[applause] >> this is going to be very, very embarrassing because my introduction of the elderly will be shorter than my introduction. but you are here to listen to it said lee, not me. so with that, it is an honor to introduce our 43rd mayor of san francisco. i did not know ed lee when he was appointed by gavin two years ago, but he proved himself to the tech community by keeping twitter in san francisco and passing the private company's

stock option tax waiver, and this is while he was interim mayor. he announced back then his platform would be all about creating jobs, and guess what, the city of san francisco's employment rate is now outpacing that of the rest of the nation. that is a measurement that not many other cities can talk about. [applause] so, ed was born in seattle, when to bouduin college. [laughter] we never stop learning. bowdoin college. i had never said that were before. what is significant about ed is

he sets an agenda and then stays on it. lots of politicians do not do that, they get distracted. ed lee is a friend of attack, creating jobs, and that will make the economic climate and life in san francisco a lot better. with that, i would like to turn over the mike so that it can discuss his top priorities and his first 100 days in office. [applause] >> thank you, ron, for that very kind introduction. yes, it is voting, because i was constantly reminded when i went to college, people on the east coast new how to pronounce that college. i want to thank you not only for the introduction but certainly for your friendship, counsel,

and it is really wonderful to see so many people, including ron, who have worked with the business and technology community to work with the city. it is not easy where people just a political positions and people forgot how great cities are built. they are built with everybody's involvement. the technology companies have a greater level of contribution to our city. i am excited to work with you and make sure that you know that i am grateful for everything you have done and for sf city and the companies that have joined in membership. they will be successful companies. i am so excited, just hearing the company instagram getting bought by facebook 4 $1 billion, knowing that they started here, there innovation was right here in san francisco. signals to these other companies

you are going to be as successful as you want to be, but hopefully it is in san francisco where innovation continues. we are and continue to be innovation capital of the world. i am glad to be here tonight. thank you, rose, everyone from the commonwealth. it was only six months ago, october 6 to be exact, with 15 other colorful people, and i am still recovering from that. i do not think today will be as entertaining. i recall there were some wacky statements made that night, but i am glad and honored to be here to explain what i have done and all you have heard and read about some of the things we are doing. clearly, i am excited about hear your comments and questions tonight because this city is deserving of everyone's opinion.

whether you are critical or supportive, being the mayor of a great city like san francisco, i have learned to respect everybody's opinion and still try tomb make the right decisions on an everyday basis. so i'm excited to be here, just short of the 100 days, and i think the voters gave us four more years to help manage and run the city together, based on two premises. the first one is something that i talked about six months ago, my promise was to work really hard and make sure we are a much more collaborative city. when the board of mayors and supervise got together, we would intelligently discuss the things

that were involved and not be distracted with rhetoric or political positioning so much as asking the question of why we are here and what it is we have to do to recover. the second premise i believe the voters voted to have four years of my leadership was on a topic that i have spoken at least a couple of times about, and that is jobs. [laughter] i had to put that in there. 17-point economic plan is what i ran on, economic recovery, job creation, the promise that an urban setting has welcoming as san francisco could actually produce jobs at a depth and number that more and more citizens can participate in, or returning veterans, or people in their mid career scampered dissipate in. the economic growth of this city is so important. so many other cities are

challenged by their economics. i think that part of my appeal, if you will, his because i still think 22 years of experience is worth something, under four mayors and five departments, if i could run the city, it would be impossible for anyone else. i have been careful not to make the mistake that some politicians have made in the past, and that is something that could be done in 100 days. i left that with full expectations because i know some very politicians -- famous politicians have made that mistake of promising too much in the first 100 days. totally understandable in terms of their in exuberance. you want to always promised something, but now that i have

been 22 years of experience, i know delivering on more than what you promise is always welcome in a city like san francisco. civility at civil -- city hall. i have been working on that. as you know, once a month, i walk over the hallway -- in fact, one of those days was today, to answer questions that they have. and it is less dramatic, without the rhetoric that you have seen, but guess what? i have appreciated the questions they have been asking me because there is a lot more thought in those questions now. it is not a gotcha hour. it is not how you can sound good and maybe not follow through and do good. so i think those questions have become that much more mature, focused on the things that are important to the public, and i

always take the opportunity to thank those supervisors for their questions. i will walk with them in their districts, commercial corridors, when they have been with me on any particular thing or not. we're all trying to run the city better. if we can do that, we will be ahead of the other cities that continue to debate among themselves, positions. we have a lot to look forward to, a lot to decide, and it takes civility at civil all -- city hall to get things going. just like now, we are having good conversations about a housing trust fund. who would have no redevelopment would be wiped out and we need a stream of revenue to replace that, or a sustainable replacement for our payroll tax. as ron and everyone else knows, we cannot have a tax that punishes people, while at the same time asking them to create

jobs. that is kind of a crazy thing that only in san francisco we have done, so we have to change that. we need to have a conversation about that. everyone is in the room, we have not left it yet, and we will get to the decision making, hopefully, in time for the november ballot. our economy is still in recovery. as ron said earlier, we went from 9.5% unemployment in january last year, to buy december, 7.6%. now it is right around 8%. almost 2%. the decision that we made, with technology companies, by inviting twitter to stay in mid market, as they grow from 450 employees, to over 2000. they signal that the beginning of their lease, they would

release about 250,000 square feet of the building, but they are exceeding that already. by june of next year, they will have 1000 people moving from their folsom street office to market street. that is what we were wishing would happen. what people do not understand, when they see the twitter deal, it was not so much the twittered deal as it was a mid-american revitalization effort by us. that is what we wanted to do. we wanted to use the ttwitter deal to signal the revitalization of the corridor. and it worked. i'm with another company that had decided to relocate in the same building, but what was happening across the street at a lot of people did not know. on 10th and market, there is a project that has been a hole in

the ground for over three years, crescent heights. they did not start that project, about 500 units, because there investors got shaky over the last couple of years, even though they got permits in hand, because of the economy. within weeks of the twitter deal being signed an legislation going forward to exempt them from the payroll tax, the investors of the 550-unit building released their contractors to go to work. that is why you see three cranes on that site. this is the investor confidence that we are now producing because of one decision that was so remarkably regurgitating to run market street. and then you have seen other things, donnie's cafe relocating. zendesk. even before that income was

signed with twitter, zendesk moved in right in the middle of market street. there are more coming in. there are three property owners who are about to change ownership in mid market because of the signal they feel. market street will change but all this activity. investor confidence. i want to come back to that game as to why i want to continue to manage the city in an economically-recoverable way. we still have a lot of work to do because, with 8% unemployment rate, that is 7000 people who have yet to get jobs, and they are looking desperately for them. we have got a huge partnership with sf city to get into that unemployment group of people. one of the things that the technology companies have signaled his they want to give back. part of the way you can give back, by way of their success, is to help me establish one of

the first the employment training centers in the country aimed at people who want to join the technology industry. this employment training center is being funded and led by the technology companies through sf city. they began with how they are recruiting right now their employees. they decided to consolidate their recruitment efforts online to a website that we have called hiresf.org. that is the beginning. there will be training programs. they are working on criteria that could then be reflected in training classes for skill sets they will hire people for and create internships for. that is how serious they are, that is how technology companies are working with us. technology is part of our future. if it is not technology just in

the gaming industry or social media, it will be technology that helps our city departments improve their delivery of service. how many people have used this website, application called sf park? it has been helpful to thousands of people. just to reduce the amount of congestion while people look for parking spaces. it is helping us manage traffic through managing parking. that application i have been able to use to attract other mayors to take a look at how technology has helped us and can help them. i got five or six hands from other mayors, from gainesville, fla., austin, texas who said they want to see that. i have parking problems that i cannot figure out. i want to see how this works.

they have been testing it and asking questions, so we formed a technology and innovation task force, a subgroup of the conference of mayors to introduce new ecology we are introducing here in san francisco, but we are along the experience to be felt across the united states. that is our giving back to the conference of mayors. that is one of the things i get excited about. every time i turn around there is a new application. we want some of those applications to reflect solutions for the problem we have been challenged by. that is exciting to me and that is why, every tuesday, and get the chance to work with my technology innovation officer, who was the first to be in the mayor's office, the first across the country, to have a chief innovation officer next to me telling me, you have to see this company. they are creating something that

you do not even know about. every tuesday at 5:00, i get the least from my prison in city hall to spend half an hour to 45 minutes with new technology companies. i cannot even pronounce all their names. one day in isyammer, and yelp, eventbrite. when i get in there, i do two things. i walk around and let them tell me what they do and what their business model is. then they have allowed me to do something that i did when i was at twitter. they let me speak to their employees. that is the most important thing. if i am going to give you a secret about technology, it is -- the fact that technology is here, partly it is because we have great cultural venues, great food, great bicycle and

transit lines, but the real reason why the technology industry is here is because they are in search of the talent that makes them successful. that talent is their employees. he may not have known this, but when i met with twitter the first time, i asked to meet with their top engineers by myself, without the cfo or ceo in the room, and they let me do that. that has become part of my visit. they have to let me speak with the employees themselves. if i ask the employees what they need from the city, and if i can cater to their needs, i have captured the cfo and ceo of the company, and their investors. that is the real secret to success. if you set up -- satisfy those top employees -- and they told me they want more affordable

housing, great transit, the one to keep the cultural diversity of the city at a high level. that is how they get innovative in their own ideas. they want to be able to come out onto the streets and hear different languages, people from different companies, different parts of the world, interact in the great big news that we have. that keeps their mind innovative, and then they go to work 15 hours a day inventing the new applications, but their companies are here because of the talent. that is the secret to innovation, i think. that is why i pay attention every tuesday with a new company. that has also gotten the invitations to visit this company in new york, this other one in chicago, and other places, because they are proud of the fact that there is a mayor paying attention to what they are doing. there are a number of other things we are doing to make the

city more investment-friendly. we are going to revitalize the payroll tax. that is on the way. we have the controller coming out with ideas. they have interviewed major industries to find out what we can replace it with. there will be some kind of version of a gross receipts tax that i think will end up being some sort of hybrid of that that comes out to as much agreement as we can. i think the biggest lesson there is we're keeping everyone in the room, from the established chamber of commerce members, technology companies, people who have been here for a long time, to small businesses who want to make sure we are streamlining things as we go and discover a better taxing system. i have mentioned before job training and placement. not only have the tech companies recognized the need for training, but even our u.s.

department of labour. they have recognized this industry needs more training for people. if we are going to hit the veterans when they come home, made a career folks to get into the technology, we need training centers. a month and half ago, the u.s. department of labour announced a $5 million grant to san francisco to allow us to train young people all across the city into the new job skills that they need to be successful in a technology and in the by-life sciences industry. $5 million grant. we are going to put that into the trading mechanism through a couple of nonprofits that will devise those same curriculum and getting the skill sets down and making sure we train people. this summer there will be a lot of youth looking for jobs. we had a great meeting with all of the 55 departments of the

city, try to get some extra money to hire our youth run the city, in internships to run this summer. we want to reach out to 3000 kids. we have asked as at city to step up with the chamber of commerce. they will be meeting with us to make an announcement on how the private sector will join san francisco government to host summer jobs for as many youth as we can. when we get our youth interested in making some money for themselves, we will be that much more responsible for their lives in the summer rather than hanging around and getting into trouble. that leads to partnership and education. there was a dispute with i said, school board, while you are being cut, these millions of dollars from the state and you're asking the city to step