meet their needs, and we'll still have to do this work after the 8% hours cut, one way or another. and year after year, you know, we've phased these cuts. we appreciate the board of supervisors stepping in and not reducing our or making our members pay more for health premiums in a recent budget process. but right now we're not asking for a raise overall, but we are asking for the city to help backfill. and from the state cuts we have this reduction. but from the federal government we have help that has come to the city in the form of a new face for home care funding that the city has to send to the state. and you've already budgeted a higher figure that it's now been reduced. so, we're asking that that

difference be contributed to help backfill the cut that our members are facing. and i know that sometimes for people who make less, 11.54 doesn't sound like such a bad deal. but in san francisco, the livable minimum wage for a 40-hour week is $12.43. so, our members are not making that. and our average members work only 21-1/2 hours, so that 11.54 has to be stretched out. when you take that 6, 21-1/2 hours and stretch it to a 40 week, that's like $6 an hour. so, help us help our seniors and disabled, keep them at home, keep the costs down, keep them out of our institutions, and keep them happy and flourishing. thank you. >> thank you. (applause) >> thank you. next speaker, please. good morning, city staffers, elected officials. i'm brian larkin, larkin like

the street. i'm here to request that we underground our utilities out here in the richmond district. pg&e has a schedule to do it, we're not even on it. we've heard about senior citizens and the number of us in san francisco -- i'm over 60 -- so there is a certain sense of urgency to get them done so i can see it before i die. also, speaking of transportation, eric mentioned that i'm an advocate for that. i'd like to see us build a subway, lrt system out here, extend the central subway out to our neighborhood. no one has ever built a subway in any community and regretted it later on. is that on the time? thanks very much. (applause) >> thank you. [speaking through interpreter]

my name is shu wow lee. [speaker not understood]. i'm a district resident, ihhs, and seiu. i currently take care of an elderly person in district 4.

the person i currently take care of, his son is away from home and so it's very important for us to make sure they take their medication on time, that their needs are met. with the limited income that we have, we really hope that there's more funding to our income. there hasn't been an increase for six years and it's really important that bemake sure we serve all the needy seniors and disabled individuals. please let us to live a good and quality mannered life in the city and county of san francisco. thank you. (applause) >> thank you. do we have any other folks here from [speaker not understood]?

good morning, city officials. my name is eric wu. i am a member of the san francisco youth commission. the youth commission is a body of 17 young people ages 12 to 23, that advises the mayor and the board of supervisors on issues that affect the young people in san francisco. one of our priorities is actually the summer job plus program and supporting that and expanding that. currently there's still a significant population of job-seeking young people in our city that are currently unemployed and we hope that the city will collaborate with our -- with the nonprofit organizations and the private sectors in bringing more jobs to young people this summer. last summer, s.f. summer job plus program was extremely successful. we brought over 5,000 jobs to

our young population. and this summer we hope to bring 6,000 jobs to our young people. and on behalf of san francisco youth commission and the young people in san francisco, i would like to thank the mayor and all those who have worked and collaborated in bringing jobs to the young people in san francisco. thank you. (applause) >> thank you. do we have other speakers? all right. with that, i just wanted to also take some time just to layout from here on out the process. so, the mayor, his team, and some of the department representatives will be traveling throughout the next several weeks to hold other budget town hall meetings throughout different districts. i know that the mayor's office as well as supervisor farrell have on their website information about where those next dates and locations will be. so, check those websites for the latest upcoming town halls.

in addition to that, just wanted to kick it over to supervisor mark farrell. he's going to show a little about his budget priorities as the budget chair this year. >> thank you, supervisor tang. and i'll keep it brief, but i want to say thank you all for being out here today, especially those who spoke at the podium. you know, from my perspective, we are feeling a lot better as a city of san francisco. as i just mentioned to mayor lee, our unemployment is actually at 6% right now this month, down from over 9.8% just a few years ago under mayor lee's leadership we've gotten so far down the road. but we do have a challenge in the budget. as was mentioned before, we have a $123 million budget deficit heading into next year. but we're all committed as a budget here to you and everyone in san francisco that we will have an open and transparent process, that we will manage our finances in a very fiscally responsible manner going forward, and that our budget that comes out will reflect the

priorities of all people who live here in san francisco. i commit that to you and i look forward to a long process and coming in july having a budget that, again, reflects all of our priorities together. so, thank you for being here today. (applause) >> there are actually a number of other people that i think had signed cards, but i'll make sure that any of the questions and comments that people wrote on the cards are given to kate howard and leo and the budget office so that they're integrated into the budget process. i also want to thank everyone for the very thoughtful comments. also, if anyone has any questions or comments for the budget process, please fill that out in the cards and we'll make sure it gets integrated. for my role on the budget committee as well, i think supervisor farrell has been doing a great job as a budget chair and we're looking forward to taking as much input in, not only for districts 1 and 4, but for the whole city. i also wanted to say that before i let mayor lee wrap us

up today, i wanted to thank all the richmond district folks for coming out and speaking. i also see disability organizations like the fdr club and jonathan lions back there. i see merchants associations david heller and [speaker not understood], and others that are here representing our small businesses as well. and ray holland and nick baloney from the planning association for the richmond. and i see the director of the richmond area multi-services, which really provides significant and culturally sensitive and multi-cultural mental health services not just for the richmond but throughout the city. also i really appreciate all the senior and youth and family service agencies and child care and organizations that have spoken today. lastly, i wanted to thank the city department heads and reps from all of our departments for spending their beautiful saturday morning in this dark but great auditorium of the washington eagles. and i wanted to say that i hope

you have a great weekend and a beautiful saturday and sunday and earth day as well on monday. and thanks so much to victor lim, [speaker not understood] and peter from my staff and supervisor tang's staff as well. but also our mayor's office of neighborhood service staff and our office of civic engaged immigrant and civic engagement and the mayor's budget office for making this first of our series of budget hearings a great one. so, now i'll let mayor ed lee wrap us up. (applause) >> thank you, supervisors. again, and department heads. this is the first of many town halls. i've given up pretty much my saturday rounds of golf to make sure that we listen, even though my doctor says i need more exercise. but anyway, i'm glad to do it. so, some of you who may have just participated here but didn't really know what

question you wanted to ask but you got an issue, you're definitely invited to the other town halls. we have a full schedule. just because we hold it in other districts doesn't mean anyone from anyplace else can join as well. so, please, again, feel comfortable in talking with your elected representatives, your city wide officials as well as your department heads. this is all for you to get us the feedback in a direction for what we prioritize in the budget. i've heard a lot of things today. we're definitely taking them to heart. i want to note that one of our summer youth job seekers who was very successful in real estate. i'm going to assign him to work with your senior centers rent reduction issue so we have that instantaneous service right there. (applause) >> but i also want to say that with the question that was directed at me for the

undocumented youth, first of all, what came to my mind immediately is we have a municipal id card to make sure that those who are undocumented get an official card from city hall. so, please make sure you're aware of that because something that i had worked on with a number of supervisors throughout so many years as our city administrator, and i want to make sure that works for everybody. having said that, we also fund a lot of community-based nonprofits to help us with the employers in the city. and this is why we have focused our effort with united way of the bay area because we do have nonprofits who can bridge the child's undocumented status to their ability to get a job. and we specifically fund groups to do that. so, please, if you have those issues, make sure that they talk with our family youth and children services centers as well as united way.

as eric said, and i'm going to be very excited about this, because this year we're focused on 6,000 jobs for our youth, focused on the most disadvantaged kids of all different backgrounds, want to get everybody employed. as supervisor farrell says, it's moving even faster down to 6%. so, maybe we'll get down to that 5% pretty soon with the help of united way. and it's going to be a shared responsibility of departments, but we're going to push really hard on private sector because they're the ones that are experiencing the most success in our city right now. so, we're going to ask them to help pick up this great opportunity to work with our kids. i can't think of anything better than to have our youth experience the summer jobs because it pays for year after year after year if you get an individual to be focused on their careers. and that's going to help all of us focus on a better city.

there's a lot of issues that we have documented here. we'll make sure they're incorporated into the priorities that we have. we've heard from seniors, we've heard from ihh -- from your work force, from the experience that you've had. we heard from youth. we've heard from people that need our help and all the gaps that we have and we'll definitely pay attention to that. so, again, thank you for giving up your saturday to join us. i look forward to seeing some of you in the other hearings. and, again, we appreciate your input and your guidance for our priorities. we have some questions? mr. hal? mr. mayor, i wanted to thank you for being here. [speaker not understood].

[speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. >> okay. i'm sorry if we missed some cards. we meant to get to every single card that was submitted. so, our apologies if that happened. but i will say, david, if there's any question about our commitment to small businesses, you hear from me directly that we are investing in neighborhoods in a very large amount. my budget from last year and this year reflect a very strong consideration for neighborhood small businesses in our city. and i know of not only your

leadership, but mr. carnilowitz's leadership. this is why we have an abundance invested in the leadership program. maybe if you have particular issues off line, we can do that after this, or if you want to have one more question, that's fine. [speaker not understood]. >> okay. [speaker not understood]. >> all right. if everybody didn't hear, the question is some businesses that want to operate mobile and

that's coming from the mayor's office what the rumor is. i can correct that's not true, but i do believe that people are submitting their ideas for whether or not mobile businesses can be successful here. i think it's a big challenge, to be quite candid with you, because we have a lot of people investing in the brick and mortar along our neighborhoods. we certainly feel that our investment right now, our priority has been to help them and to help them deal with those vacancies. in fact, i think we have an idea about making sure we, if anything, policy wise, we push ideas into the vacancies. that would be even better than try to operate on that basis. but anyway, we'll pay attention to that as well. again, i'm sorry if there are cards that were submitted that didn't get attention. we meant to get everybody covered.

all right. thank you very much, everybody, appreciate it. (applause) there are so many ways that the internet provides real access to real people and resources and that's what we're try to go accomplish. >> i was interested in technology like video production. it's interesting, you get to create your own work and it reflects what you feel about saying things so it gives perspective on issues. >> we work really hard to develop very in depth content, but if they don't have a venue,

they do not have a way to show us, then this work is only staying here inside and nobody knows the brilliance and the amazing work that the students are doing. >> the term has changed over time from a very basic who has a computer and who doesn't have a computer to now who has access to the internet, especially high speed internet, as well as the skills and the knowledge to use those tools effectively. . >> the city is charged with coming up with digital inclusion. the department of telecommunications put together a 15 member san francisco tech connect task force. we want the digital inclusion program to make sure we address the needs of underserved vulnerable communities, not communities that are already very tech savvy. we are here to provide a, b and c to the seniors. a stands for access.

b stands for basic skills and c stands for content. and unless we have all three, the monolingual chinese seniors are never going to be able to use the computer or the internet. >> a lot of the barrier is knowledge. people don't know that these computers are available to them, plus they don't know what is useful. >> there are so many businesses in the bay area that are constantly retiring their computer equipment that's perfectly good for home use. computers and internet access are helping everybody in the community and people who don't have it can come to us to help with that. one of the biggest problems we see isn't whether people can get computers through programs like ours, but whether they can understand why they need a computer. really the biggest issue we are facing today is helping people understand the value of having a computer. >> immediately they would say can i afford a computer? i don't speak any english. how do i use it. then they will start to learn how to do email or how to go

back to chinese newspaper to read all the chinese newspaper. >> a lot of the barrier still is around lack of knowledge or confusion or intimidation and not having people in their peer network who use computers in their lives. >> the important thing i learned from caminos was to improve myself personally. when i first came to caminos, i didn't know anything about computers. the second thing is i have become -- i have made some great achievements as an individual in my family and in things of the world. >> it's a real issue of self-empowerment where new immigrant families are able to communicate with their families at home, able to receive news and information in their own home language, really become more and more connected with the world as well as connected even inside their local communities. >> if we value the diversity of

our city and we value our diverse neighborhoods in the city, we need to ensure that they remain economically viable. equiping them and equiping residents in those areas with jobs that will enable them to stay in san francisco is critical to that. >> the important thing that i see here at caminos is it helps the low income community, it helps the women who wouldn't have this opportunity otherwise. >> the workers with more education in san francisco are more likely to be able to working that knowledge sector. where they are going to need that familiarity with the internet, they are going to find value with it and use it and be productive with it every day. and half of the city's population that's in the other boat is disconnected from all that potential prosperity. >> we really need to promote content and provide applications that are really relevant to people's lives here. so a lot of the inspiration, especially among the immigrant community, we see is communications with people from

their home country but we as much want to use the internet as a tool for people to connect within the local san francisco community. >> i think it's our job as public educators to give them this access and give them this opportunity to see that their efforts are being appreciated beyond their immediate reach. >> you have to blend this idea of community network with computer equipment with training and with support. we can pull all that together, then we've got it. >> it's as much about social and economic justice -- in fact it's more about social and economic justice than just