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[singing] [applause] >> the project. [applause]

let's give them another round. ok. that brings us to the acknowledgements and closing remarks. on behalf of the san francisco african-american historical society, i would -- something like this cannot happen without the involvement of a lot of people. and some of those people on the back of your programs, we have listed all the members of the committee who worked hard and long to make this happen. nobody worked as hard as kirsten in the mayor's office out of the office of may -- neighborhood services. let's give kirsten and the committee a big round of applause for their contributions to this great effort. we have another -- a number of proclamations that was received from senator feinstein and boxer and other offices.

a couple of other people we do have with you. michael sweet is with us and sheriff ross mirkarimi is with us. let's give them around of applause. hansothis is a membership organization. open to any -- anyone. ms. kelly spoke to in her remarks. you wrote him to join us. there is information about the society and refreshments. please join us in the light court. thank you for making this a wonderful kick off. let's give naomi kelly a round of applause again. thank you. [applause]

thank you all very much. ♪ >> ok, thank you.

thank you, everybody, for being here. local 261, thank you, laborers, for being here. mr. harrington, thank you. john martin, our airport, thank you. d.e.m., of course, ann, thank you very much for being here and our human rights commission director, thank you very much, terese afor being here. it's a large city family. >> dennis, thank you. thank you very much, dennis, for being here. commissioner normandy, supervisor carmen chu, thank you. good morning, everyone. larry, good to see you, great to be out there with the new labor center. wonderful. friends, family, emily, judy, good to see you. everybody, thank you for coming. entertainment commission, of course. thank you for being here. and commissioners, human rights commission, as well. we have 11 commissioners

representing eight different commissions to swear in today. and i want to, again, thank each and every one of you for both new appointments and reappointments to our wonderful commissions. this is a very, very proud day for me because we're welcoming back people who have done great jobs in our city and running our airports and our arts commissions, our civil service, our commission on the status of women, our environmental commission, our entertainment commission, our human rights commission and of course our rent board, something that i grew up with here at city with our rent board. i want to thank everyone here for coming for this wonderful occasion to ask again for a recommitment and a new commitment of our commissioners to serve our city. you don't get a lot of pay, as i understand, from doing this. i get a little pay but i depend upon your guidance and your

policy calls for doing such a great job for our departments and also guiding the city and creating jobs and also getting work done with our department heads and that's why so many of them are here, as well. they are working hard to keep, during these very challenging economic times, a balance of what it is to move the city forward, but also just the opportunity to keep our city together. that's a wonderful thing. and i know the rent board, for example, that whole tension between our landlord and tenants and making sure it's a well balanced thing. and our environment, to make sure we're not only doing the new things, but working with all of our agencies to get the best in energy efficiency and in our look at reducing our co-2 emissions right down to our civil service commission and as you know, we lost a very long-term civil servant in

donald casper. we welcome in our new commissioner, as well. on our human rights commission, we have a lot of work to do. and i know that in keeping our city together, we have to also continue to fight obstacles of discrimination but also welcome in in a proper way small businesses and challenges to all of the obstacles being created that are new to us. i want to welcome in our entertainment commissioners because they have that very, very fine balance that has to do with creating new opportunities of entertainment and dealing with our young community as well as our music entertainment community and balancing public safety. i'm excited with our arts commission. as you know, i've been a great supporter of the arts, all forms of arts, and seeing how it's helping us activate mid market street as well as our new

central subways and all the opportunities we have. i want to thank you for stepping up. eleanor, our airports commission. airport is, of course, through john's leadership, one of the driving engines of our economy. we're going to work on high-speed rail, which would be part of the plan for our airports because if we don't help reduce traffic between l.a. and san francisco, we'll not have the opportunities to get increases in our international tour thamp we want to have and the plane capacities, the land capacity. we have big challenges while we reinvent everyone one of our airport terminals and make them a beautiful place to land and be a part of. all of you, thank you very much for stepping up and being part of the city. if i may, to welcome in our fire chief, as well, thank you very much, chief white, for being here, to have you all stand and we are prepared to take the oath of office.

if you can repeat your names -- [laughter] you may stand if you wish. repeat after you and the office that you will up on. occupy. i -- your name -- do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that i will bear true faith and aleggience to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california.

that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i'm about to enter during such time as i hold the office of -- for the city and county of san francisco. congratulaons, everybody. welcome in our new and reappointed commissioners. thank you.

[applause] a hundred kids

actively participating in our programming. it doesn't stop here, we're continuing the momentum and continuing to grow. and like those students, we want to make sure that college becomes the rule and not the exception. so i want to thank everyone here who is gathered here today. and because of all you in the room, you have contributed time, resources, advocacy, energy, to make this dream a reality. so thank you all for coming. i want to introduce some -- everyone here is a v.i.p. and i thank people for coming. they are behind me. first of all, mayor lee, mayor of san francisco. please give him a round of applause. [applause] >> and supervisor malia cohen from district 10. thank you very much. who is doing an awesome job

representing district 10. we want to make sure she is on board. she's been a great supporter since she was elected to the board of supervisors so we thank you, again, supervisor cohen. with that, and one last person i want to introduce is randy lenit. randy is a graduate of college track oakland, a graduate of san francisco state university with a degree in civil engineering and randy was instrumentally involved in planning this entire building. you'll hear randy's story in a little while. round of applause for randy. and so with that, i would like to invite mayor lee up. thank you. mayor lee: thank you, omar. and thank you, everybody, for coming to college track. what a wonderful, wonderful name and a beautiful goal. you know, i don't know if you know this, during my college

years i worked for this program called the upward bound program and i did that for about 3 1/2 years. during those years in the 1970's, it was about just persuading parents to let their kids try to get a college education. what we didn't know at the time, for, particularly, low-income kids, and kids from challenged neighborhoods, was there was a lot more than just persuasion at work. there was a lot of dissuasion going on with our kids, a lot of distractions. and over the years old, working with programs like college track and bridge to success, we learned a few things in partnership with our school district. rich caransaz is here today, in partnership with wonderful non-profits and our business and philanthropic communities, many are here to support this today,

we learned there was more than just persuasion to be done. if you look at kids going through high school these days, if they're there, and if we're preventing truancy, they're there sometimes alone. they're there with tremendous financial pressures, community pressures to do things other than seek success for themselves. and so we figured some of those things out and it led to needing to have a place for additional support to happen and there's where this wonderful program called college track has appeared with us. and i'm here today to signify the first success, because i know in june, the first class, although we started in 2007, the first class graduated this june and 100% of that class is going to college. isn't that wonderful? and did you know that 85% of that graduating class are kids

that are first time going to college for their families, the first in their families to do so. that's another great goal. [applause] as omar said earlier, there's a bunch of us that sometimes we're v.i.p.'s but i really think the v.i.p.'s today are the college track kids that are right here with the blue shirts. thank you very much for -- thank you very much for joining this wonderful, wonderful program. we're here today in this beautiful -- looks like a shell right now but if you see the designs, you'll see how wonderful this will be filled in. it's the additional 13,000 square feet that's going to more than double the number of kids that we'll reach out. and i want to especially thank someone who's been working alongside with me for many years and his leadership along with

the redevelopment commission. i want to give a personal thanks to fred backwell. fred, take a bow, fred. fred blackwell and malia cohen and so many other wonderful people who have really been leading this effort to revitalize the whole of bayview hunters point and third street but i know fred's heart has been in this from day one. i've watched him. i've worked with him. and i know that he's gone through every emotion in life to bring revitalization and hope in this neighborhood and now on the eve of his so many successes going on and we shared some tears with him a few weeks ago when we announced the alice griffin from neighborhood choice

program. we knew that that, along with college track, and his droction droction -- direction in getting this building and his leadership not only in redevelopment -- work with our school district, working with city college, working with san francisco state university, working with the private sector. he's crowning so many things before he leaves to be the deputy city administrator in oakland. i want to thank you, fred, for all your wonderful leadership and your commitment here. [applause] i know that college is going to be a reflection of everyone's success here and from the years that i worked in upward bound to now, i want to congratulate the kids who are here right now. because, guess what, not only have you joined a very successful program that will work very hard on your behalf to

deal with things like academic affairs, college affairs, student aid, to get you where you need to have a sustainable economic forecasting so that you can be successful there, but you're also joining a a very exclusive club that i think will be more and more kids coming from this neighborhood. you have just committed to joining the million dollar club. did you know that? the million dollar club, do you know what that is? the million dollar club is the difference between a high school diploma and a college degree. it's the difference in economic income that you will earn relative to those who don't graduate and go to college. that's the million dollar club. you're joining that club and you're going to make yourself successful and by the way, as you do your part in graduating from college, we, in the city, working together with all of the different entities here, we're going to do our part to make

sure we create and sustain the jobs that you want, the best kind of jobs, the high-tech jobs coming in. the life science jobs, the jobs that are going to make a difference in your lives. we will do. that we will keep those jobs here in san francisco so that when you graduate if college, those jobs will be there for you. how do you like that as an agreement? [applause] and i know there are so many partners. i see great partners in carmen policy and wilkes bashford and mrs. fisher is here and the board on behalf of college track, there are so many people that are participating in this because they have the same belief, they have the same knowledge that if we can help take care of those distractions that afford you the opportunity to keep focused on your education, we're going to do right, we're going to succeed, just like randy. randy's going to tell you about his engineering light that's

about to be successful. he's going to work on many projects here in san francisco, right? we've got a lot of development going on in the city, successful developments that will have those wonderful jobs, because that, at the end of it, is your prize. going to college is a sacrifice. you will be faced with distractions, no doubt about it. and we've identified those distractions with the college track program we have here so they don't become distractions for you, so you can focus on your education and focus on the goal. that's what i want to do and that will be the commitment of this mayor and this administration as long as we are here, we'll get the jobs to you and keep supporting these wonderful programs. thank you very much for being here at college track. [applause] >> thank you very much, mr. mayor. i would like to invite supervisor cohen up to speak, please. thank you. >> thank you.

ladies and gentlemen, once upon a time ago, about six, seven years ago, i met a man named ed lee and he was a quiet little bureaucrat. he was an administrator -- actually, no, before that, he was the director of d.p.w. and then an administrator. he just did what he was told to do and worked very hard at doing it and was very diligent and now over the last nine months, i've had the opportunity to watch him blossom into a mayor and to listen to his speak, he's so mayoral. i mean, there was a time he would start his opening remarks would be two or three minutes and that would be it. and now i have to follow him on the program, of course, i yield to him. but i have to follow him and he takes every last one of my talking points. every last one of them. so when he wasn't mayoral, when he was a bureaucrat, it was much easier to speak after him. nowadays, it's really a tough

act to follow so i just want to say publicly, thank the mayor for his leadership and his continued strong leadership he has been demonstrating from day one that he took office in representing this part of san francisco. thank you very much. i am very grateful. [applause] and one thing he didn't do this time was he didn't go down the long list of folks to thank so i'm going to run through them quickly and share brief remarks. he did acknowledge the vision that lieutenant governor gavin newsom had for this organization. he also acknowledged carlos garcia and our partners at the san francisco unified school district. we could not do this without our educators by our side. also, he acknowledged the college track bayview council. thank you very much, i'm going to name them out. we have the wonderful, not the late, sorry, wilkes, not the

late, but the great wilkes bashford. we have cofi bonner headlining. i have a long list and i'm going to take a minute of your time to show my gratitude because if it were not for the community partners, none of us would be here and i wouldn't be able to capitalize on the success these young people will have. cofi bonner, chris boskin, ron conway, hydra mendoza, mr. carmen policy and of course the lovely lauren dove, and david singer. i just want to acknowledge you for your profound work. thank you very much. and a special note to mr. fred blackwell. sir, thank you. without the head of the redevelopment agency, without the leadership of our redevelopment commissioners, this city would be in probably a perilous state.

would you agree? we need every single leader we have and i look forward to cultivating new talent to come back and continue to serve san francisco because that is exactly why we're here. i started my public service journey when i was 8 years old. 8 years old, i met the then dine feinstein who was mayor and she took the moment to talk about the importance of public service and it was in a brief two-minute exchange that she planted a seed in me that has come to bear fruit which is why i'm here today. ever since i was in the third grade, i've been walking down this path of public service. so to my future senators and business men and women and doctors and entrepreneurs and engineers and architects, i welcome you to the table, to the -- what is it, the hundred million