>> you, good morning, everybody. show time. , thank you. is everybody okay today? could we get started? great. thanks for coming out here on an early saturday morning, i know that it is tough, it was tough for me. so, mr. mayor, supervisor tan, and ferrill and department heads, and d7 and d4 residents, i am very happy to be here today to hear from you about your priorities for the city's future.

i believe that the budget is the most important policy, document, that the board of supervisors and the mayor approve every year. it expresses and represents our values, our priorities, and our vision for san francisco. the city and county of san francisco has a 7.4 billion dollar budget. that might seem like a lot compared to other cities, for example, the city of philadelphia's budget is about half that of san francisco. for approximately double the population. but, there is a reason for that. we run an international airport, a court, two hospitals, and produce some of our electricity and provide water to every home in san francisco. so our budget is not only for

the city functions, but for also, county functions. >> it is also important to note that during the year, the years, voters have approved many ballot initiatives and measures. and mandates. and for us to spend part of our revenues on things that the people san francisco think that are important. we have set aside for services that work for the children. we have approved initiatives that insure that we have an appropriate number of firefighters, to respond to any emergency, prioritized funding for repaving streets and keeping our libraries open. all that means that out of the

$7.4 billion annual budget, only roughly 1 billion is discretionary, meaning that this inflicts (inaudible). it is really fundamental that we have the careful and balanced approach to how we use our budget process. many important things are funded through our discretionary budget. fema services, mental health services, maintaining our parks, preschool and early education for our youngest residents. and really importantly for me pedestrian safety improvements. every year my colleagues that serve on the budget committee and all of the members of the board of supervisors are faced with difficult choices on how to allocate our limited resources. last year for the first time,

my predecessors and his colleagues were able to pass a budget that solved san francisco start to reverse the tide in terms of our economy by reinstating additional revenue and supporting small businesses, enhancing our public safety by holding three police academy and one fire academy and starting to address our needs in terms of open space and pedestrian safety. the city is continuing our efforts and being fiscally responsible by for the first time in san francisco's history, passing a two-year budget which creates a better for all those interested in the budget, to see the path that we are laying down and having a five-year financial plan. that insurances the systematic prudent and fiscally responsible vision of the city. it is important for us to know what lies ahead, to better

prepare the city to address the challenges of the future. but also to learn from what we have done before. i look forward to hearing from all of you today about what you think should be priorities of san francisco in district 7 and district 4. i strongly believe that putting all of our minds to the task we will get a better out come. i would like now to introduce my colleague, and the newest member of the board of supervisors, katie tang who represents district four and who has a wealth of knowledge and experience on the budget process for having staffed the committee for the last two years. >> thank you, supervisor yee, and thank you so much for coming out and thank you for coming out and for all of the department heads and yee, and the budget director and thank

you, of course, i graduated here from hoover middle school so it is nice to be back. go hawks. and so as you know, as supervisor yee had stated, our city's budget really is a reflection of our city's value and priorities. that is why it is so important that all of you come out here to really share with us what your thoughts are on the budget. as you know the mayor will have to submit the budget to of board of supervisors on june first. at this moment, his team and budget staff have been working really hard with the departments over the past several months to come up with the proposal. but before they submit it to the board, the mayor has really reached out to the board of supervisors to make sure that he goes out to the community, and goes around to the different districts to hear from you first. i'm happy to co-host this town hall with supervisor yee as our

district border each other and we share many of the same concerns and priorities. and so with that i would like to turn it over to mayor ed lee. [ applause ] . >> thank you, supervisor tang. just kidding we thought that katie graduated from here a couple of years ago. good morning, everyone and welcome again and i want to thank the school district for offering their auditor um here at herbert hoover and i want to thank the office of civic engagement. they are here to be providing support and translation for those who english is not their first language. so that we can get their input as well. the community ambassadors are those in the yellow and working with them to make the streets safer and i want to thank the police and fire department personnel that are here today in addition to all of the departments and representatives. and supervisor tang, and supervisor yee are working very closely with us to make sure that the districts are heard.

and of course, this is the fifth of 7 budget town halls that we have held throughout the city and i want to especially thank, supervisor mark ferrill because he has been with me on every one of these as he fulfills his role as the chair of the budget committee that he has inputs from each of the supervisors and the residents of each district. this say promise that we have made that primarily today and each of these town halls to listen to the residents's views of what they think is important in what sburp yee has described as a very large budget. it is one that is reflective of a huge number of amount of responsibility for the city to run it. but within that, it should reflect, a budget that is sound, a budget that represents a level of safetiness, safety,

for the city ebut mostly what would make our city successful. how do you define success? from the neighborhoods, we want strong, commercial corridors in our neighborhoods. we want the city to be safe. we want, our education system to reflect high values, we want pot holes to be filled. we want muni to run on time and not do the switch backs that supervisor tang has always been focused on. >> we want our play grounds and our parks to be very clean, very open, very welcoming, and very affordable. all of these things, we have been hearing throughout the city and i want to make sure that the bulk of time today is that we listen to your viewpoints about what is important. in the past years, you should know that much of the testimony in these meetings affected the way we prioritize in the budget. and when we heard a year ago

that many of our seniors were really facing a lot of cuts in their nutrition programs, we responded, last year, when we saw those cuts and aid's funding from the federal government. we responded to make sure that the health system really focused on the people that were in great need, or our senior centers or our youth centers, when they say that a lot of kids are running around and nothing to do and there is going to be a lot of trouble if kids don't have things to fulfill their rich lives. a lot of parents came out and said let's invest in recreation programs and prevention programs. our budget was successful because it reflected what people said was needed in their neighborhoods and we are going to continue doing that. now, we are getting more revenue in the city. i will never use the word surplus, because there isn't any. we always have a deficit still because we are doing smarter things. we are trying to make sure that our budget covers two full

years. and that is the big challenge. but, because we have done that, guess what? our unemployment rate is down to 6 percent in the city, that is the third lowest in the whole state of california, and we are going down even further. and one of the reasons why we are doing that, is that, right after this, we are going to be joining probably about 1200 kids who are looking for jobs this summer, we are going to help them. kids from the east districts and from all over the city and we are going to give them some training about how to conduct themselves in the interview, how to put together a resume, because, we are working with united way this summer, for the summer jobs plus, we are going to work with every single department in the city, and as many companies in the city to produce 6,000 summer jobs, all paying jobs for kids in san francisco this summer. so this is... [ applause ] >> what we want to do.

because this makes our city successful. and we are going to continue increasing that, every single year because we know when kids start understanding how they can earn their way forward, they are going to appreciate what we do as parents, because we work pretty hard every day but sometimes we don't know if the kids appreciate that. but based on earning then they know that when they buy something they have earned it and so we are going to kind of instill that spirit in all of the kids. we are going to focus on a lot of economically poor kids in the city, but 6,000 jobs, last year, we got 5,200, so this is very doable and they are going to be in companies like starbucks and technology companies and sales force and wells fargo and they are all stepping up along with every one of our departments is stepping up as well. so i think that we are going to have a fun summer. one that is enriching for everybody. and in addition to work, there

is play, there is many more parks to work on. and then we are going to take care of a lot of other people. but today, let's spend the time listening to you, and and give your testimony about what we should be focused on in our budget and we will try to honor that as best as we can and balance it with all of the other viewpoints that we have been given in the five others and ultimately in the 7 full budget town halls that we are holding throughout the city. thank you so much for spending your valuable time coming out here on a saturday morning giving us your feedback, i appreciate it. now we will have supervisor ferrill, do you want to say? >> [ applause ] >> thank you mayor lee, and happy saturday, my name is mark ferrill and i am the supervisor for district two and the honor of chairing the budget city and town hall. and with chu who did a great

job the last two years, i am going to keep this short, as mayor lee mentioned today is about listening to you. we are doing six of these town halls out in the different neighborhoods of san francisco, we did an on-line town hall the other week on the internet. the point is that we will have a budget that reflects the values of san francisco but we want to make sure that everyone has the confidence that we are doing it in an open and transparent manner and our priorities really is to manage our budget in a way that not only reflects our values but also balances the need to make sure that we do everything that we can today in san francisco, but also that we plan responsibly for our future as a city. and future for our children, and for our grandchildren to make sure that san francisco tomorrow is just as great as it is today. so thank you all for coming out on a saturday morning and look forward to hearing from you throughout today. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, superviser ferrill. he want to go over the agenda, next i am going to call kate

howard the mayor's budget director and going to give an overview of the budget process and after that we will go into budget comment and so the mayor's office staff if you want to raise your hand, they are going to be coming around to collect your comment cards. we will not be able to get toefrn, but we will try are very best. so after public comment we will hear from supervisor ferrill again to talk about the budget hearing process. so we also wanted to set a few of the ground rules here. if you like to speak, again, fill out those speaker cards. and the open mic will be limited to two minutes per speaker and we have the time keeper, make sure to keep your eye on him if you see the red paper just make sure that you realize that your time is up. so we want to be respectful of everyone's time. and if you could stay on the topic that would be great. if we don't get to your speaker card we will collect them and take your comments into consideration. so with that, kate howard.

>> good morning, everybody, thanks for being here today. i would just talk for a few minutes about our budget and but before i do that i wanted to make sure that you all know what is here. and so we, have a number of department heads here with us today. the fire department, the department of public works, san francisco police department, office of small business, san francisco housing authority, the arts commission, mayor's office of housing, the department of building inspection, the office of economic and workforce development and our department of public health. and then on the far side of supervisor tang human services agency, the public library and the department of child support service and mta, and rec and parks and juvenile probation and we also have a number of department heads and department staff up in the front over here. and we have mayor's office of disability, the department of yoegt and their families, aging adult services, the controller's office and the

department of the environment. i think that i got everybody. so today there are here to listen to you about the ideas from our budget, feel free to approach me of the department staff at the end if you have specific questions. so, what is a budget? >> um, i think that the mayor and the supervisors addressed this well. it is really our plan for how we are going to spend the money, the resources that we have. it should reflect our priorities and our values of san francisco and it is also a law, and it is a law that the board of supervisors has to pass every year. as supervisor yee mentioned our budget is very large, about $7.4 billion dollars, it is for both the city and the county of san francisco, where one government. and we spend if you look at the second chart in the middle. about 32 percent of that total budget on public works, transportation and commerce, so that is things like the mta and the airport and the public utilities commission and so we

have another 20 percent on public health. and then, about 14 percent over all on public protection, and so that is the police department, the fire department, the department of emergency management. the people ask anywhere do we get our money and the easiest answer is from all of you, right? it comes from the tax payers but more specifically we get in our general fund which are local tax resources that are not associated with those enterprise departments, about 32 percent of our over all research is from the property taxes so about a billion dollars a year, from property taxes. we also get about 13 percent from business taxes and about 1 out of every five dollars in san francisco comes from another level of goment, from the state or federal government in particular. and that is important because the state and federal government makes changes in

their budgets they have really direct effects on us here in san francisco. and since we rely for about 20 percent of our total general funds sources from the state and federal government. >> as supervisor ferrill mentioned, we have begun a really important planning process where we are looking at our five-year budget out look and this chart over, that you can see is showing you the gaps between our revenues that we were taking in over the next five years and the expenditures that we are projected to have. so over the next five years they are expected to grow and if you look at the red line and about 25 percent, and our revenues are expected to grow by about 13 percent and so the gap between the black bar and the red bar, is what the challenge that we are trying to solve, so how do we solve that deficit? >> so kind of the budget in brief. and i also wanted to share with

you a little information that we had, you know, we showed the data here, your experience, your stories your priority and we also have a way of getting information from you on a regular basis which is through 311. when people in the community call and report their concerns or have things that they need help with. and so, for districts 7 and 4, the most common concerns that came into 311, were related to a band of vehicles, and streets and sidewalk cleaning. so we certainly would be interested in hearing if those kinds of concerns are consistent with your experience or if there are other things that you want to share with us. so with that, i will hand it back over to supervisor tang. >> all right. thank you, kate. so just a reminder so everyone can start filling out their comment cards and turning them in i am going to call groups of five at each time and if you could make your way to the

podium, megan ag, and chang. angela picler. >> annie chung and lisa spenali. >> i guess i will go first. hi i am the director of the sunset neighborhood beacon center in district four and i am representing youth services she had to cancel last minute because her son qualified for a music competition and he is a senior in high school. on behalf of those of us, and i think that i have interacted with them talking about the youth and family in district four. which is what i am here to talk

about. working in the outer sunset is a real challenge when it comes to the conversation between absolute numbers and percentages. so, in the budget process, i really encourage all of the decision-makers to think about absolute numbers. the beacon center will work at five local schools and they are obviously more than that. 3,000 children, more than 3,000 children attend those schools. percentage wise, only about half of them or little over half of them qualify for free or reduced lunch which is a major metric that means that more than 1500 children are hungry every day and that is what is just on the registers, i encourage you to think about absolute numbers, there are a lot of population and percentages don't tell the full story. the second point is summer services, we have talked a lot about summer services.

and i got an e-mail at 3:20 this morning with a parent begging us to admit her child into programs that is well over 100 youth that is not possible. so invest in summer services for families and the final point has to do with the children's fund. this say critical part of the city's budget and the way that we spend, and it is an investment and a statement of what we want san francisco to look like ten to 15 years from now. so if our families are not supported now we have no long term vision. i am done. thanks. >> hi, my name is yuni and i am the president of (inaudible) association. the priority is to fix our streets (inaudible) it is long due for the paving and (inaudible). there are many (inaudible) and street signs like crosswalk signs and stop signs are fading

and it is very dangerous. (inaudible) we want more planted on the street. we have some but not enough. if we can do all of this, our street will be very attractive for many people to visit who are (inaudible) and it would be a beautiful place for our (inaudible) to live. thank you. [ applause ] >> angelaticler and i am the owner of the hardware store and the president of the merchant's association and i would like to speak to a bigger picture related to trying to find the ways to minimize the disruption that occurs to the local businesses and residents when it comes to redundant or repetitive street construction. i am not discounting the need for infrastructure improvements but for example, currently, the area of 19th and 20th avenue in irviing is under going a month long pg&e project which is

taking away parking resources. and businesses in that area are extremely, 30 percent in revenue which for a small business for a month is enough to put you under. that same area, will undergo the exact same problem later on this year when our corridor is repaved, which we are quite grateful for. and we will happen potentially again when the 88 curbs go in if they are not timed with these street repaving. and it is a hit that the small businesses take particularly hard. and we have experienced the same thing on 25th avenue between lincoln and irviing where the street was repaved by the city two months ago, it was already torn up twice in two areas by two different city agencies at&t is one and i can't remember the second one,

it has faded again for 88 curbs to go in and again it will be disrupted with the addition of the at&t services facilities that are going in. so i just urge you to find ways to try to coordinate more of the city's construction, and outside vendor construction. because basically a brand new street was already compromised, less than a year after it already went in, twice, and it will happen two more times. thank you. >> good morning, and my name is ian and i am a senior from high school and i am sure that many of you have heard the recent tragic accident that happened in early march that took away my childhood friend (inaudible) and i still remember the days that i found out about the news. it was first period and i was in class and my friends a classmates were like have you heard about the recent accident. and was like no who is it and

he was like it is (inaudible) and i couldn't believe it until it was confirmed it was (inaudible) to all students. and to this day i cannot believe that our friend or family member can be taken away like that. and i believe part of it the issue that part of the issue that has happened is because of the unregulated street slope. people if anyone driven by slow on 19th, it is a long street, just like (inaudible) without any regulation, no stop signs and no light, and no walking light or anything. and drivers, anyone can tend to speed up on that strip. because oh,, this is long, of nothing to stop me so i am going to speed up. and you know, just usually (inaudible) pedestrian and except in school time.

i think that it is crucial that the city spends the budget on production and safety because i have done research and it is not the first accident that happened on slope. there has been many previous accidents and according to the neighborhood associations it has been a problem before i was born. and i really want that to be the last accident that happens on slope. thank you. >> good morning, everyone. i'm lisa and i am the president of the sunny side neighborhood association. and just after the last speaker, we lost the custodian due to a fatality with a car. and i think that this issue of safety. and i want to talk about two things today, i want to talk about safety and blight and they are related. >> first with safety, we have

lost too many people to unnecessary car accidents. and that i am struck by how much money we spend on bicycles we want more but we all walk but yet pedestrian safety is not something that we are allocating, enough resources to and i think that needs to be something that we need to make sure gets an appropriate amount of expenditure towards to really make us a safer community, collectively across the neighborhoods and so that is my first point and my second point is that i should thank all of you. we don't have like... we have mother's day and father's day and we don't have a special day to honor public servants, i don't think and there is not always a greeting card and i want to say that to you because i call your departments and i asked for things and you are responsive and i want to appreciate you and you can do anything for a living but a

public servant is not an easy job to take and i thank you all for what you do. i am trying to be advocate for the city with the community. so the second thing that i want to talk about is, around blight that we have a lot. and the first thing is that i want to make sure that you have open pots of money that can be leveraged. we can volunteers to do things but we need resources to do that. planning is an example of that and so i suggest that we continue to do that and the last thing is that i would say that we have mixed results with 311 and suggest that we take a look more closely at what could complete the cases of 311. i would say that 50 percent of the time they are a result verses the times when they are handed off. so thank you again and i appreciate all that you do. >> thank you. [ applause ] . >> and before she goes up i want to call the next five speakers if you want to make