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tv   [untitled]    October 30, 2013 9:30pm-10:01pm PDT

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>> commissioners, ray hartz, director of san francisco open government and i am only to comment on section 7 and 10 of this report. the first section, number 7, discusses the filing of form 700. and some focus needs to be placed on the fact that the filing of such reports are done under the penalty of perjury, the city librarian failed to figure that out. and he also didn't seem to understand that finding such a statement is perjury, even when it is not done in front of the public official under oath. and i have to believe that someone as intelligent does not understand those matters and there must be many more city employees who do not understand, and potentially a lot of other were filing and complaints with the ftpc against the members. >> and it is the same as mr.
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herrera in similar amounts. >> in section ten is says that due to the records involved. and it has been side tracked from the regular duties end quote, under the sunshine ordinance and the san francisco public records act. and responding to public records requests, they are among the regular duties of every city employees. this mistakingly represents this as something that they are being taken away from their duties. it is part of their duty and any city employee who is asked for a record is a requirement and part of their job duties to provide a job response. and putting this in a report saying that they are taken away from the regular duties it is
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simply a ploy and the record request to something and it is a legitimate legal request from a citizen of san francisco. and the control and the supervision or a record and not getting it. and it is my own experience after chasing him for two solid years and going through the city attorney's office and a petition that the supervisor of records to continue to records and those were the very records used to find him in violation of the regulations. and i did not blame him. and i would lie about the existence which he did. and i even denied, answering whether they did exist or not, when they responded or the
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company requestor had a legal document saying that you should have it signed by the respondent. >> agenda item 6, items for future meetings, do the commissioners have any suggestions as to items that they would like to see on the agenda for the meetings in november? or subsequent there to? >> mr. heart you are the only mefm of the public, do you have a suggestion or items that we should put on the agenda. >> i do, ray hartz, director of san francisco open government, i think that this body needs to acknowledge that in your charter it says that you are
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responsible to a degree for the sunshine ordinance and its implementation and enforcement. and yet in every single document, i see coming out of this body, you just, you fail to address it at all. and in the civil grand jury report, the sleeping watch dog that was mentioned by the civil grand jury. and you simply dismissed that with the typical response to civil grand jury reports of thank you very much for all of the time that you put into this and how much that we appreciate all of this hard work and then proceed to disagree with everything that they say. deny what they say and say that it is wrong and say that they don't understand and anything but accepting it. feedback, is the breakfast of champions that is something that ken blancardsaid, and anybody and any organization or individual or group of people who cannot accept the feedback and admit to the fact that occasionally they are not doing something that they should be
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doing, is willfully ignorant and saint thomas said that willful ignorance of what one ought to know is a mortal sin. the sunshine ordinance, task force hears dozens and dozens of cases each year and they sent you three or four or five and you dismiss every one of them. you take the city's side every single time. only one time, have you ever taken an action and that was to recommend to the mayor that the president of the library commission be removed. and he ignored you. and so i guess that i can't blame you either, would i not want to take the action if i knew that the only thing that i would get is somebody saying that i am not going to do it. and you don't have any power and you don't have any control, people say that the sunshine task force does not and i will give them this, at least, listen to the citizens of this city and when they find a good case, they will issue a
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violation and i have 19 of them myself and just try to get them enforced. and you can catch people in a blatant lie and you know the most interesting thing about it, they never have the courage to show up and explain their own actions. and they send some city employees who does not really know what is going on say, here you go on and you defend this illegal action. and poor sue black man at the library commission, the secretary gets stuck defending the actions of gomez and herrera because they do not have the integrity before a body and say that the reason that i did this is because of this. they send her there and the last time that i watched her, she was physically standing there shaking like a leaf because they were asking her questions that they didn't have answers to. >> i am not sure that i know
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what the agenda item is that you want us to put on. but if you want to submit some specific agenda item for our consideration, we will certainly consider it. >> i thought that i made it clear, the item would be to have an open public discussion at ethics commission meeting about what you feel this body feels about its obligations under the sunshine ordinance. >> all right, i think that we spelled that out when we set the new regulations for hearing on sunshine complaints. >> but there are no further items? >> public comment >> i thought that we had finished public comment >> one more.
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>> and any, and anybody want to move to adjourn and then i will ask for the public comment on that? >> any public comment on that? >> agenda item 7 is general public comment. >> all right. the item 7, is sort of the flip side of two, public comment on the matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda that are within the jurisdiction of the ethics commission. >> ray hartz, san francisco open government and there is that meeting is only about 30 minutes long and i don't feel particularly impolite to use the second opportunity. you can act like i am here just to be a pick on you and poor us and you know, all of this other, crap which you seem to want to present it as. but i have been watching the
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open meetings in this city for the last five years, attending meetings in the commission and the arts commission, and the board of supervisors, and the respect that people pay to the public as far as their ability to participate in meetings to make public meeting and to make the public records is ludicris and part that have responsibility falls with you, the city employees know that if they want to withhold the documents from the public because it is going to make them look bad and because no one in the city especially this commission is going to do a thing about it. and you are going to come up with 150 records and in fact, mr. saint croix had to be defended in the superior court of california and just recently by a lawsuit by allen grossman for withholding records, about the sunshine ordinance, which clearly states, that any
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communications between the city communications and the matters regarding, open government issues cannot be hidden from the public uppeder the patient, and where the attorney, public privilege and the ruling came out, and it agreed with the argument and i think that reason is that the city attorney instead of being the kind of person who expects the city employees and departments to follow the law wants to allow them to do whatever they want and then wants to advise the bodies how to avoid giving documents to the public which would expose it. and like i said, i fought with herrera and that man is an intelligent man and i knew that the documents that i was asked that we are asking for and were disposal under the public record's act. and they fought me repeatedly
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over the public comment. and i have at least eight in finding them in violation of the law because they didn't like what i say because i think that you can understand it because i am pretty clear, but i will say one thing for me, that i can't say that for a lot of people on the boards or commissions, and i will look you in the eye and say that to your face anything and i would not say it behind your back, but my impression is that you sit there and commission and any comments you wait until we are gone and you wait until we are gone to make them. >> >> item 8, i will hear a motion to ayearn. >> and so moved. >> and second. >> all right. >> comment on that. >> all right. all in favor?
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>> aye. >> meeting is adjourned.
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>> hi. i am cory with san francisco and we're doing stay safe and we're going to talk about what shelter in place or safe enough to stay in your home means. we're here at the urban
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center on mission street in san francisco and joined by carla, the deputy director of spur and one of the persons who pushed this shelter in place and safe enough to stay concept and we want to talk about what it means and why it's important to san francisco. >> as you know the bay area as 63% chance of having a major earthquake and it's serious and going to impact a lot of people and particularly people in san francisco because we live on a major fault so what does this mean for us? part of what it means is that potentially 25% of san francisco's building stock will be uninhibit tabl and
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people can't stay in their homes after an earthquake. they may have to go to shelters or leave entirely and we don't want that to happen. >> we want a building stock to encourage them to stay in the homes and encourage them to stay and not relocate to other locations and shelters. >> that's right so that means the housing needs to be safe enough to stay and we have been focused in trying to define what that means and you as a former building official knows better than anybody the code says if an earthquake happens it won't kill you but doesn't necessarily say that can you stay in your home and we set out to define what that might mean and you know because you built this house we're in now and this shows
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what it's like to be in a place safe enough to stay. it's not going to be perfect. there maybe cracks in the walls and not have gas or electricity within a while but can you essentially camp out within your unit. what's it going to take to get the housing stock up to this standard? we spent time talking about this and one of the building types we talk about was soft story buildings and the ground floor is vulnerable because there are openings for garages or windows and during the earthquake we saw in the marina they went right over and those are -- >> very vulnerable buildings. >> very and there are a lot of apartment buildings in san that that are like that. >> and time to.
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>> >> retrofit the buildings so people can stay in them after the earthquake. >> what do they need? do they need information? do they need incentives? mandates? >> that's a good question. i think it starts with information. people think that new buildings are earthquake proof and don't understand the performance the building will have so we want a transparent of letting people know is my building going to be safe in it after an earthquake? is my building so dangers i should be afraid of being injured? so developing a ranking system for buildings would be very important and i think for some of the larger apartment buildings that are soft story we need a mandatory program to fix the buildings, not over night and not without financial help
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or incentive, but a phased program over time that is reasonable so we can fix those buildings, and for the smaller soft story buildings and especially in san francisco and the houses over garages we need information and incentives and coaxing the people along and each of the owners want their house to be safe enough. >> we want the system and not just mandate everybody. >> that's right. >> i hear about people talking about this concept of resiliency. as you're fixing your knowledge you're adding to the city wide resiliency. >> >> what does that mean? >> that's a great question. what spur has done is look at that in terms of recovery and in new orleans with katrina and lost many of the people, hasn't
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recovered the building stock. it's not a good situation. i think we can agree and in san we want to rebuild well and quickly after a major disaster so we have defined what that means for our life lines. how do we need the gasolines to perform and water perform after an earthquake and the building stock as well, so we have the goal of 95% of our homes to be ready for shelter in place after a major earthquake, and that way people can stay within the city. we don't lose our work force. we don't lose the people that make san francisco so special. we keep everybody here and that allow us to recover our economy, and everything because it's so interdependent. >> so that is a difficult goal but i think we can achieve it over the long time so thank you very much for hosting us and hosting this great exhibit, and
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thank you very much for joining
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>> welcome to district -- need your district supervisor. we're here with supervisor john avalos, from district 11, which includes the excelsior, and will sign, our mission, and crocker amazon neighborhoods. supervisor avalos was elected to the board in november of 2008. we are going to get to know him and talk about the toughest issues facing the city. welcome and thank you for joining us today. tell us a lot about your background, where you grew up, went to school, the job you worked. >> i was born in a town called