we're exploring with the mayor's budget office options for additional general funds. if you look at the investment of $9 million and what that will buy us, it will buy us 1,700 job placements, which is a pretty good run on our investment. at the same time, we'll be helping 25 families that are eligible. back to public assistance if we worked long enough. we'll also be serving non-custodial parents, the extent that they're participating in the program, dads who aren't living at home, but are eligible to be served. it was designed internally but with a lot of input from the private sector. scott helped us bounce some ideas off him and some of his colleagues in the small business community.

and throughout the program. i can't thank scott enough for his feedback and being a soundingboard, not only for internal program operations, but also really on program design and what small businesses look for in terms of supporting wages and hiring individuals. so i'll turn over to scott for a few comments and be happy to answer some questions. >> i'm scott, i'm the president of small business california. i also own a small business in san francisco. i have about 29 employees. disappointed in the federal government for not continuing this program. it's been an obvious success, in my mind. one of the things that's been a little frustrating in trying to extend this is when we started a couple of weeks ago or so, the lack of knowledge of people who are benefiting in their state, to understand what was going on. so you had a big education factor. and then, of course, we had the

problems with the republicans and the just say no. so we're going to continue to fight to get this extended. but i do want to applaud the mayor for looking at other options to help small businesses and businesses in general. i've owned my company since 1977. and i can honestly say that this ever had. every dollar counts. and just to clarify, you've heard the debate about small business and the tax cuts. i want to make it very clear that i'm not one of those small businesses that's making over $250,000. so every dollar counts. so this $2,500 clearly isn't going to cover the salary, but i'm able to keep my employee -- very honestly, would have kept the employee anyhow, because she was such a good employee that when you get somebody good, you don't want to let them go. but as i said, every thrar

counts and this will help my bisms and again, thank you, mr. mayor, and thank you, trent. >> so that's the idea. most of this we can do internally, and there's a small portion that will be working with the board to get us to that $9 million mark. i think we have the authority, the executive authority to address about seven million of the nine million. so we'll move forward expeditiously. we'll be prepared for october 1 and we'll continue to fight in congress and hope and expect that they do the right thing to support this very successful stimulus program that does exactly what everyone of all ideological stripes hope to do, and that is bring private sector jobs in an economy that desperately needs those private sector jobs. any questions on this? >> is there any way that saving these jobs -- i can almost hear the board of supervisors now,

and the unions perhaps saying, ok, you've laid off all these city workers. how are you going to use city general fund money? >> yeah, the reality at the end of the day, there weren't that many people -- don't get me wrong. you'll find, i'm sure you'll check someone we did lay off can say how can the mayor say this? but at the end of the day, a rt of myth versus reality about a lot of people that were quote unquote laid off. a lot of that was done through attrition savings. a lot of that was done by moving people around, and being creative. but the bottom line is private sectors the engine of our economic growth. small business are the net job creators. if you want to grow your budget, grow the economy. if you want to have the resources to invest in people and programs and place, grow the private sector economy. that's the spirit of this.

and the spirit that labor has supported. i mean, this has not been at odds with public employee unions. they've been quite solicitous and helpful and very supportive of our efforts. so i don't see that as a particular conflict. and i should also note that we've reduced our welfare roles in this city with this program 20%. in this economic climate. and that's a win for everyone. that actually offsets the burden on the general fund. that means we have more money to invest in other parts of our system, and i know trent wants to add to that. >> when we designed the public sector track, the trainee track. what we've seen is even the constraints on the general fund and hiring constraints, departments are still hiring some folks and filling some vacancies. the public service trainees program is work exactly as we'd

hoped. they're scoring well and they're getting hired. the human services agency has hired a number of folks right out of the public service training program to do case work and eligibility work. that's really sort of the design of that. in terms of the welfare roles, the mayor is right. about a 350% increase when you compare the prior year in terms of numbers of families leaving welfare. in san francisco, about 5,000 people are on it. that does represent about 20% of our case load. of course, we have new families coming on daily and weekly, but through this local program, we hope that many of those families will qualify. >> one other question about the specifics of how the program works. is there any amount of time written into this that the employers have to guarantee that they will keep those jobs and workers on the payroll in order

to get the 2,500? >> i'm looking at my staff. tony, the timeline to get this $2,500 subsidy? >> it's a reimbursement of wages, so the employee will have to pay at least $2,500 worth of wages to get that back. >> so the direct answer is, depending on the wage and the hours worked, that's how long the subsidy would go. >> you don't want to cut $9 million and find out that two months down the road -- >> what we've learned, though, barbara, is that these employees have added value to companies, and it's an incentive to hire from this pool of candidates who we have prescreened and who we refer to interviews, to get in that job and to succeed and to contribute positively to the company. and we hope that after the $2,500 subsidy is up, that they keep that.

that's what we're learning already on the current program. >> you understand how difficult it is to get an employee, to turn the employee. >> yes, a good employee is like gold. it's probably one of the biggest challenges with a small business is finding good employees and keeping them. but the other aspect -- you hear about increasing sales and those types of things. but the biggest benefit for me is when i brought this employee on, i took some pressure off my other staff and improved employee morale within any company. that's gone a long way in my agency. >> -- without the $2,500 incentive. if a good worker -- i would agree with you. >> bash remark let me clarify. the $2,500 is for new hires. it's not to keep existing employees on. it's for new --

>> [inaudible] >> they do. but on their own dime. the $2,500 federal, state, and city money is going for new hires. >> to is -- so the assumption is they wouldn't hire a new person unless they intended to keep that person for a while. >> is there a job training program in there? >> no. >> to support this program not only for wages, we also have staff. we have placement staff. we have business account reps to recruit private business. we have caseworkers. those are all part of the $9 million. it's not just for subsidy. and so what we're doing is reorienting them away from what they were doing before. >> so once again, we're hoping that half the employees will stay employed and the other half, the loser employment, will

create this incentive and try to keep as many of them on as possibly can until roughly 1,740. again, patching things together and creating ways if a difficult climate. the best solution is to extend this for another year, increase the number of people getting the job subsidies. lower the unemployment rate, generate some sales tack, payroll tax, have more consumer spending, which drives more demand, which drives the economy and reduces unemployment further. but that would just be an actual application of reality versus an academic discussion about what's wrong with each party and whether or not the stimulus was good or bad, which is utterly irrelevant to the realities across the country. it's beyond frustrating. i think we've got three or four of these press conferences and i say i fizz logically get caught up in this. -- physiologically get caught up in this.

it's not being amplified at a time when it needs to be, when unemployment got worse in the state of california, not better. any other questions on this? well, that's the idea. thank you all. >> welcome to coulterwire.

the san francisco arts commission and department of public works has joined forces by battling graffiti by launching a new program called street smarts. the program connects established artist with private property owners to create a vibrant murals which is a proven an effective strategy for combating graffiti on private property. artists, along with his crew, recently transformed a building turn to vandalism into a masterpiece. let us take a look. >> part of me has so much compassion for other graffiti artists. i understand why they are doing what they do. for me, it was something that was so hard to get out of.

the lifestyle in general. j and tagging is addicting. i used to be on these routes. i have compassion for these guys. a lot of these guys are super talented. i am just trying to find the median to still be involved but still do my thing as an artist and work with the city, like we are doing. we are doing this wall in a collaboration with the san francisco arts commission. basically what they are doing is trying to get rid of some of the tags and by putting up murals. they are cooking up graffiti artists with business owners. today, we are trying to get a lot of this wall buffed out and covered it. then we will spray on some

sketches of what we are going to do. the rain is coming tomorrow. it should be here for a few days. we want others to know that there are artists working on this wall. the owner of this building, she has had to pay a lot of money to keep on paying over these attacks. >> we have paid as much as $400. the fed typically have been talk about four times a year. typically, it happened right after we have been notified that we need to remove it. the painter will go up there and paid over the graffiti and make a perfect canvas for the tigers to come back. this program appeals to me because we were looking for a way to stop the taggers and the ugly graffiti. this program has beautiful work done by great artists that we

thought would look great on our building. cameron talked about a few difficulties that he thought would be great. he called me and we talked about a theme of what he could do to the side of the building. he took some pictures and e-mail them to me. >> we are going to do all kinds of animals and plants. also, we are all to doing graffiti letters. if you one other taggers to respect our, you have to respect graffiti art. >> if you had a lot of characters in it, you will get more respect from business owners and stuff like that, but letters will give you the respect of the graffiti artists.

i have actually had in my name in this patch of seaweed. >> what if we did it a giant blue whale? >> i was going to do a puffer fish. >> the program for the children is just so important. this is important, too, but you have to get at the kids to find out why they are doing it and direct them in more positive ways. i think what you are doing is great. >> have a good day. see you later. >> dana has been great, she has been a sport about the project. it was cool for her to see it

and actually like it. as an artist, it means a lot to us. we are going to make it look really clean today. then it should be done. we have had this mural of for about six years and it has not been tagged. it really works as a deterrent. a lot of us graffiti artists have been waiting for an opportunity like this, to express ourselves on walls. and there are so many walls around the city that could be beautified. i am so thankful that this opportunity has come about. >> my word encourage anyone who is thinking about it to really jump on the bandwagon. it is looking beautiful. when i came here this morning, i was notified that taggers were there last night, but

fortunately, they did not touch our building. >> to check out the mural in person, stop by 65 polk road. in addition to being a street smarts artist, he has been teaching students about the value for public space and creating public art for the communities through a program called where art lives. for a full list of other in your locations and to learn more about the efforts to combat vandalism, visit i'm the president of friends of mclaren park. it is one of the oldest neighborhood community park groups in san francisco. i give a lot of tours through the park. during those tours, a lot of the folks in the group will think of the park as very scary. it has a lot of hills, there's a lot of dense groves. once you get towards the center

of the park you really lose your orientation. you are very much in a remote area. there are a lot of trees that shield your view from the urban setting. you would simply see different groves that gives you a sense of freedom, of being outdoors, not being burdened by the worries of city life. john mclaren had said that golden gate park was too far away. he proposed that we have a park in the south end of the city. the campaign slogan was, people need this open space. one of the things that had to open is there were a lot of people who did a homestead here, about 25 different families. their property had to be bought up. so it took from 1928 to 1957 to buy up all the parcels of land that ended up in this 317 acres. the park, as a general rule, is heavily used in the mornings

and the evenings. one of the favorite places is up by the upper reservoir because dogs get to go swim. it's extremely popular. many fights in the city, as you know, about dogs in parks. we have 317 acres and god knows there's plenty of room for both of us. man and his best friend. early in the morning people before they go to work will walk their dogs or go on a jog themselves with their dogs. joggers love the park, there's 7 miles of hiking trails and there's off trail paths that hikers can take. all the recreational areas are heavily used on weekends. we have the group picnic area which should accommodate 200 people, tennis courts are full. it also has 3 playground areas.

the ampitheater was built in 1972. it was the home of the first blues festival. given the fact that jerry garcia used to play in this park, he was from this neighborhood, everybody knows his reputation. we thought what a great thing it would be to have an ampitheater named after jerry garcia. that is a name that has panache. it brings people from all over the bay area to the ampitheater. the calls that come in, we'd like to do a concert at the jerry garcia ampitheater and we do everything we can to accommodate them and help them because it gets people into the park. people like a lot of color and that's what they call a park. other people don't. you have to try to reconcile all those different points of view. what should a park look like and what should it have? should it be manicured, should it be nice little cobblestones around all of the paths and

like that. the biggest objective of course is getting people into the park to appreciate open space. whatever that's going to take to make them happy, to get them there, that's the main goal. if it takes a planter with flowers and stuff like that, fine. you know, so what? people need to get away from that urban rush and noise and this is a perfect place to do it. feedback is always amazement. they don't believe that it's in san francisco. we have visitors who will say, i never knew this was here and i'm a native san franciscoan. they wonder how long it's been here. when i tell them next year we'll get to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the park,