delight. >> i am proud, from your the tenant governorship, if and when it begins -- >> others disagreed with the decision. i think he should have been sworn in on monday. that seems to be in the spirit of the state of constitution of california. >> the next day, the board had one last chance to nominate their twice for interim mayor on january 4. >> when the board finally got around to actually nominating people for, and taking up the issue of inter mayorship, the first thing people should know is it was late at night. the board really put this off as light as they could. people were tired and cranky. that is the first thing people should know about this meeting. >> they said they would take nominations according to who was on the roster first. so it became a game of jeopardy where the question was, who

could press the button first? then it became this sort of strategy. >> having run out of time, board members began the first round of nominations. >> i would nominate former mayor art agnos. >> current city administrator ed lee. >> everyone is expecting hennessey to have the sixth vote. >> i would like to request a 20- minute recess. >> perhaps an explanation? >> i would like a recess. that is my explanation. >> colleague, can do that without objection? >> he took sophie maxwell and they started walking down the hall, across the hall to room 200, the mayor's office. when it came down to it, bevan dufty said, after talking to the

mayor, newsom made an argument as to why edwin lee should have the job. >> supervisor daly, having witnessed several progressives vote for a moderate saw the progress of dreams away. >> we ostensibly had a majority on the board of supervisors. we had an opportunity and we made the biggest fumble in san francisco political history. >> once it became clear that ed lee had the votes to win, nobody wanted to pull the trigger. so they stopped the meeting -- at midnight -- and decided to have another meeting that friday. at the end of the day, so many people had been put up for consideration, and here is the one person that had not and he ends up being the person who the board ends up with. that is a huge shock. >> when the board finally made their appointment, i was joyful because i thought it would be much more difficult. >> supervisors avalos and, thus

ask that the meeting be recessed until friday to allow for a meeting with ed lee. >> i have not had a chance to talk to ed lee, any more than him, to my office and telling me that he was not interested in doing it. that was my last conversation with him. ed lee is currently in china. i would like to see if i can have a conversation with him before we make any kind of determination. >> the current board had run its term. they return for one last meeting to begin -- finish what they began on tuesday, nominating ed lee. >> i will support mr. lee. >> it is for those reasons i will be supporting mr. lee's nomination. the reason why i wholeheartedly support ed lee is because he is a qualified person and he is the right person to lead san francisco. >> we have engaged in an orderly

transition of leadership. this is what separates us, as a democratic society, from other less democratic societies. and i am so proud of us for what we are about to do today. so with that, colleagues, thank you for being part of this historic moment. >> the supervisor campos? there are 10 ayes, one no. [applause] >> the motion for edwin lee passes. [applause] >> you are talking to one of the happiest people in san francisco. this was an extraordinary an historic vote. but it was symbolic. remember, the new board of supervisors who convenes tomorrow will make the actual decision on who the next mayor will be. >> everybody came down to ed lee

with the expectation that it will be done in the most intellectually honest way and in a way that role and order is respected. i think we discussed a few nominations and came down to this one by a common denominator. >> i had a sense of urgency because i did not want to see anyone being acting mayor in the presence of the board of supervisors. that is not the kind of transition i talked about. we need to have a transition -- legislative branch separate from the executive branch of san francisco. that is the best way to do our work. people would not like the situation of having an acting mayor and president of the board of supervisors. >> now the dominoes in this

chain of political events were falling day-by-day. the next day, january 8, new board members were sworn in. >> congratulations. [applause] >> and on monday, gavin newsom was finally sworn in as lieutenant governor of california. >> the duties upon which i am about to enter. [applause] >> the very next day, january 11, the new board of supervisors met for the first time, with the historic first decision of their new term. >> item 3 is a motion to ratify the appointment of a successor mayor due to the occurrence of a vacancy in the offense of a mayor expiring january 8, 2012. >> i am hoping for is, as we look forward to the confirmation of mr. lee, that we will also,

leaving behind the kind of tactics that were used last week, that i thought really made the process feel more clumsy than it should have been. >> this is ed lee's day. i have said a lot about my perspective of this man who comes from the community, who is rooted in our community, who has a tremendous breath and death of city experience. colleagues, at this time, i hope and ask that we unanimously vote for ed lee to be our next mayor. >> supervisor campos? president to? supervisor chu? supervisor colon? supervisor elsbernd? there are 11 ayes. the motion is approved a [applause] . >> colleagues, i am going to

move that we recessed the meeting and we conduct the swearing in ceremony of the new mayor in the rotunda of city hall. [applause] >> so ended one of the greatest challenges the board of supervisors has ever faced, resulting in the first interim mayor in san francisco in 32 years. >> we had a real sense of belief when the full board made the final appointment to successor mayor. we thought there were some and gaps in our knowledge about how to appoint a successor mayor. by the time it was actually done, it seemed almost easy, but it was not, to be honest. we had planned for different types of variables to occur, and none of that actually happened. no conflict of interest laws came into play, no inquiry issues. >> i thought they did a good

job, actually, trying to figure out something that had very little precedent in our city's history, something that was very important. >> angela and her staff did an extremely professional job. she was on the hot seat, under a tremendous amount of pressure. i did not see a lot of the back room arm-twisting, hair pulling, chest pounding that was going on, the pressure she was under, but when she walked out into the board chamber, when she walked into the hallway and the reporters were chasing after her, she was precise and professional. >> in the end, there were some questions about the charter of san francisco. >> our charter spells out a formal process, but lee is pretty silent on that application process. >> this has happened in 32 years, but i think we need some better certainty on how we deal with this decision of succession. >> the charter has worked several times during times of

vacancies like this. it certainly worked during aftermath of mayor mosconi and harvey milk. >> so we may be seeing more of these successor issues coming up, certainly something we do not want to legislate. i hope that we can trust people to be grown up about it, but if that is not the case, we can spell that out. >> going through the first time with little knowledge and information was difficult. now that we have got our record of how to do this, i think the next clerk and the city will be much informed with having our process and having our archives to look too. >> and that is how san francisco government worked out the kinks, twists and turns, bombs in the road, to select its new interim mayor, ed lee. san francisco's first asian- american mayor. >> this has been an unprecedented and historic transition of power here in san

francisco. i am so happy the board of supervisors came together to select an outstanding choice along many outstanding candidates to lead us over the next several years. >> over the past several months when this issue has come up, it had been agonizing. the board has been put into a difficult situation. there are a lot of differences of opinion on how to run the city, how to mass make a decision, who should be in place, 11 people to agree on that is a challenging thing. i think we have done the best we can do in the process, considering the difference of opinions. >> the people of san francisco can now choose their mayor, the direction they want to go. that is why this decision was so appropriate. >> the other big shock is that the moderates seem to have won this round. people thought, progressives have themselves on the board. there is no reason that they will not get together and take a noted leader who is a

progressive to be interim mayor, and then stayed there for another term. the great thing about being in term mayor is to get to run as an incumbent. the fact that the progressives could not get together to get somebody into office as interim mayor in their own self-interest was very surprising for a lot of us. >> what happened in the last month in city hall was an incredible show of democracy that was part policy, part politics, and it all came together, and more than anything -- not just from a reporter's perspective, often was this? but there was a public interest as well on what was going on in san francisco government. we take it for granted a law that there is a city government here. this was something that brought people together. you heard people talking about it at the cafes, park playground, people who do not always pay attention. in that $0.10, it was the best thing we could have done for city government, even though it

was a little bit messy. it was a lot of fun and an eye opener. it got people interested again.

>> i'm susan buckbinder. i'm the director of the h.i.v. research section and of the sore project. on behalf of the entire project and the entire team which is large, i want to welcome you all to our ground-breaking ceremony and just give you a little bit of background on the aids office itself and the reason for the soar project. the aids office is really a unique research institution. in addition to the care that's provided and the resources that are given to the community to care for, to prevent and care for people with h.i.v. infection, we really are the only health department that is leading the h.i.v. prevention and surveillance effort. the kind of research that we do is done primarily through universities, so we're in a

unique position. we have three research organizations houses within the aids office. there is the h.i.v. epidemiology unit that is headed by dr. seussan sheer and willie mcfarland. they really are the premiere surveillance group for h.i.v. and aids in the country that train many other groups globally about how to track h.i.v. infections and h.i.v.-related disease, so that we can know how best to target our prevention efforts and our treatment efforts. so they have really done a huge service to the global h.i.v. aids community and also in addressing health disparities. the h.i.v. prevention unit is headed by dr. grant koufax. they also are really a ground-breaking research organization as well as providing prevention services and leading the presense efforts in the city. they have really spearheaded

this effort at looking at how treatment can effect prevention, how if you get people tested and treated more globally, you can really drive down h.i.v. infection. and so through that, they have pioneered on viral load and h.i.v. testing, in treatment of substance use and a variety of other topics. and then i head the h.i.v. research section and we have a number of talented folks who work with me. we're test age number of different kind of prevention interventions including h.i.v. vaccines, preexposure prophylaxis which is using h.i.v. medication to prevent new infections, reaching out to the african-american community to understand what is driving the epidemic particularly in that community and using peer health navigation to connect them with services, combination prevention intersenses and so forth.

in the last year, we have had a couple of major breakthroughs in both a new h.i.v. vaccine that seems to be providing partial protection and we are understanding how that is working and preventing new infections. the entire aids office has come together to work collaboratively to address the epidemic. now, we were challenged in that we are based in a health department and so we don't have the resources to build buildings and to renovate buildings because we're largely grant funded. one of our employees, janey vincent, saw a -- [applause] >> saw that there were federal stimulus funds that we could apply for to renovate our building. we needed to work together more collaboratively. teams were split up on different floors and there wasn't good meeting space to work cross teams. we needed more clinical space to

see our study volunteers and we needed more community space to bring community into what we do. under barbara garcia's leadership, we came together and put in this grant and it's the first time that the federal government, n.i.h., has awarded this kind of money to a health department. they've only awarded this kind of research money to universities so it's really through the joint efforts under barbara's leadership that we've been able to move forward and it's really through the support of the city government through the mayor, through our supervisors, through the health commission, that we've moved this field forward so without further ado, i want to introduce the honorable mayor lee. [applause] mayor lee: thank you, everybody, for coming this morning, and dr. buchbinder and barbara and the commissioners,

congratulations. these days it is so difficult to land federal grants, so matter where they're from and it only takes the dedication that you've identified, the people who worked on this very hard to put together a grant specific to modernize our aids research office and it's absolutely needed. i remember in the early 1980's where we joined three major cities of the country, this city and new york and los angeles, where the initial aids research got started and we are concentrated in our areas but we understood that this epidemic had to be studied further to make sure we were on the right track to discover not only breakthroughs but prevention ideas that would be directed at curtailing this epidemic. so you fast forward the 25, 30 years since that time, and we need more of that research done so i am glad this money was identified. it's going to be very helpful.

the $9.5 million of aid from the national institute of health. this is almost miraculous. you don't see these grants very often to public agencies unless we are doing the absolutely necessary thing, and that is focused on improving and making sure we make great breakthroughs and we are going to be able to do that with this additional space. this money will go towards additional 8,000 square feet on top of renovating another 9,000. so it's a total focused on the 17,000 square feet of space that is in different floors of this building, making sure they're connected up and that we have additional physician space, counseling offices and examination rooms as well as research space. that's invaluable. i want to put on my d.p.w. hat for a moment, as well, because d.p.h. doesn't work if a vacuum.

when they identify this, they work with everybody. i want to thank supervisor wiener for coming here today, too, because he knows how important it is for that collaboration to occur. so d.p.h. working in this facility -- and by the way, i need you to know that probably the last time i was standing here was having barbecue when it was a barbecue restaurant here and i was at the top floor, at rooftop hall, heading up the human rights commission and we were already working in concert with the aids office to prevent discrimination against people with aids and i recall those meetings because it was so important to make sure those people weren't discriminated against as they tried to survive and find help in this wonderful city that we have. public works, you're amazing, you working with our real estate department in finding ways to make sure we have the best approach to this and we are also

working with our private contractors. i know turner construction is doing the construction management here, working closely with our bureau of architecture and engineering to make sure this is done on time, within budget. that's the mantra of using federal funds these days. you better be on time. better be on budget. and we also better make sure that when we do this, we reach out to our local vendors and make sure they're participating in this economic times, struggling. we have a 25% goal to do this correctly. so this renovation is important for all of those different levels but the most important thing is that we have more modern offices for our aids epidemic research. because i know, i know that in our lifetimes, barbara, we're going to find fantastic breakthroughs with your leadership, the leadership of the commission and the wonderful staff that you have that is focused on ending this epidemic and making sure people not only

get the resources that they have but that they also know that this is the city of hope, that we're going to continue doing what is necessary to make sure that we end this epidemic and to provide cures for people around the world. it isn't just for san francisco any longer. we know the disease knows no boundaries so the discoveries that we will make here, the prevention ideas that will educate more and more people about safe practices, safe lifestyle, and the discoveries that we have in finding the appropriate drugs, will happen as a result of this effort here. and so i want to thank everybody for working together, and i want to thank mark primo, as well, and his private consulting capacity, that he's been able to take a look at the physical things that we can do to ensure that the research goes on, and i want to celebrate this day and get ready to knock down these

walls and make sure that we provide the space that we have. thank you very much for being here. [applause] >> i'd next like to introduce supervisor scott wiener. supervisor wiener: thank you, thank you. i thank both of my constituents, dr. buchbinder and mayor lee. i have the honor of representing the castro, among other neighborhoods, and as you know the castro is arguably the hardest hit neighborhood in the country in terms of this epidemic so i feel a special responsibility to always thereby and make sure that our city does what it needs to do to beat this disease. and i know that our department of health has done such a tremendous job in terms of the services that it provides to our

city, to our community, to make sure that people have access to prevention resources, to treatment resources, and i know they will always be there and this project will increase the effectiveness of our city government in terms of consolidating services, having people together and working collaboratively. so i'm really excited about that. also, in addition to all the great work that the office of aids and d.p.h. do in san francisco, it's a reminder to the world, the international leadership role this department plays in terms of fighting hiv/aids and i was reminded of this a few weeks ago when i was sponsoring a grant acceptance for the department for some international work and i got a call from a reporter about why are you sponsoring, you know, something relating to kazakhstan, and it was actually a great opportunity because we

got to educate this reporter about what this department does and how this is an international epidemic and how people around the world look to san francisco for leadership and expertise in fighting hiv/aids and the reporter said to me afterwards, wow, i had no idea how much brilliance is in this department. so this is an exciting department and i want to congratulate everyone. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, supervisor wiener, for your ongoing support. i'm next going to introduce our director of public health, barbara garcia. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. i am so honored and i'm so proud of the department's staff. i get a lot of travel requests and it's to peru and mozambique and tanzania and at the bottom it says how much it costs and it's usually zero and those are the ones i like to sign but it

really does. and i want to just acknowledge the d.p.h. aids office staff, please raise your hands, because you clearly -- [applause] >> some of you, in culmination of years, i know you have hundreds of years of experience here and i know that is so, so important and we've done some incredible work in san francisco and you've taken your work and your understanding of this disease to other parts of the world and it makes such a big difference for everyone in the world, particularly around ending this disease. you're doing aids planning and my job as the principal investigator is to help with space planning. this is a 100-year-old building and we were in all kinds of spaces and i want to acknowledge the staff that helped and figured out how to move people and how to construct behind them. mark primo and martine soto --

raise your hand, martine. he's been my negotiator whenever people are trying to figure out what the next space process is going to be. i also would like to recognize the department of public works. i believe we have representative. the real estate division, john updike. the 25 van ness real estate team, leslie, jerrold and john updike. one of the things that we're looking at is how to bring this to the 21st century in technology, where, also, we're going to have a large conference room. i believe it's going to fit about 150 people, and that will be able to bring community people in, but it's also going to be an advantageous one for us. we're talking about telemedicine so we can speak to other parts of the world in terms of our work. so the department of technology. do we have representatives? all right, great. and our own san francisco

department of information technology unit, do we have our staff here? and turner construction. what could we do without a construction company. so -- [applause] again, i wanted to thank all our staff but also it's really important to acknowledge the role of our commission who continue to support our efforts, and this effort. i wanted to introduce steve cherney. >> i just want to take a second to congratulate everyone. i had the pleasure to work in this 100-year-old building for a while. the exciting thing about san francisco is when the c.d.s. and hearsa said we want to cut new hiv infections by 10%, san francisco said, no, 50%. when they said we'd like to get folks in line with undetectable environmental load, susan and the rest of the team