sorry, there is another person. >> okay. >> control, please unmute the person. >> me again. so, i'm sheila gunn and i'll say my contact info, it is public anyway, here because i tried to put it in the chat and i could not figure out where the box was. webex is not accessible. it is not accessible on the computer as it was my android, but there are much

better meeting platforms then this, and i am not a accessibility trained expert or certified in anything, i have just been using the web since 1995 and problematic access needs to happen, especially at places where folks may not be able to get there physically and they want to come virtually and one question i like to know at some point is, how you guys got to manage to let people comment virtually, because [indiscernible] hasn't figured how to do that, which is embarrassing? anyway. so, i put the information in the q & a and had to figure how to choose one person because i wanted to send to all catalyst, but apparently couldn't, or maybe i misunderstood the way webex

works, because it is a long paragraph my screen reader has to read, so maybe i wasn't patient enough. the paragraph is about a minute long. so, sheela gunn, and i'm the emergency preparedness coordinator at the center for independent living in berkeley, and my e-mail is sgunn@thecil.org. my phone number is 510-422-5068. i would have happily put it in the chat so everyone can see, but tried and couldn't. so, i like to--i heard a lot

and glad i was here and maybe more collaboration in the future, or thoughts or brainstorms or whatever. >> thank you for your comment. >> [indiscernible] >> we will be--oh. debbie kaplan, i just like to say thank you sheila and we will be in touch with you, particularly about your specific issues that you had with webex, because hopefully we can pass that on to cisco, and because we have been communicating with them about accessibility and so this would be very useful to us. thank you for your participation in the meeting.

>> now, we are going to item 10. information item. comments and announcements from the council. >> none at this time. thank you. >> do you have any comments? patricia? >> control. >> sorry. i do, but sorry, i have to agree with sheela, webex is not particularly user friendly online, and especially for disabled people and older people who are usually the disabled people who are not computer internet natives. yeah.

john has been great help with me today to ring out a problem just for the general public, it is a bit difficult. zoom is a lot easier. >> thank you, patricia. for me, i don't have any announcements or comments. now i am going to do the last thing. adjournment. before i do that, i want to give thanks to the interpreter, the public, the staff, and-- i hope we will work together going forward and with

that, without any objections, we are going to call it adjournment. again, thank you and see you next time. [gavel] [meeting adjourned] agency. board of directors