work at st. luke's hospital and i'm not a nurse. from listening to this, it's clear that the nurses don't support the project, at least they certainly don't support the downsizing of st. luke's. now, cpmc seems to be desperate to provide evidence that some workers somewhere support this project so we've been asked by our supervisors many times over the years to sign these little cards or make some statement that we support the project and of course everybody wants to support their supervisor, they want to make their supervisor happy, but they still haven't gotten that many signatures. so they've gotten the sciu which is a top-down run union, run from washington, d.c., to support them in this effort to try to provide evidence that

there are some workers somewhere that support this project. and but sciu hasn't managed to come up with the presentations like the nurses just did. they just have a few of the top leaders saying, we support this, you know, but not a whole line of people. so i want to tell you what happened to me. i was told there was a party across the hall and that they would be serving punch and there would be a raffle, a drawing, and there would be cakeuned ice cream and everything so i took a break and went over and they asked us to sign up for the raffle so i signed up for the raffle. guess what, i didn't look closely. there were a whole bunch of people signing up for this party the fine print said, when you sign up for this, that you're signing that you support this project. so, in other words, they're using all kinds of sneaky

methods to try to pretend like they have workers supporting the project. but people who work at st. luke's don't support it because they can see they're being downsized out of existence. president miguel: thank you. >> my name is linda carter. i've been a resident of san francisco for 24 years and a proud r.n. at ain't -- st. luke's for 40 of those. im coming to you today as a san francisco resident. i am really, really concerned about several issues. one of those is, well, the fact that this plan makes it top-heavy with most the medical services being north of market, nothing for the southeast of the city. in the case of a disaster, we'd be cut off, basically. and if we are a very small

hospital, 80 beds, there's no way that we could handle whatever the other hospital can't handle in the case of a big earthquake. that bothers meempt the other thing is the lack of concern for the elderly patients who are now in our sniff and in our sub acute. and is, cute patients -- subacute patients have long-term illness, and dependent on ventilators and they can't be placed anywhere else. there are very few centers that take them in the bay area. one in kemp will have, one in -m distressed that they're not talking about replacing these. for the sniff beds they're

closing they're opening another 38 new beds at davies but nothing to say where they're going to put the rest of the patient and patient are often leaving the hospital much more ill these days. they're going home sometimes with i.v.s that still need to be given or i.v. antibiotics that need to be given. most patient's families don't feel comfortable giving these medications at home. so they really need a transitional place, a skilled nursing facility that is hospital-based so that if they do get in trouble, they're right there. we often get patients from both the sniff and the subacute and it's -- i'm just concerned that at the size that they're proposing for st. luke's we will not survive. and perhaps for another -- maybe another five years but then we would look at them closing us

anyway. thank you. president miguel: thank you. leachan lee, emily lee, billy huey, rachel ubarra. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is emily lee, i'm a community organizer at the chinese progressive association. we work with low-income chinese immigrant folks in san francisco, many of whom don't have access to affordable healthcare. our community supports the alternative of having a bigger st. luke's hospital with smaller cathedral hill hospital. we believe the draft e. i.r. is infleet in adequately -- incomplete. initially, the draft e.i.r. does not refer to some elements of the general plan, it doesn't

address the commerce and industry element, objective 7, policy element that states that the city seeks to promote health and educational services to all districts in the city and acknowledges that the clustering of health facilities in few areas creates problems such as limiting the access of residents in other parts of the city to the healthcare and employment opportunities that these major institutions offer so the city should encourage the decentralization of major institutional cities to other areas of san francisco, particularly those presently without adequate services. as many have mentioned, that's the southeast sector of san francisco which has the largest number of immigrants, people who speak a language other than english, children, seniors, families. and right now there's only two hospitals, there st. luke's and general. we feel the draft e.i.r. doesn't

analyze how reducing the beds in st. luke's will increase access. if cpmc is allowed to continue on the path they propose with their long-range development plan, we are on our way to a healthcare crisis in san francisco. if st. luke's is downsized and more uninsured patient are pushed out, that burden will fall on general. with our record budget deficits and cuts to safety net, how can san francisco afford to pay for the additional patients that profitable corporations like cpmc are turning away. we clearly can't afford that and we as a community need cpmc to pay their fair share to ensure that all residents of san francisco can access healthcare. thank you. president miguel: thank you. >> good afternoon, president miguel and commissioners. my name is rachel.

i am here with bernard heights neighborhood center, a member of the coalition for health in san francisco. i am a resident of bernal and go to st. luke's for medical services. the statements from seniors that spoke earlier and recalling speakers, there is a profound need for accessible healthcare services in the southeast part of the city. people need to access a full range of quality medical services in the community, including the increasing medical needs of seniors as they age such as skilled nursing facilities, health, education and nutrition education, preventive approaches, trauma care, support for parenting teens and complex birthings, psychiatric services and treatment including in patient services. cpmc needs to commit hiring from the communities and implementing discriminatory practices. in essence, if cpmc expects to

reap the benefits of operating as a non-profit organization and touts itself as a community-minded entity, then their plans should reflect that. in the current draft e.i.r. does not adequately do so. president miguel: thank you. alan, kevin kitchingham, kevin vallen, diane smith. >> good evening. i'm the ceo of emerit goodman and associates. we own the building that will be the most impacted of this project, cathedral hill.

the emerit goodman building, probably the oldest wood frame building of san francisco. survived earthquake and fire because it was on the west side of van ness. we renovated after eight years of development and construction in 1985, serving residences and businesses for the last 25 years. your staff presented you, which i saw for the first time today, an august 27th four-page executive summary. i didn't hear any reference to that. in the executive summary it mentions the significant unmitigated environmental impacts and those are the items which should have been dressed in the d.i.r. is, how those impacts which, from an economic sense are called external costs. external costs mean the simplest example is pollution where you'd

have a polluting facility putting dust and pollution in people's houses. and that's an external cost instead of the old days before they had to have filters and cleaning facilities that guild to the other people. it became an internal cost for the person causing the damage once they were required to reduce the plulings. the cathedral hill project is analogous to that that there are external costs being imposed on other people. as an example, the d.i.r. states that there's going to be construction for approximately 54 months. and i don't know if anybody else raised this today but the construction period for five days a week was from 7:00 a.m. to midnight. 7:00 a.m. to midnight. i mean, 17 hours a day for 54

months, which is 5 1/2 years. during part of the project, there's going to be 370 trucks coming during that 17-hour period, which means one truck every three minutes for 17 hours a day. i have prepared -- excuse me, how many copies of a presentation? i prepared an analysis of some of those uncompensated -- unmitigated impacts and i'd like you to read these and try to address how cpmc can reimburse, compensate the people who can't live in their apartments because of the noise of 17 hours a day for 5 1/2 years. president miguel: thank you.

>> i'm kevin kitchingham with the bernal heights neighborhood coalition. we represent more than 30 organizations and have grown out of community members literally coming to our door step concerned about the long-range development plan for cpmc and its disproportionate impact on the community. there are many issues at stake here and the document before you is the result of a lot of hard work by the planning department. there are numerous criticisms of the study itself, glaring deficiencies. this is about fairness, whether or not san francisco is a just and equitable community and city for all. we have an extremely profitable corporation that have decided that health severances to the poorest san franciscan is not as

important as profit. we have a developer that has decided that those who can pay 100% of the obligation for the impact that their project will cause, profit is more important. though cpmc bought their property on the van ness corridor years after the special use district was in effect, they decided that rather than honoring the law and the planning code of the city requiring that they provide housing at a rate of three-to-one on the corridor, profit matters most. instead of making sure that one of the few hospitals that serves the southeast sector of the city is sustainable with mixed services for neighborhoods with the highest concentration of youth and profitable, instead profit is the most important. instead of engaging in honest open discussion about alternative 3a, they reject it because profit is most importantly. bernal heights neighborhood center and the coalition of

san francisco demands that equitable healthcare access be mandated where 100% of the developer's obligation of the existing code, particularly that in the van ness special use district be met and st. luke's be rebuilt to its current licensed 270 bed capacity at a minimum so it can be around for another 100 years to continue to serve san francisco's working class neighborhoods. keep in mind that cpmc made $150 million last year. it's time for them to get serious about their obligations under the law and engage with the community rather than trying to maximize profit off the backs of the poor. thank you. president miguel: thank you. >> good evening, i'm tina shots for the filipino community center. i am a part of the baba

san francisco, advocating for the rights and welfare for filipinos, especially for those underserved and advocating for their basic rights including access to jobs. we stand in solidarity with the filipino community center, a good neighborhood coalition and national alliance for filipino concerns. now a growing coalition of more than 40 organizations and individuals including the filipino community, church, labor and student leaders and other community supporters. these groups represent thousands of filipinos concentrated in some attender line and excelsior neighborhoods of san francisco and the larger san francisco bay area filipino working community that are employed or may have been potentially employed by cpmc. we stand firmly with those who are expressing in the community and in this room today alarm and outrage over a very serious socio-economic and health impact

of the cpmc's development project and the planning downsize of st. luke's hospital. the issue we are raising today is specifically related to the permanent jobs that will be created by cpmc's plans for healthcare in san francisco and in particular the permanent jobs of registered nurses. you all may be as alarmed as we are to learn there is evidence of an alleged practice of racial discrimination and discrimination based on national origin against hiring filipino and foreign graduate nurses at st. luke's hospital. through signed declarations by three nurses, managers and supervisors, nursing managers and supervisors, we have learned tadiana corner, vice president of nursing allegedly told these supervisors and managers, "you are not to hire any filipino nurses. the filipinos are always related and know each other and that's not good. you're not to hire them." "it is hard to understand them

and be understood by them." "do not hire foreign graduate nurses." these are very qualified nurses who are being discriminated against. when we learned of this in the filipino community, we interviewed nurses and one of the supervisors to verify this was said and reviewed data provided to us by the california nursing association indicating a severe drop in the rate of hiring of filipino nurses since the beginning of 2008. and when these discriminatory statements were made, any of us who have been to hospital facilities in san francisco and around the u.s. know two things, one, that filipinos are overrepresented in the healthcare industry at rates upward ofen its, 30%, 60% in some areas. president miguel: thank you. >> can i say my demands?

president miguel: you can submit the written comments. thank you. >> thank you. >> my name is diane smith with project management advisers and we were retained by daniel bernham court at one daniel bernham court. you heard from their general manager. they chose p.m.a. because we have numerous projects around the country and especially in san francisco. we manage the development of one rincon hill, the argent and poke and one embarcadero across from the ballpark and they wanted to take a pragmatic approach to understanding their concerns rather than being surrounded by cpmc's cathedral hill campus. for instance, their concerns are all under the purview of sequa in terms of vibration and noise and dust and as helene noted,

we've reviewed the e.i.r. and are planning on submitting our formal comments. i don't go over them here. we submitted our concerns also directly to cpmc and we're currently in discussions and are hopeful that we will come to agreement on how to mitigate them but in particular to our experience in construction, we're providing through our formal comments some more specific mitigations that can reduce the impacts of noise and vibration that may not have been identified or that were not identified in the e.i.r. and these are practical and rational and come from working in the construction industry and being development managers in real estate so we hope that those considerations are adopted. thank you. president miguel: thank you. >> my name is fran taylor. i've lived within walking

distance of st. luke's for over 30 years. my mother died there. and i want to see that hospital continue to survive. and i'm worried that this plan will just reduce st. luke's to a shell that will eventually wither away. one of the arguments that cpmc is giving for cutting services and beds at st. luke's is that the census has never filled the number of beds that are there now. but the confusion in the neighborhood about what's available at st. luke's has been pervasive over the last several years because services are getting cut and i was at a meeting once there that ended at 8:00 p.m. and i couldn't figure out how to get out of the hospital because the doors are locked. what kind of hospital locks its doors at 8:00 and you have to look for a worker to guide you out to the e.r. and so o.the strategy seems to be like that of a grocery store chain that

buys an outlet in a poor neighborhood that it really doesn't want. it doesn't really want this supermarket, so it takes the stock off the shelves. and people stop shopping there because they never know whether they'll be out of milk today or won't have bread today and then after the shoppers stop coming, the chain can say, there's no demand. now, this is what's happening. and i want to point out that a few of the arguments in favor of the d.i.r. spule speak to keeping at a viable size. the people, the doctors who spoke about the need for speed, to get those pediatric emergency patients to a hospital quickly, every minute counts. tough luck for the engleside, too bad for excelsior. the same with the clinics in the tenderloin and china town who were happy the hospital would be close to them. i'm happy for them but what

about us? what about us in the southern part of the city who will have a boutique hospital for maybe a few years and as far as the jobs issue, this is not a jobs versus neighborhood issue. i want jobs. i want those plumbers working, i want all of those people who spoke about their jobs through the job training programs to keep their jobs. and i think we all want the construction workers to have their jobs. well, nobody wants this project to die. we just want it to be fair. president miguel: thank you. malcolm young, norah green, orlando raille, stefan tenia. >> i think i'll pass for norah green. my name is nato green.

president miguel: sorry. >> norah green is me in drag. i'm nato green with the california nurse's association and coalition for health planning. we believe that the draft environmental impact report is seriously deficient for deciding essentially on the first page not to look at healthcare because all of the arguments about why the plan should go one way or the other are healthcare arguments and this body unfortunately cannot kick that can down the road to somebody else and c.n.a. having looked at it, what we see is that the cpmc is asking for a lot of concessions from the city from a land use and city planning point of view to build a cathedral hill and the question is are the healthcare benefits so overwhelming and what is the evidence for that and we believe the evidence is that they're not. one of the key healthcare issues we wanted to raise is the issue of costs, which is completely out of it. i don't know if you saw the article in august 20 in "the chronicle" about sutter and monopoly pricing that this is a plan that will raise healthcare

costs for everyone, including the taxpayers of san francisco and their health plans, the health plans for city employees. so if there's not a serious analysis of the aspects of hospital design that will drive cost of healthcare for the entire population of the city and possible mitigations from a cost point of view, the plan will be deficient. secondly, the whole argument about seismic compliance is fraudulent and cpmc has been in the capitol logging for a bill that will extend seismic deadlines and they were telling people in the capitol that we don't want to have to rid -- we're not going to be able to comply because there's too much opposition to the plan and we need an extension. they are completely capable of complying with the seismic deadlines if they're willing to resolve conflicts. but rather than doing that, they're risking that the building fall down on patients.

we don't think cpmc should get preferential treatment on seismic deadlines compared to hospitals that have worked out issues in order to get the buildings approved on time but it gives a lie that there's an issue that there's a concern about the hospital being seismically safe. thank you for your time. president miguel: thank you. >> we're going to take a 10-minute break.