over that period of time. i kept telling them, the avocado seed in the jar, you have to watch the things go underneath before anything comes up out of the ground. they didn't even buy it. it was a good try. and then it's the long haul of carrying this all out, but redid have a knock down, dragout process in the community. berkeley, tom, you know what that's all about. an academic community challenged to do something other than have a good conversation. you know, the status quo is not an option. so just having a conversation is only part of it. you have to actually get to real projects so that's what we did. it is pretty successful. we're still now 20 years later looking to do retail enhancements, changing some things because, you know, planning doesn't start and end at one period of time. so that's what we did and we're still standing. thank you. [applause]

>> ok. that concludes the formal presentation part of this event. now, let me make you all work a little bit. not really. i did want to say, though, i want to acknowledge some things. the panel, it's always interesting when you're tapped to do a panel like this and you wonder if it's going to fit, are all the pieces going to work together? i think you all guys touched on very important issues that really speak to this issue of whole community. so i want to give you guys an applause and really thank you for taking the time to be here today. i also because i know some of you out there kind of want to acknowledge some people and some of the things that they've done i think that are very important contributions. nancy ward over here was my colleague in the state for a lot of years and has now been -- with fema for 10 years? and i got to tell you, nancy

really did a lot to push forward funding for planning in the bay area when they were overlooking us and looking at the other areas in the country. because of her efforts we have now had a pretty steady stream of funding coming through. also want to acknowledge mike deyton in the state for this as well. but we've done i think some of the best regional planning in the country here in the bay area. and i have to -- in the interest of full disclosure, i am an employer of u.r.f. we have do a lot of those plans. with that said i think we've done an incredible amount of work here in the bay area to address the a lot of deficiencies and issues that became apparent after loma prieta. also i think it's important to acknowledge a lot of our community partners and having worked down here in the bay area for a couple years as part of the bay initiative. we have emily white and greg smith here from red cross who

are part of our advisory team. alyssa domo who carries the flag forward being executive director and working with a lot of nonprofits in san francisco and even extending elsewhere now. now a lot of the work that's being done is being done throughout the state. also here hodge who is a huge partner from the faith community here in the bay area representing hunters point bayview area and just did a tremendous job in boosting awareness and preparing that community for a lot of different hazards that could strike them. also yokilly recommendo. another intermediary group that works with nonprofits. once again, the bay area is just an incubator, just so important in terms of this whole concept. i also wanted to mention a lot

of the work that's done in the private sector. michael cummings. i worked with him when i was with fritz institute. he has gone to fema. that's an important effort that fema has undertaken. something that the deputy administrator was talking about. i think the state should bring somebody in there as well. [laughter] yeah, right. i have toe say here in the state we are lucky to have the california resiliencey law and peter who has done a lot of incredible work with the private sector. so once again, so many good ideas, so many things have happened here. just remarkable. state of the art. now, the work that you have to do, we have some questions. my colleague prepared some questions. we don't have a lot of time. we have one mike there in the center, and we had way too many

questions. we have 15 minutes or so. but i think maybe the best question to ask, jim, is the last one that we had which is like looking back at the last two-plus decades since loma prieta, you know, what concerns us collectively as a group, you know, most about our current response and recovery capacity and what do we think our greatest stride has been the time as regional community to engage bay area communities to become stronger and more resilient? what has worked and what do we really need to focus on for the future? that is really what it comes down to. i am just going to throw that out to our panelist or to the audience. first off, let me see if there's any comments from the panel. come on. >> i just think we've come so much further on the communication side of it and i think -- when i think not being able to call someone for seven

or eight hours and now the idea that you can text, i think that's one of the biggest challenges, how do we take that new technology -- not new -- but newer and use it in a way that can help us both before and after and i think that's a huge opportunity for all of us. >> i just like to say one thing, too, that i think people now realize and have studied a lot more about recovery and emergency response and recovery and i think that's really, really important. and i like to think of this sprint marathon as a kind of relay that you don't necessarily, you know, have everything worked out, obviously, in the preevent planning but you understand that transitions have to act quickly. the baton gets passed from one group to the next in terms of the focus of the work and so on and that's a really good mindset to have going in so you're not going in there thinking it all has to go this

way or that way, that you're flexible. >> i have to say that san francisco and the bay area is very culturally confident. we have lots of language capability from staff. even from the city level to nonprofit level. i would still say that cities and counties still need to really work on the ability to shelter their population. watsonville, it was about 8% of their population that was homeless for a long period of time. we have to work how wrer going to manage that large population for a long period of time. >> one of the things that happened and i think was important happened in the legislature which was the standardized emergency management system. once we got that in place when people could actually communicate and work, because that was one of the biggest problems is people couldn't communicate. >> thank you. >> hi.

i'm glenn pomeroy, the state created earthquake insurer for homeowners. we are here talking about preparedness to recovery. speaking in terms of the individual, the future survivors that was spoke about so eloquently. just a quick comment. the only way that those individual homeowners or apartment dwellers that could have the financial strength to rebuild is if they have an earthquake insurance policy that is provided in our part by this nonprofit state traded california earthquake authority. earthquake insurance is specifically excluded from your homeowners insurance. it's important for people to realize that. the only way they have financial security for earthquake damage is to purchase a separate earthquake insurance policy. they created a. we're a nonprofit carrier. we are trying to make the cost is affordable. it isn't cheap. senator feinstein in the senate

and three republican members in the house have introduced identical legislation cause the earthquake insurance act. we would save $100 million a year for california policyholders so i would encourage all californians to get behind that effort. let's make earthquake insurance more affordable and more broadly available, get more homes prepared to recover following an earthquake and, yes, we need to do mitigation too. i want to come by and visit about all the efforts we have under way both on the mitigation side and insurance side. working together we can get more homes protected. >> sir, how much money do you have available in the event of an earthquake? >> 15 years later, california earthquake authority has $10 billion of claims. good for what we estimate to be one in 500-year event so our friends from fema understand how significant that is. we're ready for a big one. the problem is most people don't buy insurance.

90% of the homes in california are not insured. i don't want you to discourage people but encourage people. >> i encourage people to strengthen their homes. that's what i want them to do. >> we're with that on mitigation too. i'd like to visit you. >> i didn't like the legislation. i thought it was too costly. didn't have enough protection. and you had to put this money aside. $10 billion would go like that. $10 billion is just chicken feed. >> actually, for homes that we insure, for the number of homes we insure we could handle another northridge and loma prieta. financial security and strength is not a problem. it's the problem that most people so far have not elected to purchase it. that's the work we have. >> you guys are rolling out a mitigation program now, right? >> we have a terrific mitigation program. getting ready to launch. we have $22 million to provide cash incentives for people to mitigate their homes. so we got a lot of things going on. thank you.

>> before you start, one thing i wanted to mention, i have a former colleague, lori johnson, not to put you on the spot. lori has done a lot of research on cobay and also on new orleans. i just want to know, if there's anything specific you have that could add to this discussion. you don't have to. i know i'm putting you on the spot. given the opportunity. all right. [laughter] ok. >> good morning. this question is a two-part question. probably would be best directed to barbara. one of the things is, as being an administrator of a church in the bay area, a vulnerable community, being part of the inner faith council, have you contacted or have m.o.u.'s with any other churches in which you could have health departments set up in there with emergency medical supplies or anything in

case of an earthquake in the area so that we would already be a part of the city's plan? and my next question is, we are on third street here in the city and third street is one of the only corridors that you could leave the city without going over a bridge or overpass. to my understanding, third street is not one of the emergency corridors. instead, on a peninsula, in having a street like that, i wonder why. >> i can answer your first question. what we just done is incorporated the individual -- the organizations that have contracts with us. we're now launching a community preparedness program and that's something we'll work with d.e.m. in terms of a citywide m.o.u. that will go to faith-based programs and i'm sure that ann will be very supportive of that. right now we're borking with our community-based organization -- working with our community-based organizations so they know

where all our radios are in that community so we already started in the southeast. but that's an excellent point to look at the faith-based churches and have m.o.u.'s work with them and that's something that clearly needs to be happening. i see ann in the front row. she's shaking her head to that. as we move from the community-based organizations that have contracts with us, then we have to work with organizations like yours. sure to come. >>ry don't know if i can -- i don't know if i can address the corridor issue. >> hi. my name is lynn. i am proud to say i have been a member of the nert program since 1994 when i graduated with my husband. at the time it cost us $25 each and it was the best investment we have ever made. and i'm so proud that it is free to all of our city residents as well as the people that work here. i am proud to say that our nert program as part of the certificate programs in the bay

area has been an open dialogue with each other. we know core, we know panda. we know the people at berkeley. we continue to learn. i think we have already had this whole community approach since 1989 and we just continue to grow it. which brings me to my biggest question which is that we have reached 20,000 people in san francisco through word of mouth. 20,000 people is an excellent force multiplier but when you look at a population that grows to more than a million during the day, when you have tourists and schools and people visits who don't know what to do, it's not going to be enough. how do we reach more people to get them into nert training, give them the incentives to get them out of their house into training classes? can we require this of businesses, require it as schools, require it as institutions and give them a payback for it? can we give them insurance reductions? can we give them tax breaks? can we give small businesses rebates?

if people are trained and certified in nert and stay active, how can we bring people in the training when it does hit we really are ready? because the time we spend now in getting ready and being prepared that will shorten that recovery time in a very great and significant way. >> i would just say we wrestle with getting more people in our community to get involved. we have our drills and it's the people that are engaged that come out to the drills. i don't know about incentives for businesses but i think what we find is when the businesses supporting it you can see it. i can go down the wharf and say who really is supporting it because we see 10 and 12 people coming through the nert program. i think any type of incentive would be welcome. i don't know what the exact answer would be but it would help us. >> i think you need to go to the legislature, state legislature to get the kind of incentives you want. local municipalities don't have

the tools to provide the incentives. there are a lot of things they can do, permit, but they can't reduce the property tax on their owns. you can't reduce benefits unless you have a 2/3 vote of the people in the area. i think you need to go to the legislature. i would be remiss to say we keep thinking 22 years ago. we still haven't repaired the bridge yet. the bridge will be ready hopefully next year. so 22, 23 years later. >> i would just like to say it is extremely difficult to get people engaged in advance to do the things that need to be done and then there's a lot of people, as you mentioned, that will be visits or what not -- visiting or what not that would have no clue. so i think probably as a strategy maybe the next level of the certain nert training is to actually think about ways of postdisaster immediate communication and engagement

with people so they can be brought up to speed about the fact that this structure does exist and there is a set of procedures and whatever that then help people to get the big picture because i don't think whether it's the legislature or anything else, that's a hard one to get to. so i would say try to think about what you can do anticipating the problem you're going to have and think of some pragmatic responses. >> good morning. my name is danielle hutchins. i'm from the association of bay area governments and i just wanted to respond to mr. jacks' opening question about what else we need to do to be prepared for a next earthquake. i would like to advocate for a regional perspective. obviously cities must be prepared, neighborhoods must be prepared to take care of their own cities to bring those back. but we have a number of

regional issues that we're going to face and lifelines and our utilities and road networks, housing, regional economic development. and i think it's really important we look at that as our bay area region, as our bay area identity. so along those lines i wanted to -- passed out an invitation to a workshop where we're going to begin to look at some of those regional issues. it will be at november 1 at ames. i hope everyone can attend. >> the importance at looking at a regional level is half of our work force lives outside of san francisco. so looking from a regional perspective, i think that would be really important too. >> i would say one of the biggest gaps we have is the lack of that regional recovery planning which i know there are various -- i know there are various initiatives nowadays moving forward. i think it's very important. i also think at the state level we really need to think more substantive recovery plan that

would, you know, seek to tie a lot of these pieces together. >> i might just add that there's a thing called the joint policy committee. it's immediating up with the four agencies, regional -- it's meeting up with the four agencies, regional agencies. now implementing, trying to figure out how we can implement the bay plan that was just approved by vcdc to figure out how we can implement the plan. in addition to that they are looking at climate change and disaster preparedness too. we do have some regional activity that's taking place in addition to that work. >> there is something to be said in bringing together resilience. economic resilience, climate change resilience. it's really all about being resilient. i think if we can put those into one conversation we can be stronger. >> i want to thank all very much for doing a great job as our moderator and for the

entire panel, i had the opportunity to work with barbara garcia for 16 years at the health department and heard her very compelling story about the response to loma prieta. so really happy that you were here and each and every one of you were able to provide very unique perspectives that began to give us the whole picture of what a full community response looks like. i'm sure you'll join me in giving a big hand to our panel. [applause] i don't know about you all but i think this was a wonderful opportunity to share ideas this morning, to see old friends, meet new friends and really continue this dialogue which is so important in our recovery.

there will be more of this in the future. thank you all for coming and encourage you all to be prepared and to think about our response and our working together. thank you very much. have a great day. [applause]

>> just a few steps away from union square is a quiet corner stone of san francisco's our community to the meridian gallery has a 20-year history of supporting visual arts. experimental music concert, and also readings. >> give us this day our daily bread at least three times a day. and lead us not into temptation to often on weekdays. [laughter] >> meridians' stands apart from the commercial galleries around union square, and it is because of their core mission, to increase social, philosophical, and spiritual change my isolated individuals and communities. >> it gives a statement, the

idea that a significant art of any kind, in any discipline, creates change. >> it is philosophy that attracted david linger to mount a show at meridian. >> you want to feel like your work this summer that it can do some good. i felt like at meridian, it could do some good. we did not even talk about price until the day before the show. of course, meridian needs to support itself and support the community. but that was not the first consideration, so that made me very happy. >> his work is printed porcelain. he transfers images onto and spoils the surface a fragile shes of clay. each one, only one-tenth of an inch thick. >> it took about two years to get it down. i would say i lose 30% of the pieces that i made. something happens to them. they cracked, the break during the process. it is very complex. they fall apart. but it is worth it to me.

there are photographs i took 1 hours 99 the former soviet union. these are blown up to a gigantic images. they lose resolution. i do not mind that, because my images are about the images, but they're also about the idea, which is why there is text all over the entire surface. >> marie in moved into the mansion on powell street just five years ago. its galleries are housed in one of the very rare single family residences around union square. for the 100th anniversary of the mansion, meridian hosted a series of special events, including a world premiere reading by lawrence ferlinghetti. >> the birth of an american corporate fascism, the next to last free states radio, the next-to-last independent newspaper raising hell, the

next-to-last independent bookstore with a mind of its own, the next to last leftie looking for obama nirvana. [laughter] the first day of the wall street occupation set forth upon this continent a new revolutionary nation. [applause] >> in addition to its own programming as -- of artist talks, meridian has been a downtown host for san francisco states well-known port trees center. recent luminaries have included david meltzer, steve dixon, and jack hirsch man. >> you can black as out of the press, blog and arrest us, tear gas, mace, and shoot us, as we know very well, you will, but this time we're not turning

back. we know you are finished. desperate, near the end. hysterical in your flabbergastlyness. amen. >> after the readings, the crowd headed to a reception upstairs by wandering through the other gallery rooms in the historic home. the third floor is not usually reserved for just parties, however. it is the stage for live performances. ♪ under the guidance of musical curators, these three, meridian has maintained a strong commitment to new music, compositions that are innovative, experimental, and sometimes challenging. sound art is an artistic and

event that usually receives short shrift from most galleries because san francisco is musicians have responded by showing strong support for the programming. ♪ looking into meridian's future, she says she wants to keep doing the same thing that she has been doing since 1989. to enlighten and disturbed. >> i really believe that all the arts have a serious function and that it helps us find out who we are in a much wider sense than we were before we experienced that work of art. ♪

>> i would like to call to order the november 9, 2009 meeting. will the clerk please call the roll? >> commissioner alexander. >> here. >> the vice chair. commissioner gonzales is absent. commissioner hill.

>> here. >> commissioner mccarthy. >> present. >> commissioner perez is excused. >> thank you. good evening. i am the chair of the immigrant rights commission. on behalf of the immigrant rights commission, i would like to welcome everyone to this symposium. four members of the public, the immigrant rights commission represents the voices of the san francisco immigrant communities. we are responsible for advising the mayor and the board of supervisors on any matters related to the well-being and concerns