it's great for urban living. they do not produce in the united states. this is one company that doesn't. they actually -- they buy from china, but they are recycled -- it is recycled plastic. >> we just wanted to -- i mean, there's a lot of detail that's gone into this. christian and regina have been helpful in kind of guiding the structure of how this is going to be done in practice. we just wanted to introduce ourselves, kind of tell you a little bit about what we're doing. i'm sure there are plenty of questions. so, thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> great, thank you. commissioner dwight. >> thanks for coming in, all of you, for presenting today. i think we've all acknowledged there are new certain novel retail concepts springing up. as a city that prides itself on being on the forefront of innovation, i think we want to

enable this as much as we can. i think, and perhaps this will come up in public comment, i think that sort of the concern if there is any is that these types of operations, whether they are selling food or selling products or whatever they might be, when they pull up on the curb in front of established business he in merchant corridors, there is the potential that they obscure the businesses that are already there, whether visually or just sort of -- you know, just because there's stuff going on that's distracting from the general business that's established in the corridor. that said, i think it's probably more likely that you create excitement, which brings people into the corridor that might not be inclined to visit, provides more excitement. and after all, retail malls exist because it's presumably capote heates excitement around the proximity of other retailers. and, so, you know, i think my

general proclivity is to side -- to err on the side of the nature of it being exciting and encouraging and growing business, that it doesn't detract from existing retail. so, that's just kind of -- as i have heard some of these presentations individually and now as we hear them today. >> any other commissioner comment? commissioner dooley. >> i was really excited to hear about you guys going into neighborhoods that are not quite as well served with what you offer. and i think that's a great service to these neighborhoods, and i really want to encourage that. that's a really great thing to do and great for the city. >> commissioner riley. >> yeah, i have a question. how do you determine where you're going to be and how do your customers and clients find you? >> well, for us, it depend on the products because we're

switching out products every two to three weeks, we call them campaigns. it just depends on the demographic that they're looking for. so, if we're selling beanies, we might want to go to like dolores park where everyone is wearing beanies even if it's 90 degrees out. if it's a briefcase we're going to go down to the financial district. it just depends what we're showcasing and we do use social media, facebook, twitter to say where we're going to be that day. >> for me my product -- oh. my product doesn't change as much as far as target goes. i just try to stick to events that encompass my target market or in the rare case that i could be in the neighborhood doing a collaboration or street party somewhere where i know my demographic will be shopping. and as well as twitter, facebook, all of the social outlets. >> that's great, thanks. >> i'd just like to say i like the fact that you collaborate

with brick and mortar and i agree with what commissioner dwight says. it's like a mall. when you get a whole bunch, it does create excitement. and this is a new industry, okay. and you guys are at the forefront of this new industry, and san francisco is known for being creative in new industries. i want to thank christian here for heading up the mobile retail group and getting you all involved because this is something that's here and it's coming and it's here to stay. i appreciate the fact that you went from mobile, and i do know what it's like to start a business and how expensive it is. not only do you have a mobile, but you have a brick and mortar now and they complement each other. small business, that's what we want to see, see that small business growth because that's what it's all about. so, i think it's very exciting. i like both of your presentations today and it really -- yours especially opened my eyes on a few things and i really appreciate that.

so, good job. so, at that point if there's no other commissioner comments, i'd like to open it up for public comment. ~ on item number 7, on mobile retail. is there anybody here who would like to make any comments on this item? none? okay, seeing none, public comment is closed. do we have any other commissioner questions? again, i want to thank you all for coming today, and great presentations. you know, i'd like to see you in my neighborhood. >> yes, thank you so much. and thank you to christian. he's been so good to all of us. he's done a great job. and thank you for regina. thank you to christian especially. i bug you all the time. i appreciate it. >> it is important because i also want to compliment the office of small business because when this is coming up and we're all hearing it because we all are involved in merchant groups, we hear this and everybody is like, oh, my god, it's coming. when this was brought up and

christian just took this on and says, you know what, let's all work together bays we all are citizens of this city and like he said, this is here to stay. so, i really appreciate your involvement in working with the office of small business because without that collaboration, we don't know how to go ahead and move forward with it. so, it's very important that we all work together on this. so, i got to thank both sides. so, thank you. >> okay, next item, please. >> before we move on, so, with regard to process here, the next -- so, the mobile retail ordinance is being drafted, is that correct, or -- >> we still have a few things that we still need to iron out both with sfmta. we have some questions that we need to get clarified with the department of public health so that we don't inadvertently -- might define something that is already a mobile retail -- i mean, a mobile operation for

health reasons that would serve a fine line of some kind of health that would be cosmetic as opposed to the public good. so, there are additional definitions we need too get there. there's a few more steps we need to -- investigative and qualifying ~ and figuring out how we're going to work it, also with department of public works. we're still having conversations about how to construct this. so, we still -- i would say we probably have a good four significant steps to go through before we kind of bring back everything up. >> and do we have sponsors for this? >> not yet because i think the questions that they may have for us, we may not -- because it's not completely baked. so, but we will soon be looking for one. >> and the hope is to have a single discussion -- a single proposal that the supervisors

can a griefgrape on. ~ agree on. i know there's a lost things floating around the different offices. [speaker not understood]. >> right. our goal is actually really -- because i think sometimes things get massaged or changed because of advocacy from outside. so, our goal is to try to make sure that when we go to propose this, we've really kind of come to a good agreement with our -- the council of district merchants and the merchants association and the mobile retail association as well. so that while maybe not everybody is completely happy, but we've collaborated and come up with what is a good reasonable permitting structure. >> and that outreach to the merchants is ongoing or -- >> is ongoing, um-hm. and they've been part -- the council of district merchants has a committee that is kind of like our advisory committee that we're working with. >> okay, well, great. more to come.

>> thank you. >> thank you, everyone. next item, please. >> item 8, presentation and discussion on the san francisco transportation plan and the early action program. this is a discussion item and we have a presentation by rachel hiatt, principal transportation planner, san francisco county transportation authority. >> good afternoon, thank you for having me. and i did bring some additional handouts from our website. should i hand these over to you for disparate -- and i left some up at the -- i had one for me and one for everyone else up there on your table. could you advise me, how much time would you like to spend on this item? i can walk you through this handout here or the handout that you have there, or i could just give an overview. >> overview. >> okay. >> just a quick overview. >> so, the san francisco transportation authority, our governing board, is the board of supervisors. we have a couple different roles where we're responsible for administering the prop k

half cent sales tax dedicated to transportation in san francisco. about $80 million a year devote today all modes, all operators, we administer that in the transportation authority board. our other responsibility is in long-range planning. we're responsible for developing the 30-year transportation plan for san francisco. its function is to articulate our priorities for san francisco transportation to the region. the nine-county bay area metropolitan transportation commission, and it's our way of making sure that he we get our fair share in san francisco of regional state federal transportation resources. so, what we have -- we're trying to publicize -- is a draft of this long-range transportation plan, the 30-year plan, san francisco transportation plan. the last time i was before you, it was about a little less than a year ago and at that time we were collecting input on

priorities. we had gone through a process of working with the public and with our partner agencies to identify the universal need over this through 20 40 ~. what does gross look like for san francisco, we know what our needs today are, what growth brings, and how can we -- what's the sort of -- the universe of that need, what revenues do we expect to have and at that point we're looking for how to prioritize knowing that we don't expect to have enough revenue to meet the entire need of everything everybody would like to he see, how can we prioritize. what we've done since then is take what we heard and come up with one draft investment scenario that is based within the resources we expect to have through 20 40 ~. and another one that says what if there were no additional

local revenues? we coordinated with the mayor's 2030 transportation task force which has been tasked with asking that very question. should there be new local transportation resources in san francisco, and if so, what should they go toward. coordinating with them on an additional scenario that proposes how we can get further our goal with additional resources. so, there are these draft scenarios. we also have in addition to the investment proposal, policy recommendations. we know that and we heard through our outreach it's not just about what we're spending the money on, but how we're doing -- how we go about developing and delivering projects. and, so, we've done some research into small project delivery practices, how san francisco implementing agencies get done the work of delivering streets and everything from paving to bike projects, and

what the options are for how we deliver major transportation projects. one of the next major investments that san francisco needs to deliver is completing the transbay terminal, caltrain downtown expansion and getting ready for bringing high-speed rail to san francisco. how can we make choices about how to fund and construct that major investment in a way that keeps it close to -- keep it on time, under budget, on budget. there's things that -- other cities or states and countries do that we don't do right now that we can consider. we have policy recommendations as well. they're looking for feedback on the draft we came up with. did we hopefully [speaker not understood] see their priorities reflected there even though there are lots of tough conversations still to be had. for instance, one of the things we highlight is we're

continuing to grow -- there needs to be -- one thing we learned is if we want to get close to our goals, we need to address sort of both sides of the travel demand picture, that is the supply side. we know we need to provide more transit capacity today and if we want to grow there is the supply, there is also the demand management. there was san francisco's first sort of downtown plan back in the early '80s, i think '84, that was introduced by the travel demand management associations, large businesses downtown as a way to coordinate commute patterns and to sort of provide employers with incentives that they could offer their employees for working, commuting during off side peak hours, peak hours, resources -- back at that time there wasn't so much working

from home, but there needs to be a new version of that. so, the demand management side is something that especially as the city is planning to grow much more into soma, we need the demand -- new demand management tools and the capacity expansion. so, those are a few things that i wanted to highlight and the themes are also summarized in this sheet. everything is on our website. and we're looking for feedback on the investment scenarios and the policy recommendations. >> great, thank you. any commissioner questions? commissioner dooley. >> i wanted to check back in on the proposed congestion pricing. in the northeast corridor, i work with a lot of the merchant associations in that area and i would really recommend you take a closer look at that and not be sweeping such a large area and because the hours proposed

are when all the businesses and restaurants are getting deliveries, they're all going to be having to pay surcharges. it's a heavily residential area also, so, you know, residence are not going to be real happy that they're going to have to, you know, pay a toll to go in and out of their own home areas. i really -- you know, i understand the congestion pricing and i think it's a good idea, but i really would urge you to kind of go back to looking at perhaps points that commuters that come into our city during the day, say from marin, oakland, somewhere on the southern border, could be captured more accurately and not catching so many people in such a large corridor. i think that that would be something that we would all in that northeast area would be interested in working with you on to make sure that it really achieved its purpose and does

not penalize a broad group of business and residents. >> thank you very much. i really appreciate that and really well put comment. just want to explain how the idea of congestion pricing appears in this plan, this long-range plan. it's one of the techniques for demand management that we analyze. so, we asked the question, looking at san francisco's goals for where we want to get between now and 20 40, what would it take to achieve them. so, we created some so-called aspirational scenarios where we said, okay, this is san francisco's locally adopted greenhouse gas emission reduction goal. this is san francisco's most split goal, the mta board has a [speaker not understood] goal. this is sort of the condition of our pavement infrastructure now and the city has an adopted goal for payment. so, what would it take? what we were finding is it had to take both increases in

supply for the new transit as well as the demand management. and that was what i was mentioning before. and i think as folks in the commission know, congestion pricing is peak period congestion pricing is one of those demand management types of tools. it's not the only one, though. so, i guess what this plan -- the message that this plan tries to put out is to let our board know and let san franciscans know we need both sides to get towards our goal. so, the next step of identifying the right demand management tools at the right time is an ongoing work item. so, congestion pricing we identify as one of those tools in the bag that we should continue to consider when we need it, or as we're growing and where it's needed, and that gets to your point, kathleen,

or commissioner dooley, excuse me. and there are other tools. so, our board, for instance, when they adopted the congestion pricing feasibility study, one of their recommendations was look at a parking alternative. look at some other alternatives. and that -- the parking work, parking alternative work is funded and it's underway. i think it's just -- i think it's sort of the beginning stages of that study. i'll mention to that team that this came up today in your comments. other work as far as advancing idea of congestion pricing is a funded activity within our budget. so, it's just that parking alternative that's being studied. that's what this plan says about congestion pricing. >> i sympathize with it also. i live and work near the levi's plaza area and i am unfortunately very aware of how many commuters come in every

single day and take up all the street parking in that area. so, you know, obviously the other part of that will have to be getting those folks that are commuting in from outlying counties to get out of those cars. >> yes, yes. and make sure that they have, you know, reliable alternatives that people actually want to take. >> any other commissioner questions? let's have public comment on item number 8. do we have any members of the public here? seeing none, public comment is closed. well, thank you for your overview today, and i'm sure we'll be talking a lot. >> i hope so. i'm going to be back regularly and appreciate your time. >> great, thank you. next item, please. >> item 9, presentation ~

presentation and discussion on findings from surveys administered to the city's neighborhood economic development organizations and 10 city departments. this is a discussion item. and we have a presentation by ken stram, 2bridge communications who is the consultant that undertook this experiment work. >> good afternoon, mr. stram. >> good afternoon. [speaker not understood]. my name is ken stram. i'm the president of 2bridge communications, we're a public relations and small business consulting firm. i was hired to conduct customer satisfaction surveys of neighborhood economic development organizations, the nidos and also city departments to get their feedback on the operations of the office of small business and small business assistance center. the he occasion for this was, you know, the fifth anniversary of the office of small business. we thought this would be a good opportunity to gather feedback from people about the performance. so, we met with -- there was a lot of planning that happened before the survey took place. we met with the staff on numerous occasions to discuss the goals of this survey, and in particular the protocol reaching out to city departments.

and we ended up -- we reached out to all the organizations at least three times, i think much more than that. we ended upped talking to 10 nidos in 10 city departments and the lists are contained in the report. we'll get to them in a few minutes. so, in general, the summary, to super summarize it, there was very high, high satisfaction with professionalism, the customer service, and the knowledge of the staff at the office of small business and the small business assistance center. and there was somewhat lower feedback on the communications and referrals. so, what i'm going to do, so, you have this document in front of you, it's a 25-page document so i'm going to quickly run through the different pieces of the department and spend a little bit more time on the -- some of the charts and then the recommendations. so, the questions, we have similar questions to the nido city department on page 22, we

had a few extra questions for economic neighborhood organizations. we started with departments and nidos to gather feedback and also to refresh the office of small business about the role that these different organizations play with small business [speaker not understood]. some of this information, i think, is really helpful so we asked the neighborhood economic development organizations and the city departments why do small businesses come to you or the top 3 to 5 reasons they come to you. what are the common areas of confusion, and also what do the small business owners need to do to be prepared for successful meeting with you. ~ nedos and, so, let's -- if you can go to page 7, i realize i have limited time. i'm going to fly through a couple of the graphs. this is where the nedo feedback begins. again, if you see overall customer satisfaction, these were very high. we asked the questions based on

a scale of 1 to 5, 1 was very dissatisfied. 5 was very satisfied. so, for the most part they scored very high. when it came to whether the small business assistance center, office of small business understands your organization, and also the quality and appropriateness of the referrals, lets that scored a little bit lower. if you flip the page, you can see that, again, most of the organizations were satisfied with these areas. there were one or two outliers. and referrals was i think particularly sensitive issue with the nedos in particular. it was my experience working at one of the neighborhood economic development organizations, i think the ones that are removed, more removed or sort of geographically removed, frankly, they fell a little bit out of the loop and they felt they weren't getting as many referrals as the other organizations. one person said very dissatisfied.

so, that dropped down the score. and again you see for year 3 on page 8, the overall customer satisfaction and with professionalism, it was a 4.8. so, it doesn't get much higher than that. on page 9, now we're getting into communications. so, with general customer service the organization scored very high. with communications they scored a little bit lower and so there are a lot of neutral responses. one of the questions was are you satisfied with sbc's communications and a number of people indicated they do not regularly receive information from the sbc, office of small business and the small business assistance center. so, that's very easily fixable. and the chart figure 5, basically we asked about whether they received the newsletters. and a number of people said they know other people in my organization receives the newsletters, but i don't receive it. i haven't received it for awhile. we're going to recommend refreshing the e-mail list and make sure people receive the e-mail newsletters.

that's a quick summary of the nedo responses. if you go to page 12, this is where the city department feedback begins. and, again, looking at figure 8 at the bottom of the page on page 12, you see that the understanding -- here the department felt that osb had higher understanding than the nedos of the role the department plays. and overall satisfied and very satisfied for all these answers. if you turn the page again, at the bottom of page figure 10, professionalism, they scored a 4.78. you can see the city departments feel the office is very professionally run. we also collected,s again, it was a confidential survey, but we did gather some wonderful verbatim feedback. few call outs where we had verbatim responses captured. so, you can see again from straight from the horse's mouth

on page 14 how the city departments felt that the office of small business and the assistance center benefited with their work. in particular, i realize i've been around a long time, i realize some of these people, they joined -- they started their position after the office of small business was founded. so, but the people who had been around longer than four years definitely recognized how conditions improved after the office of small business was started. and i think -- so, one of the things with the nedos, there is a culture of referrals. so, that question made sense to them. they were happy because they got the referrals or maybe they were disappointed because they didn't get as many referrals. with the city departments, the question of do you make referrals to the office of small business if you have a small business owner in front of you who you think needs more information, that sort of came as a little bit from left field. and, so, a couple people said, no, we don't do this, we don't refer people back to the office of small business, we don't ask

if they've already been to the office of small business, but they would be happy to do that if there was a protocol in place. there is a pretty easy fix that could increase referrals to the office of small business and making sure the city departments start to engage in this culture of referrals. , and so, i just want to go through the recommendations again very quickly, starting on page 3. so, i think if these were customer satisfaction problems, then i wouldn't be able to make strong recommendations. but since they're mostly communications issues that need to be addressed, we just have a couple of very simple fixes i think which would improve all our customer satisfaction. so, again, the organizations that interact less frequently with the office of small business, they're the ones that had higher dissatisfaction rates. so, just having more regular communications, both for the nedos and for the city departments. for the nedos it would be the regular newsletters. get on a regular schedule, refreshing your e-mail as to

make sure you have everybody covered who you're working with. also the importance of making referrals to those outlying organizations i think just to make sure that a few times a year you check in and make sure that they're going to be referrals and it's not always just the squeaky wheels that are getting the referrals. so, one of the interesting things that regina wanted us to explore at the bottom of page 3, which is she wanted to know in particular with nedos if they understood the roles the different organizations in city hall that supported small businesses, were they clear on what those different organizations did. so, we asked them to describe their understanding of the office of small business, assistance center, and small business commission and owg. those responses were confidential, but we did capture the responses. they're on page 2. it was clear the neighborhood of economic development organizations are really leery

about where osb stops and where the commission starts. so, again, i think just as a communication strategy to maybe include some e-mail newsletter content just to describe the roles of these different organizations, that would be very helpful. and, again, just communications with city departments. there were a couple departments that only -- i think the ones where it was more complicated conducting the interview or city departments where they only have one form they fill out that affects small businesses, or organizations where really they only deal with small businesses a couple times a year. having an annual visit to each department would help a lot and also i think just, you know, including these city organizations newsletters or reaching out to them and saying, we'd like to describe your organization and the role you play in our next newsletter. so, that was a very fast presentation, 25-page survey. we really enjoyed this project. again to summarize, the object