tv [untitled] August 20, 2012 2:00pm-2:30pm PDT
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thank you for all your work. >> thank you very much to the mayor and board president, it has been my honor to serve as the budget chair this past year and the year before. i of the mayor ran through the partners that are here today. allow to a department heads and all of the staff. i see a lot of budget people in this room, and this rotunda. and all the department heads and us, we would not be able to do what we do. i want to say thank you to the folks that make this happen. overall, there was a lot going on this year and many issues are coming out is still being discussed. our goal was to make sure that the budget was the least of everyone's worried. it was a low-key drama-free
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budget. we had a unanimous vote to pass the budget and with that, i think we really have put together a consensus budget. in addition to the key areas where we made investments in supporting small businesses and focusing on the economy, invest in opportunities to train individuals for the work force, who think the budget is reflective of a two-year budget. this is the first time the city is embarking on budgeting over two years and we are looking at the consequences of our decisions today and what that means for the future. i think that is a very important step for the city, having a solid footing going forward. i am happy to see where the reserve levels are going to go. always when we have this conversation and we say what you want in the budget, he never
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asks for a single thing except to increase the general fund reserve. i have to say to supervise ouor elsbernd, it will grow to over 40 million next year. we used a budget only $25 million. on top of that, we have a stabilization reserves. a state reserve, and for the first time, we put in rate stabilization reserve to anticipate your water and sewer rate increases that all of us will have to face. the city is looking forward at key investment areas, and we are making sure we are being responsible for the future. i want to thank the partners that have been involved. our own staff, the clerk, the budget analyst, k. howard and
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their amazing staff, had a special shot out to my aid. if you can join me in a round of applause for them. they are truly amazing people and if you don't know them, you want to. how to say thank you, and for the mayor, i know you're going to give hence to us, but we should get to this year for the two-year budget. >> the cost of the second pen is in reserve.
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>> moving into the welcoming introduce nancy ward, theç fema regional administrator for region nine. [applause] çç>> good morning. welcome. it is fabulous to have such a great size of the crowd on this very important topic of recovery. we have talked a lot of with the years -- over the years about the response. we got throughç the framework
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transition. i understand it was painful for everyone. now we need to focus on recovery. ççthere is no better place tok about that than the building we're sitting in today. poetic and ironic that we areç in san francisco city hall. the original building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires. two decades ago, it was completely rebuilt because of the loma prieçto earthquake. our fingers are crossed that there will not be any earthshaking today. our deputy administrator will talk about the shape specifically. i wanted to take a moment to thank our host, edwin lee, the mayor of san francisco. he has championed an equal focus on response and recovery.
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today he is our host in this majestic civil service building, probably the most majestic civil service building in the country. fema can take credit where credit is due. over the last several years we have been expanding especially in catastrophic planning with our partners from the greater bay area in catastrophic earthquake response plans we developed in 2008 and 2009 -- excuseç me, 2010. i wanted to set the stage about what we're here today to keep in the back of our minds. the type of event we're talking about could literally provide çdamages inñr theç scope ofç e kinds of implications. 1000 bridges totally destroyedç networks disrupted or dysfunctional for two yearsç,
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maritime prison for weeks or months. çthe transport of 41 key intersection of highways, taking those 335,000 cars, making it almost impossible for them to move aroundñr, then the restoration of water facilities for millions of people in the area, up to 60 days to try to get back online. then the recovery of the refineries and economic redevelopment and slowing of moving 50 million tons of debris you get the picture. this is why we're here. this is why the city of san francisco has focused its efforts solely on recovery. you will hear from them today about that. it is why we have a strong record of partnership with the mayor of the city who i am pleased to introduce to you
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today who is a champion of recovery. his city is a model for the rest of the united states to emulate. the honorable edwin lee. [applause] ç>> thank you. next time i see mayor willie brown, i will remind him it was fema. [laughter] we will have to name a doorway in addition to the staircase. thank you, everyone, for coming to san francisco. it is a pleasure to receive new and open up our house and to have you discuss, plan, and create relationships perhaps you do not have today among the federal and local police -- agencies working together on recovery. our city has been working hard.
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we have seen the future. the future is that if we're not prepared, it will not be our future. i got a glimpse of that some years ago when staff and i went down to new orleans. we have begun to realize the devastation was the result of things that could have been done there are national lessons to be learned from any major disaster across our country, what we could have done better. when i visited there those years ago, we stood at the night éovardç -- at the ninthç ward. in addition to taking pictures, we just stood there for a couple of moments. we asked ourselves, is this something we can accept? can we do something different now? when we got back to san çfrancisco, mayor avenue some -
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mayor gavin newsom asked what we have learned. he allowed me to develop the programs with the emergency management and a host of different departments to introduce a bigger emphasis on preparing for and implementing a recovery and making resilience and recovery more the norm of how we do things in our city. çq levels of response we have. we created new relationships with established agencies, the red cross, the apartment building inspection, the planning department. but most importantly, we created a spiritç that is very consistt with fema'sçç national disastr recovery from work.
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you have to start building capacity in your communitims. you cannot abandon them in the time of need. the only way you doç that is to create those relationships now. you do not have to talk about disasterç and to use that wordn every conversation to get them better prepared. you can talk about mitigation, how the neighbors come together and did greener, how they help us to create bike paths and build affordable housing. when you create those relationship with the different communities in our city as we're doing with an eyeç towards increasing their capacity towards serving themselves in a time of need, you have aç workg format. when you can invite fema to have
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an early conversation, when you can have all of your 15 different utility companies working together ahead of time to talk about how we can create what we call the lifeline council made up of the entities that deal with power, communications, transportation, response. get them on an agenda now. lifelines council, we have already seen the results of bringing together the companies already doing this work. they work in their isolated ways. çwe formed the council to prove them a vision that we need them to create relationships among them and with our city now, early,ç so that as we take on the smaller disasters like power outages, smaller shakes, or
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transportation disasters, or the oil spill in our day, we use of those opportunities to have the utilities working together to see where are the gaps. in doing so, you create relationships you did not have before. you can talk to people at your level with the other agencies you did not have before. you start building each other's capacity. we have wonderful programs already in our city. we have 72-hour.org, the award winning website. it has different language capacities. it is a must for any diversity -- diverse city welcoming various populations. i pay attention. sometimes it is good to know what areas to avoid if you want
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to get to work on time. we haveñr a smart start a publication called sf heroes. that will educate and motivate different peopleç who want to e çapplications to see what they ideas and playingç a gameçç t teaches them how to the building blocks of recovery. we have introduced those strong words to our planning department and all of the different 60 some departments of resiliency and recovery. those words are discussed on and on. i mentioned the lifelines' council, the fact that community planning isç importantç. we have invested. we lifted out the caps program, the planning aspect that had for years been focused on our most
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will mobil buildings. -- on our most vulnerable buildings. çlawrence has helped to lead te conversation in the public to pay attention to the most vulnerable buildings we have. ççthe mayor, the board, the financing arms, the private about how weç forge a financial package to seismically retrofit those buildings as we invest in all the other very important çinstitutions of like our medil institutions, hospitals, to rebuild them to seismic standards that the state requires. we're doing those things. we are also investing in people. i always smile when people say i am a member ofç nert, the neighborhood emergency response
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technicians. we pride ourselves on recruiting more nert volunteers from every part of our neighborhoods, speaking different languages, representing different cultures so that theyç can breed the kid of culture and we want to have with every one of our neighborhoods. the neighborhood empowerment network is helping usç reach ot to every neighborhood, use small business loans through our small business administration. they are here today as part of this great agencies that help us roll ou federal dollars matched with the state and local dollars. while we do small loans in our valuable opportunities to say, what else can we do to meditateç -- mitigateç and build capacit? someday we will need you. çwe will need to invest in your
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do you know what happened in new orleans? the thing that hit us the hardestñr was when people did nt have the confidence to come back to their city. they felt the city years ago abandoned them even before the hurricane hit. that is not what we want to do here. we sing the song "çwe left our hearts in san francisco," we want to make sure everything is welcoming and that we have strong ties attached. i see a member of our military year. we're proud to have as well as the purchase of dating agencies. we haveçç changedç the spiri. for decades, it used to be celebration just for tourists to see the big shh@s. we haveç turned that into a neighborhood oriented city event that brings together the
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expertise of logisticsç that al of our military divisions have. we use the opportunity to exercise with our neighborhoods and get our agencies to talk çthrough by counsel or practice what we will do in a major national disaster. how is logistics will be moved around. how ships can come in and help us out. who commands during times when the military is present here? that level of exchange during fleet week has 10 times improve our relationship with the military and down to the very neighbors who appreciate the presence and new relationship we have, while they understand the international humanitarian role that our military has. these are all great
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relationships. again, you do not have to use the word "disaster" to build capacity, resiliency, and the ideas of recovery. you can take these opportunities as this remark suggests -- as this remark suggests from femaç that you look at this from a whole community perspective. everyone has an opportunity to produce a, strengthen ties. we live in the cities. we agreed confidence. we have recovery in the forefront. -- we have breed confidence. we have recovery in the forefront. thank you for coming here. çplease dialogue and create the relationships you do not have. these are invaluable things. you know the city will welcome better ideas and push for the whole area of mitigation to get to the problems ahead of time. thank you for being here. [applause]
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ñr>> thank you, mayor lee. çi appreciate you spending time with us andç hosting usç in ts beautiful than you. -- this beautiful venue. now it is my pleasure to introduce the been a deputy administrator. i want to say a little bit about rich and craig. since being appointed by president obama, both have stubbornly and consistently preached a simple butler revolutionary -- a simple but revolutionary concept of the whole community. the government can't and should not shoulder theç entire challenge ofçç responseç, recovery, and prepared this. prior to theirç administration,
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nobody would really say that out loud. we became an agency trying to be everything to everybody at the worst possible time for all of us. it is their leadership and tenacity to hone in one this one psychological culture shift in speaking about earthquakes that is a real seismic shift in the way we look at things. we are honored to have him here for a few minutes today. the deputy administrator. [applause] ç>> good morning. it is truly a pleasure to be back here in san francisco. i was here a few months ago for the anniversary of theç loma pr
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ieto earthquake. in talking to a lot of folks and listening to the mayor, the mayor getsç it. i come from the city in the çnortheast. i spent a little bit of time in boston. i had a career before i came to fema to 0.5 years ago. boston and san francisco are similar in many ways. you have a mayor that is passionate about emergency management. you have a group of people in emergency managementç not onlyn the city but in the state and in the region that get it. çççwe have a lot to learn fr. çtoday we are going to be talkg about the national disaster recovery framework.
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as the mayor said, this is the whole community. as nancyç said, itç was a new fought forç -- newç thought fr fema. it is not new in the city of san francisco. it is not new in the city of boston. it is not new at the local level to get things done weather in response or in recovery, you have to work with not just the federal government, the state governmentç, the local government, theç tribes. you also have to work with the nonprofits, red cross, salvation army, many more. you have to bring in the faith- based community. it is huge what they are able to doç on a daily basis with a sml emergency. it may be in somebody's home unfortunately caught on fire.
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it is a disaster to them. ççwho is thereç during the dr for that family? it is the city. it is the red cross. the salvation army, the local church, synagogue,ç mosqueç, whatever. the faith based community is there to help the mountçç -- o help them out. when things are little bigger, who else is there? neighbors helping neighbors. ças it gets a little bigger, or even if it is a small house fire, in the neighborhoods of this city and neighborhoods across the country, if something çhappens, there is usually a local business that knows the family and been dealing with for a while and says that will help them out in some way or another. i remember last year i was traveling in the floods of north
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dakota. there was a family i was talking to at one of the shelters who lost their home. he said the one good thing was he did not lose his car. he had sent it to the shop the day before. the shop where it was getting fixed was not affected by the floods. then he said he went back yesterday to pick up my car. as he picked up hisç car, the y said it is ok. he showed me the bill. it was like $800 bill for repairs. it said "paid in fullñr." he said take care of yourself in your family. he picked up the tab, a small- business garage.
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that happened every day on small scales and now on larger scales. the ndrf is giving us the framework to take what people are doing it expanded to bring together the businesses that may not know the individual but billy to other -- may not know the individual but know each other and know how to bring folks together ahead of time. this is an opportunity not just to build relationships but to take action on how we are able to do that. we're doing it at the federal level. we have different members of the federal team here between hud, hhs, the army corps, and many others are here. thatç is at all levels of government and all levels of the faith-based community. we need to bring togetherç the whole community. having a plan will make a difference in businesses. we have seen it time and time again.
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in the floodings in tennessee last year, businesses were wiped out. businesses were wiped ád tornadoes in alabama. because those cities andç towns saw there was a recovery plan, they were both ready to move out of the city. one was wrangler. the otherç was a &oç oç smi. they wereç going to leave the town they were in because everything was droid -- was destroyed. because there was a plan and quick action, the locality had a plan. the businesses decided to stay. with that, jobs stayed. people stayed.
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with that, people had hopeç. the workers, the community because we, not just government, the whole community came together. as much as anything else we do, all this work gives people hope and makes a difference. you are going to hear from a lot of different people today. i am going to step out and come up -- back. if you do not know some people, take the opportunity toç get to know othersç outside of your aa of comfort. take that time. you make a difference. people in this room make a huge difference. for the work you do each and every day, thank you. thank you for what you do, because you truly make a difference in people's lives. çç
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