tv [untitled] July 27, 2010 12:02pm-12:32pm PST
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this coming monday, by the way, is the anniversary of the passage of the act. in 2009, 2010, is of a grand jury initiated an investigation to determine what has been done to comply with the americans with disabilities act, and what, if anything, remains to complete compliance. in summary, the jury identified three areas where support is needed in order for full compliance to be achieved. the first was facilitate and expand the citizens of a grievance procedure. second, accelerate the completion of the transition plan. third, to develop and implement training program for city staff, especially for the contact personnel at the police department and municipal transportation agency. there are many areas which further work needs to be done, nevertheless, much has been accomplished. the civil grand jury finds
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inappropriate to extend its compliments for the dedication, effort, the achievement of the personnel that the mayor's disability office and department of public works, as well as the city in general. their efforts have brought the city global recognition for leadership and achievement in disability for its residents and visitors. as you have already been informed, we have been asked to respond to findings and recommendations for, 5, and six. i was prepared to go over them, but since susan did such a good job already, i am happy to answer any questions that you may have. supervisor chu: thank you. mr. chair, perhaps we could go to public comment? supervisor mar: is there anyone in the public that would like to
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speak? please come forward i will also call a couple of names. >> good morning. i really appreciate the time and attention that you are putting into this issue because it is important for myself and for the community. in my experience, i came here 14 years ago. we have been asking transportation for some basic things. many times there is a problem, but they do not do anything.
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i am able to see a little bit better than before, but oftentimes, drivers are driving fast and it is hard to hear. oftentimes, they do not honk. i wanted to make a comment about this. i believe it was last tuesday. i was trying to go to the bathroom on 16th street to. somebody told me when my stuff was coming. they said it was the next one. the person pulled me the bus number, and right away, i could hear the bus driver making the announcement.
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i know they have to do it, but in my opinion, i do not know who had to force them to do it. they have the equipment. they know they have to do it, but many of them are refusing, muni drivers. i have had been using a guide dog for 10 years. i had a bad accident eight years ago. i was attacked. i called the police and they came to my house. they said everything was done. the dog is in the cattle, there is nothing you can do. i said no this is my guide dog. the police did not know what to do.
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i asked for a report but they did not want to do one. so i called the school, and they recommended that i call 911 and ask them to send the same officer to my house to make the report. i did that. he was upset -- i have other comments. supervisor mar: could you elaborate on your findings, recommendations to the civil grand jury report? >> you have an agreement. in my opinion, one way or another, you have to force the police and drivers to do their job. that is what we are asking for. supervisor mar: thank you.
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i notice that members of the disability council are also in the audience. any more public comment? please come forward. >> name iselaine. thank you for listening. -- is elaine. basically the same thing that paco said, bus drivers are not stopping. another thing is taxis. we go shopping in the city. they come and roll down the window, no dogs, and then they take off. one time we waited two hours to
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get home. taxis will drive by. we cannot be good enough to get the car number. that is a big problem for me and not calling the stops. i have not been shopping here for a long time because of that, the taxis. i think many to be educated, and paco did try to educate them. i do not know if it worked or not, but every driver that pulled up to us would not pick us up. supervisor mar: thank you so much. next speaker. >> good morning. thank you for hearing this
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matter today as well as for the civil grand jury for their report, and the ongoing work of the mayor's office. the council felt, due to the circumstances for disabled people in the city of san francisco, we had a little bit different response than they do. predominantly, we agree with their findings and response to the items. the only thing that i would like to call your attention to would- be we agree with the grievance decision. it really needs to have some substance behind it. that is how disability rights are usually in adjudicated. i have been very proud working on the council. there has been a lot of pro active effort for inclusion for people with disabilities. that is wonderful, but of
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course, in these economic times, certain cuts are made. we agree with the reinstatement of a full-time grievance staff addressing title ii issues. in regards to -- we have different perspective on title iii. you heard about the woman with the taxi. title ii and iii are interrelated. as much as the city could pursue that, it would be a wonderful effort, but we are also aware of funding efforts. i would request universal sidewalk and curved ramp accessibility. it is almost 20 years. we do not wish that funding to be taken from health and human
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services, public works. we do not want to prioritize physical disability over programmatic and access. finally, one of the most striking things i noticed from the council members was in regards to the training. there was a mention of online training. each person i spoke to a grade that need to -- there needs to be more interaction between people with the bill -- disability and people without this ability. that is an effective way to focus your attention on the matter. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors.
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thank you for the opportunity to respond to the report from the seven grand jury. i am the other co-chair of the mayor's disability council. as ms. parsons outlined, we are in agreement with many of -- most facets that the grand jury reported on hand with recommendations. you also have the recommendation from the mayor's disability council as well in your packet. one thing that i wanted to highlight further was the matter of training of the municipal transit association as well as for the police department, and other city employees, interacting with people with disabilities. as ms. parsons also alluded to,
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we were concerned about online training, that it was not enough to have a facts-based primer to give to the employee is on an ongoing basis. the context of the actual interaction with someone with disabilities seems to make more of a human factor out of this. we are talking about one out of five san franciscans who identified themselves as a person with this ability. it may be seen, like blindness for myself, or they could be hidden disabilities. if they could see these people and in direct them, ask questions, make it a human issue, it would be better. for the last four years i have
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been working with the mta on training of new operators. it is amazing the routes that i go on with these drivers. they recognize me. they realize they need to put this into practice. i am not only trying to teach them but i am also a user of the services, a citizen in the county of san francisco. we applaud the grand jury for their work on this. the conclusions that they came to in the report were good. waybill continue to speak about this. we definitely want to move forward in a very personal, human-based effort to educate
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these people on this 20-year- old-now a piece of legislation. it is definitely time to implement. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker? >> good morning. i have lived my whole life in san francisco. i want to thank the civil grand jury for working on this item. all the work of the civil grand jury is worthy, although, in my opinion, the city does not implement many of the recommendations. in regards to finding two, ada grievance procedures, my own story as a city employee is relevant. when i tried to go through the
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grievance procedure, in my opinion, the city retaliated against me by putting me on mandatory sicklied. i thought that was an interesting response. -- sick leave. also, i had requested numerous times that san francisco general be investigated for suspicious activities. in my opinion, for the record, the three supervisors still oppose any inquiry into san francisco general hospital, including the ada situation. i felt i've applied to all lead to requests -- i replied to all the requests that were made at the time. i feel like he and i were
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shortchanged by somebody up the ladder. if you are applying for an ada process, how the city can put you on mandatory sick leave, to me, nobody was asking for sick leave. i was only inquiring what the a daada could do to help me with y back problems. i feel like the process was this used for whatever purposes the city needed. in my opinion, the ada is there to help people who really need help. people like me are looking to them for guidance. it seems strange that instead of giving me guidance, they basically short circuit the system and, in my opinion, ending the system.
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ada compliance need to be seriously considered, especially at the board level. in my opinion, this committee is even weaker than the ethics commission. supervisor mar: thank you. is there anyone else that would like to speak? please come forward. >> hello. i am also a member of the mayor's disability council. i am in that category of having a hit in disability. i also want to start by thanking the civil grand jury and you all for giving this the attention that you are. we appreciate it. i wanted to reiterate something that we mentioned, which is, if finances were not an issue, as the community would want every suggestion that the community suggested, but seeing the
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situation is not that, we want to make sure architectural access is not prioritized over other disability access needs. particularly, public health needs ,ihh, ihhs, making sure tt funding is not taken away from those critical categories. thank you. we appreciate it. supervisor mar: susan has another comment. >> thank you. i did want to clarify, because it is not transparent to the public and perhaps not to you, that the employee process for ada issues as a separate process
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from the process of human resources. items covered at this done on men had the experience that he had. that is not the procedure that is of a grand jury refers to or what our office worked on. if you would allow me to summarize, the disability community is not a homogenous community. there are different interests, different needs, different priorities. so it is the unenviable job of decision makers, like ourselves, how we distribute the resources available. i believe that is the message we have been trying to convey. the mayor's disability council had a robust conversation about this. every one of the recommendations would be wonderful to implement, but we are concerned, as a
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community, about the availability of resources continuing. the budget that you have passed looks like that will happen. the need for health services, human services, ihhs, independent living has always been a high priority and we want to protect those services and would not want them to be reduced at the expense of architectural access, which is expensive. supervisor mar: thank you. is there anyone else from the public that would lead to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor chu, do you have supervisor chu: thank you. i want to thank the civil grand jury for your work on this issue, and in addition, i want to thank the mayor's office of disability, the disability council, and all the departments to have taken the time to review
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and respond to the document as well. at this time, we do have item two, also, which has been called. it is the response of the board of supervisors to the 2009-2010 grand jury report. if we look at the actual underlying document, there actually is no response to findings yet from the board of supervisors, so if we take a look at page four of the legislation, beginning on line 18, is really just sort of a place holder for us to put in our findings as well. mr. share, after hearing from the departments, if i could make a motion -- mr. chair, we are responding to items one, two, four, five, and 6. i would make a motion that we adopt the city attorney response to finding number 1 and to recommendation on the one --
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recommendation number 1. i also recommend we adopt the mayor's department of responsibility's response to finding two, four, and six, as well as their response to the recommendations for items two, four, and six, and also make a motion to adopt the department of public works' response to recommendation 5 and finding five. supervisor mar: thank you. any objections? then we have adopted those responses to the findings and recommendations. supervisor chu: i will make a motion to send this out, to send item two out, as amended, to the full board with recommendation, and to file item one. supervisor mar: without objection, so moved. is there anything else on this item, supervisor chu? thank you. thank you, everyone, for coming
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up, and the activism around complying with the 88. could you call the next item? >> item 3, motion directing the budget and legislative analyst to audit the department of children, youth, and their families. supervisor mar: item 3 is also called by supervisor alioto-per. is there someone from her office -- supervisor alioto-pier. is there someone from her office? no one is here from the office. let me just say that this is a motion that direct the budget and when it -- and legislative analyst's office to audit the department of children, youth, and their families. is there someone from the budget and legislative analyst's office? thank you, ms. newman. >> good morning, supervisors.
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i'm here to discuss this motion. however, i would note that we have had discussions with supervisor alioto-pier's office, regarding this audit, and we had prepared with them if an amendment that is to my understanding they were going to approve this morning to narrow the focus of that audit, to not do really an audit of dcyf, but rather to revise it to a direct and more interdepartmental audit of the cd's program to provide early childhood care and education services. i do have one version of what i understood they were going to be presenting this morning. i could go over that, but i have understood that they were going
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to be submitting it and presenting a this morning. i will take your direction on how to proceed on this. my understanding is that it was a more narrow focus, and to work with the early childhood programs. we had prepared a report to the committee today on the revised scope. and i can go over that if you want. supervisor chu: if i could make a recommendation, my understanding is that supervisor alioto-pier's office would be coming to make a presentation to also explain what the change in scope would be, the limited scope would be, so maybe if we could do for this item to later in the agenda so we could allow for supervisor alioto-pier's legislative aide to come by, and maybe we could ask the clerk. supervisor mar: great.
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we will delay action on this item. can you call item four? >> item four, motion directing the budget and legislative analyst to conduct a review of police practices -- of aging in place practices and resources. supervisor mar: this is an item from my office urging the budget -- requesting the budget and legislative analyst's office to further delve into the issue of aging in place practices and resources in the city to implement the proposed additional research. legislative analyst would determine the approximate number of aging adults on affordable housing and public housing, collective summarized demographic information about aging adults in san francisco, review independent living programs and models, including shared housing programs, volunteer health advocacy programs, and the nonprofit retirement village models. that is aging in place retirement village models.
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also provide legislative recommendations for incentives that encourage property owners to make residential upgrades that increase accessibility and safety for aging adults. that is the proposal. i would like to ask ms. newman to also make some comments. >> certainly. again, debra newman from the budget analysts office. let me give -- let me step back and maybe just give a little overview of where we are on our audit program. as you know, as part of our budget and legislative analyst contract, one of the functions that we do provide for the board of supervisors is audit services. these generally, as requests from the members of the board. to date this year, we have conducted the mta, the first phase analysis of that, the revenue analysis, and concluded
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the small business audit. we have approximately 4500 hours each year to dedicate to audit services. we have expended to date about 1500 hours on the, so this applies to both this audit and the earlier one that i will not go into detail right now, but we have more than sufficient capacity currently between now and the rest of the year to all the audit assignments that are before us. this is within the scope of our existing contract. in fact, even if both of these audits were assigned to us, we still have sufficient capacity to move forward with other audits. i would encourage you to move forward would definitely the audit of supervisor mar pose a presenting on the seniors in
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place. we have done some additional work -- initial work for the office that has brought us to this place that we realize that the elderly community is growing at a faster rate in san francisco, and we are attempting to look at some of the demographics about that aging community in terms of income, ethnicity, languages, and to look at independent living options to be able to encourage the aging in place that the elderly will be able to stay in their homes, live more independently, say as members of the community, so that we will also be looking at best practices that are currently in use in san francisco as well as other communities and coming forward with legislative recommendations for incentives
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