[applause] [cheers and applause] >> very nice, thank you.

that will be the end of the press conference. you are all welcome to join us at the library. [inaudible] 7:00. thank you all very much for coming. >> for those of us on the board, i know many of us have young ben

was in the city. i know a ton of my friends have left the city. one thing that the strike me as we have a ton of data, but it is a different places. this year, we will call for those constituents to come together to understand the issue better and, going forward, enacting policies to extend that period . of all the places i have been, this is my favorite. i am a born and raised san franciscan. more important, i represent district 2. i grew up in the marina district close to the palace of fine arts. my parents still live in the same set of plants that i live in. i went to grammar school here. i went to st. ignatius here. i am a proud wild cat. i went to college at loyola- marymount university in los

angeles. i had a scholarship to play baseball. i remember coming down here to christie field, when my dad was in the military, seeing how the beaches have transformed into but we have today. you cannot beat the views, of course. it just holds summoning memories and i can come here with our kids, our family. i ended up going to ireland to get a master's degree at the university college of dublin. i went back to the states and went to law school at university of pennsylvania. then i came back, and choosing to live in san francisco was natural to me. when you are a child, you do not realize what you had until you leave home. i had the opportunity to live in los angeles, abroad in ireland, and there is no place like home, when you are from san francisco. i have been a corporate attorney

at palo -- in palo alto. i became an >> i worked in the finance industry about 5 1/2 years. in the summer of 2009 i joined a venture capital firm with two other partners. >> we are all excited about the americas cup here in district two but one thing if you think about it everyone knows what fleet week is like here in the marina. this is fleet week on steroids. think about fort mason, these will be the most brings taken places to watch the americas cup. what we're working on and working to continue to work on and want your input on, how do we make it a positive experience for the people that live here. >> i'm happily married and my life and -- wife and i live around laurel village. we have two children, five around they. we are proud parents and now just excited to be here on the board. i think i'm in the middle. i'm a moderate person.

fiscal fiscally conservative and that is the way i intend to practice what i preach here. in terms of getting into politics, i think for me it was really that reasons. first being from here, i think that was part of my own motivation, feeling a sense of roots in san francisco. also raising our children here. i think we went through as a young family the discussion and dialogue that many young families go through. should we move to the suburbs? away decided to stick around and we are very happy we did. once you stick around i think it was a turning point to say we are here for good. what can we do to make this place better? there were a lot of lessons to be learned in running a race in san francisco. a few that stick out, money does matter. raising money. that is a simple, somewhat unfortunate fact if you want to be candidate. most importantly, one thing i drew out of it is hard work and

utter determination is the thing that will, i think, allow to succeed more than anything else. i came from the private sector and looking at honestly answering the question did i have something different to offer that i thought would be valuable it san francisco right now and i think a hrrpbl part of our -- large part of problems are financial and with my background i think i can add a lot of value and that is why i decided to bet in the race. >> it means there might be some small profit if you run it correctly but not always. that is something we really need to keep in mind in our city government. from my point of view is that. we have to figure out what is it lake -- like to be a business person in the city and what we can do to not only have full restaurants and bars but making sure it is worth it to continue to open successful places that make our community that much better. >> we have a huge unemployment

rate in san francisco. it is about 9.6%. the fact that we have not done much about that in city hall i think has it change. that certainly is something i will be focused on in the beginning here in city hall. putting people back to work. it is an individual issue but it is a family issue and we've a lot of families still struggling and i think people have lost sight of that. hopefully we will be getting out of the recession soon but we need to do a lot to accelerate getting out of that recession, making sure families are back at work and children are provided for. to me that is my biggest priority. i think that we do lose a lot of sight in the past district supervisors lost sight of the fact that we do represent san francisco as a whole and we need to make sure in city hall we are enacting policies, laws and legislation that move the city forward as a whole. these are the neighborhoods i grew up in, so for me it is fun to be in them to really understand what is going on and

be able it fundamentals some of the thinking and some of the people that are making decisions. >> right here we played football. flag football right here every year. we hung out right in the gym. directors looked after us. parents used to check in but not only one parent, they checked on all the kids. that is what is great about this district, the community. the family base of everything. >> exactly. and look how you turned out. you are doing ok. >> doing all right. two local city guys. >> there you go.

supervisor mirkarimi: i think that the deliberations that came out of the last few months on the question of tax breaks and tax reform have helped us arrive at a particular place that gives us this entree to determining,

maybe with our toe in the water, of what it might look like to actually recall tax structure. for most of my adult life, i have spent completely here in san francisco. now about 27 years. i was born in chicago. my father had emigrated from iran to go to school in chicago where he met my mother when he was attending university of chicago. that is where i was born. my mother, growing up in that -- growing up for me in the 1960's and 1970's -- was very involved in the war movement and what often take me to protest and lectures. she was also involved in union labor, as her family had been for a couple of generations. my father was the director of ymca in chicago. with the sixth engagement, i think that all was in one variable or another, very influential on me. after my parents had divorced, i spent most of my youth in the

state of rhode island. after i graduated high school, i went to the undergraduate college in st. louis, missouri, and came out here for grad school. fell in love with the san francisco bay area appeared all my plans changed, and this became my home. >> [inaudible] do we end up with a wells fargo here? another bank of america over there? what projects as going forward? supervisor mirkarimi: you read my mind. that is a perfect segue. i wanted to talk about rezoning, areas that fortified neighborhood interests so there is not another chase situation or wells fargo, or what have you, that should put us in this position again. >> i worked as an environmental analyst for a number of think tanks and then applied to that trade in law enforcement where i went to the san francisco police academy many years ago, graduated from the sfpd class,

trained in environmental forensics, both here locally, state, and finally by the u.s. epa in a training center, and i worked with the district attorney's office in san francisco for nine years becoming -- before becoming elected supervisor. i was one of 20 people who co- founded the green party in california. i thought that the democratic party in the united states had essentially vacated or left and use a little too much with the political right. in my opinion, there had been insufficient advocacy for people who were left of center. less than to w. years ago, i decided it was time for me to shift direction and said the democrats. that is what this comes down to. that does not take quite as long comparatively to other cities, either. if anything, at least maybe permitting is made to the frustration that red tape business is the way you deal with that reality, but in terms of legislation, good idea

actually gets marshall pretty quickly in this city. i love to campaign. i knew that in advance. how i like to campaign is i meet people. i knock on every door in district 5, and i really did enjoy that. but i like grass roots organizing. does not matter what your brand of politics is. it should never be subverted. whether you come from the right, middle, or left. you should always want to engage the public and in power the public by them meeting you and you listening to them. that is what has happened around here. thank you. be well. if you look between hagiht and g -- haight and gary streets, you would have seen a complete renaissance. the median is here. the improvements on the sidewalks. this just happened over the last

two or three years. the street you are right in the middle of right now is on funding at growth and a visitor. it is an amazing farmer's market that the whole community comes down for pirie whether it is good or bad, i have to tell you, i am the lowly impressed. right here, in front of motor bicycles shopping cafe -- mojo bicycle shop and cafe, we have the first part what we're week extended the table seating right on the street, and it is the first one in the city here in district 5, and it serves as a template for other businesses wanting to do the exact same thing. >> there is all -- there's always a lot of discussion about diversity. i think class ever city is something that should not be subordinate to that discussion. i want to make sure that sanford cisco has a working-class population. i want to make sure that we do not take for granted because we

are seen as more cosmopolitan, that that excuses' us from not tackling issues of poverty, which there are still substantial pockets of it in san francisco, despite what others may argue. that, to me, oddly it's our requirements, to make sure our city, in its reputation of being forward thinking and progressive, learns to make sure that that translates into economic, so that this is not just a city for those who can afford it. we want to get down to brass tacks issues about not just public safety but the root causes that we want to address of job training, job placement, giving our youth something to aspire to, giving young adults something that they can turn to, giving people who feel that they need that extra level of support from city hall, from local government, the ability to be able to reach out -- that is also what tonight is part of.

he is the real supervisor, my son. he just turned two last week. i know i was going to grow to be an eco-leader in some respects, but out of the desperation, the fact that we are not getting leadership from the federal government and state government, trying to mitigate pervasive environmental harm or answering the larger questions, like of a climate change, or trying to figure out ways that we compensate for insufficient public resources, coming from state government, these are the kinds of things that force us to deal with citywide issues. sometimes, that is the risk of people of accusing us of overstepping our jurisdiction and being a little too heady about dealing with issues that really do not concern san francisco. my response to that is with globalization and with the way that the world has been brought into closer focus and the way that people now have admitted

together through social media, there are no borders in this issue, and if there is going to be this kind of policy paralysis on a federal or state level, it is good for municipal government to step up to the plate and start leading the way or a less challenging the other tiers that if you do not do something, then get out. >> to address these concerns, i

have made a series of amendments to the resolution that capture the spirit of the policy but would allow continued conversation with the task force and other stakeholders about how we do metering. i believe strongly that the city needs to start developing toes to help create affordable housing. in our housing element alone, we talk about building a 60% affordable, but we are currently not doing that. it is important to start the discussion about creating tools of measuring our affordable housing and creating tools to enforce that. i grew up in new york city, one to my parents who had immigrated here to the u.s. actually, i started really becoming active in working with the community when i was in high school. came out to california for college, went to stanford. i was always politically involved. when i was a college student, i worked on the initiative to get

rid of affirmative action in our public government system. currently, we have 3 legislative items that are pending. the first is going to be coming to a final vote on tuesday, our mid-market uptown tenderloin task exemption legislation. it is basically an incentive to encourage businesses to come to mid-market. in particular, where we have the highest commercial vacancy. and then when i graduated, moved out to san francisco about 12 years ago. i always loved sanford cisco in college, and i just wanted to try it out. i started working in economic development policy. i was a community organizer for six years. i worked with young people, parents, and families around issues that concern our neighborhoods, whether it was improving muni lines, affordable housing, public schools, or just

planning issues in neighborhoods. we just had a hearing last week, and we are trying to do some work around bedbug enforcement, which is a major issue in the tenderloin and of hill and 63. a hearing will actually be on thursday, april 7, 10:30. we're doing our first hearing on pedestrian safety. i think public safety is a huge concern. it ranges from both low-level crimes to pedestrian safety, and so that is a really important issue to me. we are probably more than double what every other district has. and that are preventable. and we can do better. district 6 is one -- home to one of the most diverse constituencies. we have the poorest residents in san francisco. we have lgbt. we have immigrants, people of color, youth, and a high proportion of seniors in the city as well. we heard that people want to see

more jobs, want to see access to more jobs for our residents. we want to see more preventive instead of just reactive. we want to see after-school programs versus the police picking them up because they are out on the street, which i think our chief agrees with. i actually ran for the board of education in san francisco and got to serve a term on our school board. what really surprised me was how much i enjoyed it. i loved it. i love meeting with families, meeting with youth, meeting with teachers, visiting schools, and getting a deeper understanding of what it means to make our system work better. the one thing i really enjoyed was i got to run within a district instead of citywide, was that i really got to know voters and residents. i actually enjoy campaigning more because i had time to knock on doors and the voters individually. i'd love it. i actually really enjoyed being

out on the field. so i spent a lot of time doing it because i got to really get a deeper understanding of what people care about and what people's concerns are and also what people loved about the district and the city. i was talking with the mayor yesterday. he was very interested in seeing how the good work with our office -- how he could work with our office. i would love to see how we could support small businesses because they are the heart at san francisco. they provide 60% 07% of the jobs in sanford cisco, and they provide it locally, and they are not going to offshore their jobs any time. i am not an opponent of cleaning up the tenderloin. i love the tenderloin. i love what is right now. i recognize we have a diversity of books that live there and people do not want to see open drug dealing. i do not have a problem with people lit think -- people out on the street socializing. i think that is good. that to me is more -- you know,

it is part of the character of the neighborhood. i get to represent one of the most exciting and dynamic districts in the city. it is where change is happening, so i think it is exciting in terms of how we can model what it means to be a smart growth neighborhood, how we can use transit and housing effectively to serve our city and also to do a lot of the new green policies that we have developed over the last 10 years. when a resident of san francisco is looking for health care, you look in your neighborhood first. what is closest to you? if you come to a neighborhood health center or a clinic, you then have access it a system of care in the community health

network. we are a system of care that was probably based on the family practice model, but it was really clear that there are special populations with special needs. the cole street clinic is a youth clinic in the heart of the haight ashbury and they target youth. tom woodell takes care of many of the central city residents and they have great expertise in providing services for many of the homeless. potrero hill and southeast health centers are health centers in those particular communities that are family health centers, so they provide health care to patients across the age span. . >> many of our clients are working poor. they pay their taxes. they may run into a rough patch now and then and what we're able to provide is a bridge towards getting them back on

their feet. the center averages about 14,000 visits a year in the health clinic alone. one of the areas that we specialize in is family medicine, but the additional focus of that is is to provide care to women and children. women find out they're pregnant, we talk to them about the importance of getting good prenatal care which takes many visits. we initially will see them for their full physical to determine their base line health, and then enroll them in prenatal care which occurs over the next 9 months. group prenatal care is designed to give women the opportunity to bond during their pregnancy with other women that have similar due dates. our doctors here are family doctors. they are able to help these women deliver their babies at the hospital, at general hospital. we also have the wic program, which is a program that provides food vouchers for our

families after they have their children, up to age 5 they are able to receive food vouchers to get milk and cereal for their children. >> it's for the city, not only our clinic, but the city. we have all our children in san francisco should have insurance now because if they are low income enough, they get medical. if they actually have a little more assets, a little more income, they can get happy family. we do have family who come outside of our neighborhood to come on our clinic. one thing i learn from our clients, no matter how old they are, no matter how little english they know, they know how to get to chinatown, meaning they know how to get to our clinic. 85 percent of our staff is bilingual because we are

serving many monolingual chinese patients. they can be child care providers so our clients can go out and work. >> we found more and more women of child bearing age come down with cancer and they have kids and the kids were having a horrible time and parents were having a horrible time. how do parents tell their kids they may not be here? what we do is provide a place and the material and support and then they figure out their own truth, what it means to them. i see the behavior change in front of my eyes. maybe they have never been able to go out of boundaries, their lives have been so rigid to sort of expressing that makes tremendous changes. because we did what we did, it is now sort of a nationwide model. >> i think you would be surprised if you come to these clinics. many of them i think would be your neighbors if you knew that.

often times we just don't discuss that. we treat husband and wife and they bring in their kids or we treat the grandparents and then the next generation. there are people who come in who need treatment for their heart disease or for their diabetes or their high blood pressure or their cholesterol or their hepatitis b. we actually provide group medical visits and group education classes and meeting people who have similar chronic illnesses as you do really helps you understand that you are not alone in dealing with this. and it validates the experiences that you have and so you learn from each other. >> i think it's very important to try to be in tune with the needs of the community and a lot of our patients have -- a lot of our patients are actually immigrants who have a lot of competing priorities,

family issues, child care issues, maybe not being able to find work or finding work and not being insured and health care sometimes isn't the top priority for them. we need to understand that so that we can help them take care of themselves physically and emotionally to deal with all these other things. they also have to be working through with people living longer and living with more chronic conditions i think we're going to see more patients coming through. >> starting next year, every day 10,000 people will hit the age of 60 until 2020. . >> the needs of the patients that we see at kerr senior center often have to do with the consequences of long standing substance abuse and mental illness, linked to their chronic diseases. hea