-- it is an honor -- president david chiu has joined us. would you like to say a few words? [applause] supervisor chiu: good morning. this is a great day for san francisco, our residents, our merchants, our tourist, and everyone who has been running our cable cars since 1873 -- everyone who has been writing -- everyone who has been riding our cable cars since 1873. as mayor lee mentioned, from literally the first day i have lived in san francisco, i have taken our cable cars. it is one of my favorite ways of getting around my district and for many of my constituents and merchants, it is an incredibly

special institution. cable cars were invented here in san francisco. they are part of what is iconic about our city. they are part of what makes our hills and neighborhoods so memorable. when i heard that we had to close down the cable cars for a time, as an elected official, i panicked a little bit. i heard a lot of concerns raised by neighbors up and down the cable car lines, who have to rely on these lines every day of the week to get to where they need to go. i am so pleased that this project happen as flawlessly as it did. i look forward to getting back up on this cable car line, and i look forward to making sure that with all of you, we are investing in our transit, in our infrastructure so that something that was invented in 1873 will be able to be part of our great city for, hopefully, centuries to come. thank you very much. [applause] >> okay, we also have with us

our board chair, tom nolan. >> thank you very much. didn't that cable car bells sound good -- didn't that cable car bell sound good? i want to thank our colleagues in the dpw and puc. i think people appreciate when departments work well together, and this is a terrific example of that, and hopefully, this is the way we will keep going in the future. 8 million people ride the cable cars every year. that is an awful lot of people. business people, residents, and, of course, visitors, and we are delighted that this is back and running today appeared my notes say that we released conduits, police records, and switches -- we replaced conduits, police brackets, and switches --

conduits, pulley brackets, and switches. on behalf of my colleagues, thank you all for a job well done. [applause] >> ok, we would be remiss if we did not ask the heads of the departments that spearheaded the great coordination that went on with this work -- i would like to call up ed riskin from the department of public works first. >> thank you, carter. this mayor, from his time as city administrator and moving on to his time as mayor, has encouraged strong collaboration between the departments of the city. when we can work together to coordinate and collaborate on the planning, design, and construction of major projects like this, it is not just about us working nicely together.

saves time and saves money. as importantly, it minimizes disruption to the public. on a street like this that has such an essential function to the city, that is such a prominent st., that has so much happening on it, the ability to do that, to minimize disruption, to get the work done and save money in the process, is very important. our role in the process -- we got 17 streets reconstructed and 80 curb ramps built up and down the length of california. it is not only smarter and safer, but it is much more accessible for the thousands and millions of people could travel upon it. we worked hard to minimize disruption during this process, but any time you are tearing up public rights of way, there will be some noise and traffic impacts and path of travel impacts on the sidewalk, but we

worked hard to keep that to a minimum. i want to thank the designers, the resident engineer, the contractor, but also the residents, merchants, hotels, visitors, the many people who had to put up with this. thank you for your patience because this was a significant amount of work we got down for the city. with regards to being able to join forces with other city departments to get this work done, leverage our resources, save time and money, we want to do a lot more of that. we take whatever chance we can to partner with other departments, other utilities, but we are only able to do so to the extent that our resources allow. the mayor mentioned the street's bond we hope to see on the ballot this november. -- the st. -- the streets bond. if that were to be approved, we would have a lot more resources to be able to improve our infrastructure.

thank you do the people for allowing us to get this work done. [applause] >> last but certainly not least, ed harrington from the public utility commission. >> good morning. i love cable cars. i have been judging cable car contest for a number of years. even though the puc is a fairly small part of this, i started 27 years ago on this project. back then, it was an unusual thing to have puc, muni, wastewater -- all those people come together and build up the streets and not come back and tear everything up. now, it is part of how we do business. whenever we have the possibility of doing some work in the streets, we figure out how to do it together and have as little disruption to the people of san francisco as possible. great to be part of this. thank you to the team on this.

thank you, everybody. [applause] >> how about that? we would be remiss if we did not also thank the operators and cable car division staff that not only have provided this lovely backdrop for today's event, but they also provide the great california alliance service that has been running behind you. they also have been instrumental of ensuring continuous service even on buses along cable car lines during the shutdowns and communicating our plans to our customers, with a transport every day. i also want to thank the teams with the cable car project for their diligence in helping san francisco maintain these important -- maintain this important infrastructure. also i want to thank the hyatt regency behind you, garrett delhi chocolates, and all of sfmta staff for making this a

success -- chirar -- ghirardeli chocolates. thank you. >> i believe we are going to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony now? >> 1. 2. 3. all right. [applause]

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. heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, stroke, those kinds of chronic illnesses. when you get them in your 30's and 40's and you have them into your aging process, you are not going to have a comfortable old age. you are also seeing in terms of epidemics, an increase in alzheimer's and it is going to increase as the population increases. there are quite a few seniors who have mental health problems but they are also, the majority of seniors, who are

hard-working, who had minimum wage jobs their whole lives, who paid social security. think about living on $889 a month in the city of san francisco needing to buy medication, one meal a day, hopefully, and health care. if we could provide health care early on we might prevent (inaudible) and people would be less likely to end up in the emergency room with a drastic outcome. we could actually provide prevention and health care to people who had no other way of getting health care, those without insurance, it might be more cost effectiti