>> good morning, everyone. thank you so much for coming out to washington heights and the richmond district for this first of a series of budget town halls for our cities. isn't this wonderful to have the city department heads, the mayor, supervisors tackv and farrell with us this morning as well? i wanted to say that my role is to facilitate this to make sure that we're going to stick to time and that we can have you out of here in a short amount of time, but also to gather as much input as possible. my name is eric mar, i'm the supervisor for the richmond district. and i wanted to first introduce our mayor, mayor ed lee. thank you. (applause) ~ >> thanks, supervisor. i'll be very brief because the whole purpose of these budget town halls is to listen to our neighbors, our residents, to find out what you think matters in our city. i just wanted to put a little backdrop that a year ago when

we started holding these community meetings, we had some significant budget deficits. and in years past they were even worse. now we've come through a lot of that and i'm thankful to all the department heads that are here because they worked very hard to work with me to find all the efficiencies, to make sure we balance that budget. clearly, the members of the board of supervisors and today we're focused on districts 1 and 4, but i want to thank supervisor mar, supervisor tang, and supervisor farrell for providing their leadership at the board because we can only make it work if the mayor and the board work together. but most importantly, we've got to listen carefully to our residents. and i want to begin by saying this has been a pretty intense week for all of us. you know, we all watched together the horrifying events that happened in boston. they don't follow too long from

what happened in connecticut. and i just want you to know that i think i watched a lot with you about what transpired and i'm very glad that we're investing in our law enforcement, but we also have to invest in education. we have to invest in a lot of things as we think about how we could have prevented that kind of horrible activity in the boston marathon. and we will make our events safe, i assure you of that. whether it's mohammed looking at every trash can or officers making sure everyone is safe in our events, working together, every event that we have in our city is important to us, the public and the visitors and the residents be safe. and we have a tremendous amount of events that happen in our city. all through this summer rec and park has got huge numbers of events that draw a lot of people. that money will come right back to our neighborhoods as we all work together, along with the events that we have along our waterfront all year long, along

with the ones that we know every year like the beta breakers. this year we have a deficit that's smaller than in past years. a year ago we were facing $170 million deficit. we have a 7.6% unemployment rate. this year and the next -- we do two-year budgets, by the way. this year it's about 123 million deficit for this next fiscal year. the following year of 14-15, is about $256 million deficit. so, we plan for two years, but we'll meet every year just to talk through it. and then we're doing really well on our employment. we have about a 6.3 unemployment rate. so, it's gone down another big percentage point. i want to keep driving that down. my goal is to get to the 5 or even below. that means a lot more people have jobs and create their own

destinies. and i need to have that happen because government can't do everything. we'll do the gaps. we'll help, of course, with our seniors, our low-income families, our children need us to provide the programs. but we have to invest really smartly these days. and i think if there's any theme that all of us are working hard on is how to properly invest as our city totally recovers. and many of you will talk to us about the proper thing that we want to invest in that have long-term economic and social benefits for all of us. but i want to thank the supervisors for being here, but most importantly, thank all of you for coming out on this beautiful saturday at the washington eagles' site, a site where we're doing community clean ups. (applause) >> i want to thank the ambassadors for being here. they're one of our newer

programs. we hire people from the community to be eyes and ear in the areas where we feel unsafe, but where we may not need necessarily the attention of a police officer, but they work together. they actually train our ambassadors to become additional extensions with our community. but we won't forget that the community is the most important thing. if we build strong communities, then i believe very well that our whole community policing will work just as it does with so many of our other departments that rely on the community to get their projects or their work done. so, again, thank you for coming out this morning and i look forward to hearing your comments this morning. thank you. (applause) >> thank you. i'm also so happy that we have many people, the new leaders of our neighborhood from young people to the elders and seniors with so much experience

and a diversity of people from the richmond. but this is also about district 4, the sunset district, and park side district. so, we're going to be doing our best to share kind of district 1 and district 4 comments today. i'm the representative and supervisor from district 1 and i wanted to make a few comments first to say that we're a city that is in the midst of working our way out of the deficit. for the past couple of fiscal years, it's actually been five years of tremendous cuts in our city. and even though it looks like we're at the doorstep of a recovery in our city, the next year will still be challenging to many in our community as we go through this difficult budget process. and we have our budget chair, supervisor mark farrell who will be attending not only this hearing, but also all of the hearings through the city as well. the purpose of this town hall as the mayor just stated, is to provide community members with an opportunity to express to all of the department heads and decision makers here what we

feel our budget should be, what our budget priorities for district 1 and district 4 should be. and the department heads and the department reps that are here are hoping to keep in mind what our vision is and what our needs and priorities are for a balanced budget in their departments. district 1 is really important. personally, i think it's really important that we emphasize and maintain funding for senior services, as district 1 has a disproportionate number of seniors. and it's a growing population that's booming from the baby boomers to growing senior population. and we as a city have to acknowledge that. we also have great representatives and nonprofits that are here that represent children and family which are critical. and the outer richmond has tremendous transit needs as well as ed reiskin and others from the mta know, we're trying to do our best to make sure the outer richmond is served. in light of the reduction and service of 38 geary and 18

line. and also finding a way to expand programs for youth after school and in the summers as many of our nonprofits and schools know here. last thing i want to emphasize the importance of providing language assistance for our immigrants and diverse populations. so, i'm really pleased that adrian and our office of engagement is here providing translation. so, if anyone needs translations, i know that that has been provided as well. now i wanted to quickly say that we have outlined at the board -- up here on the board what our agenda is today and the ground rules. the town hall begins with a brief budget overview by our budget director kate howard, and then we'll have representatives from a number of commutection organizations. i think it's five for district 1 and five for district 4, speak about specific district needs and an overview of the issues. after the district presentations are completed, we'll have 15 questions from our district 1 and 4 residents

to come and speak at the podium. and we're asking people to keep their comments as short as possible so we can maximize as many people speaking as possible. so, again, and leo chi is up here to tell us to stop like he's told me to stop already. [laughter] >> and it's really important that if there's a person whose first language isn't english and speaking in another language, that additional amount of time will be provided. then supervisors tang and farrell will also explain about the budget process. and finally the budget town hall is scheduled to end by 11:30 with clothesing ~ closing remarks from mayor lee and the supervisors. district 2 supervisor, district 4 supervisor katy tang can make their records. first supervisor tang from the sunset district. (applause) >> good morning, everyone. i'm katy tang, district 4 supervisor. i'm happy to co-host this town

hall with supervisor eric mar. i think that both of our districts -- our residents share a lot of the same concerns and we have high populations of children and families, lot of seniors as well as folks from immigrant community. and, so, today i think that it is a great partnership that we have. i also want to thank the department heads who are here as well as our mayor and very hard working budget director having been the legislative aid to former supervisor carmen chueed when served on the budget committee four years, i know how hard it is that all of you worked to put together the budget. ~ who had as you know the mayor and his team will be submitting the budget to the board by june 1st, and, so, i think that we're very lucky that we have a very collaborative mayor and his team who want to hear from you as he's putting the budget together, not after, but during the process so that he can incorporate your feedback into his budget. so, with that, i want to turn it over to our budget chair, supervisor mark farrell. (applause)

>> thanks, katy and thank you to supervisor mar. my name is mark farrell from district 2 which covers the northern part of our city here in san francisco. and this year had the pleasure of serving as our budget and finance committee chair. so, we'll be intimately involved in this budget process with the mayor, with our department heads, and with my fellow supervisors. it's an honor to be part of this process and to be leading it in city hall. i really want to thank all the department heads and the mayor, my fellow supervisors for being here today. but this is really about you and hearing from you about what your concerns are, both in district 1 and district 4. and, so, i will keep my comments short here and look forward to hearing from each and every one of you. and i think you should know that all of us are very committed to having an open and inclusive budget process and it really starts today. so, thank you all for being here. (applause) >> and now kate howard, our city's budget director is going to give her overview. thank you.

>> good morning, everybody, i'm kate howard, the mayor's assistant director. thank you for being here this morning. i wanted before i started just to quickly identify the departments that are here this morning so that you know who is here listening to you. so, we have the mayor's office on disability, the fire department, the department of public works, the mta, the recreation and park department, the health department, the city administrator's office, and the department of technology, the controller's office, our supervisors and mayor, dbi, the human services agency, the department of aging and adult services, the mayor's office of housing, san francisco police department, the department of emergency management, the san francisco housing authority, and the department of economic and work force development. so, we have a lot of folks here to listen to your ideas and concerns.

and also people who you can talk to after the conversation today as well. we also have a standing audience, our office of small business here. so, thank you all for being here. i wanted to share just a few things briefly about san francisco's budget before we get started. i think the supervisors and the mayor are correct, we're really here to hear your thoughts and concerns and ideas. but before we begin, i want to make sure we're all starting from the same page. so, when we think about a budget, i always think about the first question. what is a budget? and for me a budget is a plan, it's the plan for how we're going to spend the resources that we have available to us. it is a document and a spending plan that reflects the priorities of our city. and finally, in san francisco and in the government situation, it's a law. so, every year we have to legally balance the budget and the mayor and the board adopt that law.

in front of you, behind me, i have a number of charts. just to give you a sense of what's happening in our budget. so, the first chart up there shows you the size of san francisco's budget and what we spend our money on. so, every year we spend about $7-1/2 billion in san francisco through the city's government. it's a little more than half in what we call the general fund and it's about half in our enterprise departments like the puc, the airport, and the port. as well as the mta. we spend approximately 30% on public health and human welfare, about 30% on transportation, infrastructure, and commerce, and then about 13% of our overall budget on public protection. so, then the question becomes, well, how do we get our money? where do our revenues come from that support all of our spending?

in the enterprise department those funds come from fees that consumers pay. so, the public utilities commission, for example, people pay their water bills and those revenues support the operations of that department. what we tend to focus on when we talk about balancing the budget is the general fund. and, so, the second chart shows you where do we get our revenue sources. the largest being property tax, it's about 32% of our overall revenue, over a billion dollars a year in san francisco comes from property taxes. we also receive a significant amount of our revenues from business taxes, hotel sales, and other local taxes. another important thing to know is about one out of every $5 san francisco receives comes from the state or federal government. so, when the state and federal government makes budget cuts, things like the federal sequester, those soon have effects here as well.

the next chart over is the one with red and black. that's showing you our five-year budget outlook. and part of the reason we're here to talk to you today is to really hear from you about your priorities in the context of a situation where our revenues are growing, but our expenditures are projected to grow more quickly. so, over the next five years, what that chart is showing you is we project our revenues to grow about 13%. during the same period we expect that our expenses will grow by 25%. and, so, that gap, the gap between the 13% in revenue growth and the 25% in expenditure growth means we have to make some choices to be more thoughtful in our expenditures so that the revenues and expenses balance. before i turn it back over to supervisor mar, i just wanted to share with you a couple of pieces of information that we have that are helpful to us.

so, we're here to hear from you about your experiences and your priorities. we also have data that we get from departments and most importantly from 311, the city's line that you can call for service requests or information requests. and i wanted to just share with you today the kind of calls that are most prominent coming from both districts 1 and district 4. so, streets and sidewalk cleaning are about 25% of all calls in the district to 311 or the two districts. i can't see that number but i think it's about 14% of all -- of calls that are related to abandon vehicles. that was much more prominent in district 4 than it was in district 1. and then graffiti is also a really significant portion of the calls that are received to 311. this is just one set of data points. we have lots of ways of getting

information and 311 is one of them. but it would certainly be helpful to hear from you about whether those kinds of concerns are similar to the ones that you're experiencing. so, thank you very much for being here and i'm looking forward to hearing about your thoughts today. >> thank you, ms. howard. (applause) >> we have a number of community-based organizations that are going to present now. if the groups could come forward, the district 1 and district 4 organizations, please come forward. i wanted to also say that those in the audience have been given cards to ask questions. and if you could start, i think staff could collect cards, if people could hold their cards up, staff could come pick them up so we can answer questions to folks. so, we have a number of the community reps from district 1 and 4. we're going to start with district 1. and i wanted to say that the three groups from district 1 that will be presenting are youth and children and family programs.

charles higgins is the director of the richmond district neighborhood center. we also have preschool programs. i think jerry yang from cai ming head start is here. we have self-help for elderly, jackie chan, april chan and linda merli [speaker not understood]. so why don't we start from district 1. this is richard charles from the district neighborhood center. >> good morning. (applause) >> >> good morning. [speaker not understood]. >> you want me to take the public officials or the public? thank you all for being here. thank you all for being here, welcome, rich, to washington high school. we run the washington -- the richmond village beacon center at washington high school. we're very much engaged and have been for more than 10 years in building a healthy

community fabric and helping young people connect with their community socially and physically and emotionally healthy ways so that when they grow up and they're working in this community, that they're contributing. we're very appreciative of the support we get from the city and the school district. we run after school programs in seven schools here in the richmond district including four elementaries, presidio, and roosevelt middle school and here at washington. one of the things that we're particularly in need of here, and i think at city wide, is building more opportunities for young people to connect both with college and with jobs. and to that effort we have a work force development program and we appreciate cooperation with the work force people. we're trying to build a bridge with the va medical center where washington high school students will have opportunities not only to volunteer, but also connect

with career-type jobs in medical center. for us it's about lifelong family and community connections and we appreciate the support we get from the city and we hope that that support continues. (applause) >> so, the next speaker sarah yang from cai ming head start, you can either speak up here or from the podium, jerry. >> good morning, i'm jerry young from cai ming. we have six centers in the city. three are them are in richmond and sunset area and we serve in total close to 300 children [speaker not understood] in the city. in richmond and sunset we have close to 120 kids. so, we have been serving the community to serve these families. we have head start program, by the way.

when we have nationwide connection they work the head start program. i want to share one thing. we feel very, very gratitude to be in san francisco. because every time when we connect with those people nationwide, statewide, we couldn't believe how much resource we have in san francisco, how much we invest in early childhood education. so, that's a gratitude i really want to share with you, with all -- with the mayor, with supervisors, and all the departments. thank you for the support to our children and families in this community. [speaker not understood], i would like to share some comments, how do we do better here. i would like to see the community that we can continue invest in early childhood education as a foundation of everything. and i would really love to see

allow cbos to be able to make long-term planning. every year we almost have to learn year after year after year, we want long-term, three, five, seven years training become possible. and also we would love to see the consolidation of resources he. we have, many, many resources. if we can consolidate all the resources, that would be much easier for the cbo's. thank you again for supporting early childhood education. thank you. >> thank you, mr. yang. (applause) >> we also have eddie chang from the community youth center, formerly chinatown youth center. >> thank you, supervisor mar. first of all, i want to thank all the department heads and the mayor and the supervisors and all the residents who are coming out for this town hall. this is very important for us to have a voice, have input. we don't, and we do a disservice for the people that we service.

so, for me i'm a project manager. my name is eddie chang, cyc community center. it is important to focus on city of san francisco immigrant youth for the last 33 years in the city of san francisco. our main office is in tenderloin, but we also have the branch offices in the richmond district and we also have a branch office in the bayview district. so, we are very grateful for that. so, thea of ~ three of the things i want to talk about we want to ask the city to help support us is we would have a city wide multi-cultural youth leadership model that we are not only engaging to people in our neighborhood, but also engaging from people all across the city, especially young people who happen to deal with a lot of different challenges, especially in the more challenging districts. the bayview, western addition,

the mission, excelsior, potrero hill area, that they deal in a lot of stress and trauma every day. so, we have a need for that. the multi-cultural youth leadership one. the other one is more work force opportunity, employment opportunity for high-risk api youth. so far the city, we were able to be very fortunate to have the funding for a program called a generating leadership opportunity work force. however, at this round of funding we don't get to fund that. it directly shows from the department youth and families, there's no need employment programs for the api population in the city of san francisco. especially target high-risk youth, many youth from the ages 14 to 21 involved in the criminal justice system who have a lot of charges. and the other one i want to encourage some support in is that we need to have a courageous conversation, you know.

starting with ourselves about racial dialogues in the community. >> thank you, mr. chang. now we have linda merly to speak on student services. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is april. i'm presenting the seniors in the community, especially from [speaker not understood] for the elderly in district 1 and 4. (applause) >> in the past 46 years, south park has been providing a comprehensive range of services designed to empower seniors to maintain their independence, dignity and self-worth. the nutrition and senior center department assists low-income seniors who are culturally and socially isolated by providing activities and nutritious meals. as supervisor mar just mentioned, the senior's populations in both districts have been growing. the total number of seniors in district 1 and 4 is 31,98 4,

age 60 and older. of which over 58% are asian or pacific islanders and 39% speak none or limited english. and over 30% of the seniors age 60 and older lives alone. the senior center located in district 1 and senior center located in district 4 serves over 200 seniors a day. in the past year with the budget cuts and nutrition program we have to limit our service. we had to turn away seniors who simply want to find a place to stay out of hunger, a place to hang out with friends, a place where they call their second home. besides our nutrition program, betop is another program for our seniors. three hours on the day of the press release, all of our places are filled and we have to generate a very long waiting list. we need the funding to provide

the tech support, system maintenance in order to keep our seniors connected to the world to get roots and to their distant loved ones. on behalf of our seniors i would like to thank you, mayor lee, supervisor mar, supervisor tang, and [speaker not understood] for the engagement over the past years and future support in self-help nutrition programs and betop our seniors will not be isolated, hungry, and lost. (applause) >> thank you. next i know that self-help for the elderly was representing both district 1 and 4. next i would like to call up -- i'm sorry, i'm sorry, linda merly. >> thank you. mayor lee -- oh, good -- supervisor tang, supervisor mar, all the department heads and everybody here today, i think we're all pretty illustrious beingses for being

here today. so, i'm here to speak on behalf of some of the seniors that i serve in district 1. ~ my name is linda merly, i am the director of the richmond senior center which is just down the street on geary at 26th. according to the 2010 census, 21% of the people in the richmond district are seniors. that's individuals over 60. by 2020 we're looking at a senior population in the city of san francisco of 25%. that's all across the city of san francisco, 25% of us will be seniors, including me. at the richmond senior center, about 81% of the people we see each day identify themselves as at or below the poverty level. we ask for a $2 donation for lunch. it is a donation. it's not a requirement. i get phone calls every once in a while from people who ask me if i can help them pay their rent.

i think sometimes that people think of the richmond district as asian, russian. at the richmond district senior center, we are people. we are people who speak mandarin, cantonese, tagalog, russian, french, vietnamese and english. we are just people there, a lot of people together. we have some developmentally disabled seniors at the scenier center. one of them plays the conga in our drum circle each month. we get our funding through a community services contract with the city. a third of that contract goes to paying our rent each month, each year, i'm sorry. and that rent a year is $50,000 approximately. i was told that i could ask mayor lee when i was here, and i would ask you to talk to our landlord. maybe you can get a rent reduction for us. that would be very helpful.