tv [untitled] November 10, 2010 8:30am-9:00am PST
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posted -- hosted a little reception across the street, and i wanted to celebrate the fact that i had the privilege of a lifetime to represent the people of san francisco, and i was told i could not do it because i was at the green room across the street, and apparently, it was not accessible, which is rather remarkable to me. because as a small business person, this same city hall major, appropriately, that when i open my small business, that it was accessible, only to find out when i came here that the same people that were telling, appropriately, small businessmen and women like myself what to do, they were not doing it themselves. i remember coming together and cobbling up a few bucks, and i said that it was ridiculous because the city came in and said it would take years. it's an historic structure, all kinds of issues. i said that's the same thing i
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hear business people say all the time, but we make them do the right thing. so if you cannot do it, city hall, i will do it myself. so i wrote a check, and we put that temporary ramp, which has been made a permanent ramp, that is still there today, and made that chamber accessible. that is not to impress you but to impress upon you that i recognize that when we got here as a supervisor, we had a lot more to do that i could ever imagine. we worked to get more van taxis. we worked to focus on making sure the decision was made real. we worked to make sure there were more buses, signals, and the like, but when i became mayor, i had a little more leverage. here is just some of the things we have done just to highlight the point. we started with boating because there's no more principled thing there. in 2004, we made some progress,
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but just north of half of our polling places were accessible with accessible boating equipment. today, i'm proud to say, we are not 100%, but 95% of all the polling places now are accessible with voting machines that people can use in private, which is good. [applause] we then stop at the war memorial building because in 2004, we had this great transition plan you all worked on. it looked good in writing, but we have not implemented that plan. there was only a negligible amount of progress. today, six years later, 80% of that plan is now complete. all city offices that provide services are now made accessible. all museums are now accessible. 9% of our community health clinics are now accessible.
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14 brand new branch libraries accessible. nine more that are in progress will be made accessible appeared most modern accessibility of any new library system i know of in this country. i remember when willie brown went out there -- i will never forget. we had a big celebration. we had our first playground that was made accessible, and that was big national news. now, we have over 80 playgrounds that are fully accessible. 28 clubhouses, 19 rec centers. that is real progress compared to where we were just a few years ago. still not good. we talked about olmstead, and susan was right to bring it up. it is appropriate. ihss and home support services at what is going on in the governor's budget. i do not want to get too partisan or political, but it is pretty unconscionable that it is even on the table, these kind of cuts, but then again, not surprising with all the other cuts that are on the table.
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but you do not have to worry about those ihss cuts locally. they were not even part of the discussion, and now with the budget for all our shortfalls and challenges, we did not even begin to enter into that process to make sure we are providing the quality of care that people deserve with quality wages and quality benefits, so i just want to thank everyone for all their great work and stewardship and allowing people to live in places, live in dignity, which are the principles that bring us all here together, and it was the principle that brought us together to create that community living fund a few years ago. not everybody needs to be in an institution. as proud as we are of laguna honda, not everybody needs to be ad -- at laguna honda. we need to provide alternatives to skilled nursing services, but we had no funding and no framework.
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now, five years in a row, $3 million a year, we have been putting into this community living fund to allow people to transition back into the community or to stay in the community to live in dignity and live in place. i want to thank all of you for that community living fund. it is a national model today. [applause] people forget emergency planning. susan never did. i remember we updated all our emergency operations plans. we have not met in eight years, and the emergency operations plan have not been updated in eight years, but there she was saying is great to update it, but make sure it is accessible. at the time, only three of them were accessible. that is a challenge. today, we have more than 75 accessible emergency disaster shelters, and 37 of them can be adapted and made acceptable. that is real progress. we had only one audible alert
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system. today, we now have an audible and visual alert system to alert sf. if you have not signed up for the text messaging and the benefits of alert sf, please, if nothing else today, up. call 3114 information. again, national model. real progress has been made. this is good. it is all of their in real time. i want to thank everyone. two final things -- public right of way. i know we have had to be sued over and over again -- amen. sometimes you are happy to be sued because it gets you focused, realigns your values, so i'm acting like we were real leaders. you were the leaders holding our feet to the fire, but here's the good news -- 5100 new curb ramps in the last 100 years have been done, and we have all but doubled them.
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over 12,000 curve rams. i have to tell you -- seems like we're really fast tracking because i do not know if there is a corner in the city where we do not have some construction on a new curve ramp. i hope real progress is here, and bevan dufty is here, and i know how committed he is. if we could acknowledge him and thank him for making us honest in all this. final three points because i know you are sick of me and we have a lot of speakers, but it is important to talk about because you are important to talk about. in addition to curb ramps, we only have one intersection that was accessible with those pedestrian signals. now, we can confidently say that we lead the nation with 116 intersections and growing every
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single day. please give yourselves a round of applause for that. it is always good to lead the way. we have more work to do, but we are making progress. transportation. i know it is still not -- i get it. [laughter] man. i did that taxi task force. remember that one? a lot of you serve on that. i'm looking out here. we have increased by 20% the number of ramp taxis, and we went from a system of accessible buses a few years ago where there were only 409, and we have close to now doubled the number of accessible buses in our system, and that is good progress. again, we still have a lot more work to do. we had no digital voice announcements a few years ago. now, every single one -- they may not always be working, but
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every single one of our buses are now equipped with that technology, so good progress has been made there as well, and i hope you acknowledge that because we love to beat up that mta thatnat ford and the folks over there at muni -- mta and nat ford. round of applause to those who get beaten up all the time. [applause] the final point. housing. it is a big issue. it is the toughest issue of all, affordable housing in the city. we build more affordable housing than any time in our history. last 24 months, things have slowed down. because of your work, we've
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modernized the codes and our requirements. or 3100 units -- over 3100 units are fully accessible or adaptable. we have more under construction. this is an order of magnitude increase from where we were a decade of code -- ago. we have not forgotten our obligations on housing, transportation, right of ways, being prepared for emergencies, all the work we need to do, lead by example. until they kick me out, this will be a requirement. i know a lot of the board wants to get rid of me as mayor. i will not go until they make their chamber accessible to people with disabilities. that will be the final big effort we will engage in. [applause] thank you. keep up the good work. [applause] ♪
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environment and we are recycling oil. thank you. we can go into a refinery and we can use it again. they do oil changes and sell it anyway, so now they know when a ticket to a. hal>> to you have something you want to get rid of? >> why throw it away when you can reuse it? >> it can be filtered out and used for other products. >> [speaking spanish] >> it is going to be a good
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thing for us to take used motor oil from customers. we have a 75-gallon tank that we used and we have someone take it from here to recycle. >> so far, we have 35 people. we have collected 78 gallons, if not more. these are other locations that you can go. it is absolutely free. you just need to have the location open. you are set to go.
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charles bennett's high school dream was to teach in the old neighborhood. but without the money for college, all he got was the old neighborhood. support the united negro college fund. a mind is a terrible thing to waste. there is really, only one boy... one girl... one tree... one forest... one deep, dancing ocean...
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