and, you know, largely due to your efforts. we discussed, of course, the progressive tax structures that are no longer on the table, as well as businesses that are currently not being taxed, and i have not had time to go more in depth. i am sorry, business sectors. we did have a far ranging discussion on business sectors that are not currently taxed at the local level, but i have not had time to organize a report on that. we did of a discussion on the department's 2010 budget, and there was no new business. because our hands were full. thank you. president yee riley: 80. next item. clerk: commissioners, we are now on the president's report, which allows the president to report on the small business activities. president yee riley: well, i

attended a meeting on community development, and there was a great presentation from the mayor's office of economic and work force development on their goals, objectives, and the funding strategy, which was very educational for me. legislation and policies, and commissioner dooley already reported it, and august 3, that was the day we had the new commissioner, commissioner kasselman, sworn in, and commissioner o'brien also gets sworn in. so that is it. thank you. clerk: commissioners, items number 13, vice president's report. vice president clyde: i would

like to begin my report by recognizing a woman who gave extraordinary service to the small business community and to the san francisco community, joanie chang, who passed away a few weeks ago at age 41. she was a compliance officer with standards enforcement. she was charged with implementing the groundbreaking san francisco law that created healthy san francisco, and the reason i would want to recognize her is that she was a real model in how to educate the community, how to communicate with the small business community. she did it with grace. she did it with just great intelligence and compassion, and i think that the small business community should really an extent -- note should really extend our -- should really

extend our sympathies. she was taken way too soon. she believes newborn twins and her partner, -- she leaves newborn twins and her partner. she was only 41 years old, and she is diagnosed with cancer seven weeks ago, -- was diagnosed with cancer seven weeks ago. for the members who would like to send condolences, there is a website that was created by her friends and family. it is www.giveforward.org/ bakeanapple, and i would like to think the office of supervisor campos for providing this information and, again, to her partner, and to the new twins.

i would like to send, you know, our condolences and our appreciation. thank you, so i am just going to move on. i did attend a convention with bettie yi. she is our representative to the state board of equalization. she made it very clear that she did not favor a patchwork of regulations regarding the alcohol industry because it is so difficult to work. she did make it clear that her office is not interested -- her office is interested in keeping small businesses operating, and her office will work with businesses that are having trouble meeting their tax

payments. she was very clear in response to members of the public. the state board equalization now requires substantial deposits from businesses, businesses, who do not have track records or businesses that are changing their corporate structure. that was brought up at this meeting. her office is responsive to the synthesis go small business community. please contact and the board to work note payments and to work out schedules. she is focused on we are still in economic crisis, and she emphasized that she did not want

to see businesses closing. she also discussed marijuana and the challenges of legalization and taxation of the marijuana industry and challenges of the industry that is threatening to pick up and leave if they are taxed. this is going to be extremely challenging. the merchants organization in north beach did note -- did have a presentation, and i will encourage everyone to support this fund project. thanks. president yee riley: thank you. next item, please.

clerk: next item, commissioner 14, commissioner reports. vice president clyde: i have been trying to keep the small business public more informed about the proposed congestion pricing that is being proposed by cta, which is creating a very large corridor in our city that would be charging a fee of entry and exit, morning hours and afternoon hours, perhaps in each direction, and the possible impact that might have on our small businesses. i attempted. attended a workshop cta last month and brought up some of the concerns of the small business community which i attended a workshop.

-- i attended a workshop. also, phil did a report on this for channel 5 news, and it was also mentioned in the column, so i just want to continue to keep putting this in front of the public as much as possible so we can get some feedback and have folks be aware about what the potential costs might be in the business community. president yee riley: thank you. anymore reports from the commission? seeing none, next item, please. clerk: commissioners, item number 15, general public comment. president yee riley: seeing none, public comment is closed. clerk: commissioners, item

number 16, new business, which allows commissioners to introduce new items for future consideration by president yee riley: the riley: -- consideration by the commission. president yee riley: seeing none, next item, please. clerk: item number 17, adjournment. commissioners, the meeting is adjourned at 11:46 p.m. --7:46pm.

>> please direct your eyes to the water out over the bay. just a quick note -- the 5:30 to net the lawn is not canceled -- to nebulon is not changed. for those wishing to change rocket ships, you can talk to spot.

we have another rocket ship on the way, but this one is where they take off, any minute now. we have a couple of speakers here today. the first one is an lazarus from the port. public art like this is not done without partnerships, and the partnership that we have with the port of san francisco turned this space into an art space and has been spectacular. thank you, ford of san francisco. if you are representing the whole commission and some staff, though, ann if you want to say few words, that would be great. our boarding up is right here. >> thank you all for being here today. i would like to thank mike for wearing his seersucker suit so we were sure to get some sunshine today. i'm assuming there is a cause and effect there. it takes a village to accomplish something like this, just as

with everything else in life. as mike said, this has the complete, wholehearted endorsement of the port commission, all of us, of our staff, our planning staff, even all the way across to our maintenance staff, led by tom carter. i just want to say in closing and thanking everyone, who says we do not have ships down at this waterfront? [laughter] thank you. [applause] >> i also want to thank the opportunity thank thebcdc who helped us -- bank -- thank bcdc, who helped us get a permit for this. i told people that the cost of putting something up like this cost the city about the cost of a billboard for one month, and they had a greater ability to create community and space, and it has been a fabulous addition

to the port of san francisco. people will talk about this rocket ship forever. the next person we have is our district supervisor, david chiu. when david first came to the board of supervisors, he had a conversation with the cultural affairs director for the city and county of san francisco, and he made art in san francisco a priority. he wanted to make sure the money we were spending was spent on artists from the bay area. it was very important to him that this happened. as many of you may or may not know, san franciscans -- san francisco is one of the city with the most artists per capita. our government agencies spend more money on arts than any other government agency per- capita, and the foundations that work in san francisco spend more of a percentage of their money on art in san francisco, so with that -- for them, we're all grateful, and we will talk more about them. without further ado, supervisor david chiu.

>> hello, fellow travelers. i go to a lot of events every day, and i have to say, this was the event i was looking forward to all week. yes, and one feel that way? happy friday, by the way. i'm going to say a couple of things that elected officials probably should not. when i was a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was to launch off bottle rockets. and if i had gotten some better grades in physics, i might be helping to build these things as opposed to major in political science and becoming a politician, but at the end of the day, this is part of what is so special about san francisco, and one other thing that i'm going to say that i probably should not say -- i have never gone to burning man, but i think it might be about time. i want to thank all of you who are part of this amazing community that has helped to move forward not just the arts community, but to really improve

upon community collaboration, improve upon how we think about living together as san franciscans, as californians, as citizens of the universe. i think the last thing i want to say is, as someone who represents much of the waterfront here, this is obviously what i hope is just one of a number of amazing installations that i know that the local artist community is so incredibly capable of developing, and i look forward to future installations like this so that we can make sure that our art remains not just burned in our minds, but burned in the minds of everyone throughout the world and throughout the universe. congratulations. thank you. [applause] >> this fabulous relationship that the city and county have started in about 2005, and we had some very creative project

that had happened since then, and it all started with the executive director than coming into the mayor's office and saying that we want to do more public art. put more public are on the streets and the community of san francisco, and start trying to build community. then, it changed to melissa. she carried over, and we had more projects, and we kept coming back, and then, it started to go national. started happening in detroit and reno. if you want this to continue, you have to go and give. it does not happen without your support and supporting your community. i know we all do it in different ways, but you have to try to find a way to do more so that stuff like this can continue happen. with that, tomas is going to talk a little bit about the project and the people responsible for it. [applause] >> he just said everything i was

going to say, except when we saw this ship last year -- i do not know how many of you were there -- and friday night, when the incredible thing happened that nobody thought could happen -- this rock actually launched, and as it was out there, i had a feeling that it would probably land right here. thank you all for coming out. i do need to thank a number of people that made this possible. chad, andrea lesser l --ester -- lester, thank you all so much, and also, to alex rosenthal who pulled together this event,

thank you. have a good time. [applause] >> one of the great things about this art and the other art from the desert that has come to san francisco is to see how much the art changes in a different environment and how our perception of where we are at in our space and how this has changed -- it will change before. it is interesting looking at the perspective here. it is a really great day. i do want to bring up sean orlando, who is representing the artist. it is so great to have him here. he represents a team of many people, and i'm sure he is going to talk about those people. it is a great to see -- many times, artists have communities that follow them out there, but oftentimes, you do not have artists where community is the process. do you want to talk a little bit about your piece?

. -- [applause] >> thank you all for coming out. this is really incredible. thank you to the port of san francisco for clearing the air space to allow us to crash land on pier 14. it is really quite an honor. this has been an incredible experience for us, working with brad and lesley trichet and the port and city to allow us to place this amazing work of art that was designed and built as a group project in a collaborative manner by artists and engineers and programmers from all round the bay area, and i'm really proud to work with them. it is incredible that -- even more so, that this is the first ever rocket stop in the united states. virgin galactic, you have nothing on us. one of the new elements that we have added to the rocket, which

you will notice in the background is the rockets thought, is our intergalactic bay area rocket transport or ibart. [laughter] thank you all for coming out. we have the phenomenon coming on in a little bit. we have the space cowboys, gastronaut and all their amazing food. thank you to all the volunteers. [applause] i want to go over couple of things. first off, braf has a table over there, so if you can, and get more information about what they're doing across san francisco, across the country, and get them to try to dedicate a little bit of time, money, and cash to try to help them succeed in putting art like this together. here is the reason why -- if any

of you have a chance, leslie wrote a piece about why flocked matters, which was a piece we put out in city hall a little while ago -- i guess three or four years ago. basically, it said that public art is art that you own. no one can tell you what to think about it. there's no one telling you how the field or believe is possible with this art. it is art that any opinion matters. one of the highlights for me was went 35 grammar school kids came up and tried to tell different people what they thought that that was, and it was so fascinating. with each piece, there is a different story and a different tale that the community is telling. with david best's piece that went in his brain, some guys said thank you for that piece, and some guy said definitively without a doubt, but " this is a bird house", right? and everybody in the community saw an argument start between

people in the community about a debate about what it was. another thing, the art that was created there has created another space, which is dedicated to art. out of that came the hayes valley coalition that continued to put up piece after piece and are committed to continue to bring artists into that space to show their work here in san francisco, which is really great. i'm trying to string a little bit of time out here before i introduce the mayor of san francisco, and i'm trying to get an indication of how far out he is. any indication? >> [inaudible] >> laugh i do not know any jokes, but we do have someone here who wants to do some poetry. no poetry and no jokes, but what many of you may not know is that we built this rocket ship in 1944 and launched it in 1944. we got lost, so we -- throughout our travels, we have been

traveling through space and time, picking up passengers, dropping them off, upgrading our rocket ship, collecting specimens and aliens, and some of the specimens and aliens are actually amongst you. we landed in san francisco because we thought you would not notice them as much, but the problem is that the customs agent approached me, and you all forgot your cards, your id cards, so aliens, if you could please come here and collect your cards, because you will get stock. there is one. thank you. thank you. they just blend right in, don't they? thank you.

great, here he is. ladies and gentlemen, the mayor of san francisco. gavin newsom thank you all for coming out. -- mayor newsom: thank you all for coming out. i want to thank all of you for being willing to once again allow the city to try new things. it was not that many years ago that we could not put a peace sign up at the panhandle. we could not put a spider on top of city hall, and we could not even put a giant foot down at the embarcadero. folks, in san francisco, for all our progressive politics and our aggressive policies, there's just something about public art where we are not always as progressive as we should be. i made the distinction "public art." there is something about putting something on the streets and sidewalks that is incredibly personal to san franciscans, and as a consequence, incredibly controversial. when i came into office, one of

my firm commitments was to break the rules. and i say that in a loving way, that the idea was that if we could not win by the current rules of the game, we either had to challenge those roles or change them. so what we did is we tried to reinvent our focus on public art by finding a loophole, and this was it. temporary public art. that has been the big differentiator. we went in, and we said, "don't worry. it will just be here for 30 days." 60 days. 90 -- was it a year ago? i thought it was just 60 days ago. the point was once people got used to it -- in fact, we found the spider right here.

she was here. and people started to say, "what is that?" and then, two months, they would ask why we were taking it away. that has been the narrative and partnership with the black rock arts foundation and all those incredible artists that you guys represent, all those artists that are here that are represented in this extraordinary piece. we have done that 20 significant public arts installations in this city in the last couple of years, and that is pretty good. those are significant. thousands of others significant, but at a smaller level. we did the arts in the store front. people thought we were crazy, and now that has been replicated and modeled all across the country. we had a budget with $500 million deficit, and they thought we were crazy when we said there would not be any cuts to arts programs and arts

investment in the city, but we were able to do that as well. so we are moving in a different direction. i will just end by saying i think an exciting direction. i think we have raised the bar once again. the bar was always high in our city with our 40 years of our neighborhood arts program and all that contribution at all of you make with a set aside on every new public projects, but this is one of my favorites, and that is really what i was coming here to say. i think this is just incredible. this is going to get a lot of attention, appropriately, and deservedly. it is good attention. you have the new span on the eastern side of the bridge that is being done. you have the most environmentally friendly development in the history of this country that will happen next year on treasure island. you have a revitalized waterfront that slowly is evolving. organic produce, organic

farming, our values being advanced here every single week. a lot to be proud of. a lot to be thankful up. in that spirit, great job. keep up the great work, and i am a proud san franciscan today. thank you all very much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, the phenomenon will be here shortly. they are still trying to land. they weren't the late, so it should be just another couple of minutes. thank you very much. >> ♪