mayor newsom: we were finishing, but i did not tell you all to hold on a second. >> is this on? i'm starting to get a collection of these pens. this is a proud day for san francisco where many municipalities and counties are struggling across the state of california. here in san francisco, we are able to balance our budget, and i'm very proud of the work all across this city from the mayor's administration, the budget director, greg wagner, who has spent a year working on this budget, to my colleagues

working on the budget committee, supervisors mirkarimi, elsebernd, maxwell. we had a lot of work that involve months of work on the city budget. we worked closely with community advocates to make sure we were well aware of what changes were being proposed or coming down in this budget. we wanted to work very closely because this budget document is the most important document that comes out of the city and county of san francisco. every aspect of our service, every aspect about how government is run is embedded in this document, and the public expects us to do our best and to have the best work come out of this committee, and i'm very proud of that work and very proud of everything we have achieved. closing cuts to senior services to make sure the seniors have meals when they need them, cut to the children, youth, and families services have been

restored. our safety net is intact. we still have our public protection agencies, the police and fire department during their important work that serves all of san francisco. all of this is because of the great work and collaboration and cooperation across the city and county of san francisco. this is a proud day, and i want to thank everyone for their hard work. labor unions have given back a tremendous amount, have made great sacrifices. i know that our department heads have done the same as well. just looking at the police budget, how the overtime of the police budget has come down dramatically where it was. about $24 million is now about $7 million in overtime, and that is about the tremendous leadership that chief gascon has implemented through his apartment to make sure we have accountability about how our hours are run there. this is typical work that all our department heads are doing, despite the deficit we are

facing. proud day for san francisco. thank you, everyone, for your hard work. let's get on to the next year. i hope that we can have cooperation across the state to make that happen. thank you very much. [applause] >> president david chiu. supervisor chiu: i'm going to be brief, but i want to echo the thanks of the mayor's chief of staff, the budget director, all the wonderful budget analysts who spent many hours on this. the department heads, everyone here i can see almost to a person was incredibly involved in getting this done. of course, my colleagues. supervisor john avalos, thank you for allowing me to convince you to step up again for a second year. you did tremendous work, as did all of my colleagues on the budget committee and on our

board. there are some folks who are not here who i want to really extend a warm thanks to. everyone who represented all of the different and important constituencies that were affected in so many ways -- i want to thank you for the late nights you spent with us at the board of supervisors helping us winnowed down the budget priorities with the few dollars that we have. this is not a perfect budget, but i think it is a good budget. it is a budget that protect course city services in public health, in public safety, and services for it the most memorable san franciscans we have in our midst -- the most vulnerable. we have continuing challenges. we have budget deficits for the years to come. we have decisions that could come down from washington, d.c., from sacramento that would require us in a few short months to be back at the negotiation table, and the thing that i ask is that with the same spirit that brought us here today, we will bring that spirit to ensure

we make the right decisions for san francisco for today and for the future. thank you for being part of this process. [applause] >> thank you. i think all of us can take a moment to really appreciate the fact that we have done something that really distinguishes our city from other cities that the mayor has mentioned and counties in california. there really is a tremendous achievement because of the way we all work together because we were created. we listened carefully to each other. i want to point out that city employees ratified every one of these agreements by over 90% voting in favor, so this clearly represents the sentiment of all city employees. the truth of the matter is that city employees want nothing more than a well-run, efficient city that is not only a city that is the most progressive city in the country but also the most

effective, efficient, and well- run. i want to thank the mayor for his leadership over the last few years in moving san francisco into that direction, and i think on behalf of all city employees, it really is a pleasure to be part of the process. congratulations to everybody. [applause] >> there you have it. you get all of us individually. thank you for coming out, and as david chiu just said, we are prepared. we see some state the mission in terms of contribution, federal, we are ready to go. we are ready to get to work, and we will be moving on to next year's budget very soon. smile, department heads. thank you all. [laughter]

>> good afternoon. thank you so much for joining us today on this notable moment in the kempton family's life. i'm doug price, the general manager of the sir francis drake hotel. i'd like to introduce you to our chief executive officer, mike tabati. [applause] >> thank you, john. welcome, everybody, it's great to be here today. the mayor is apparently on his way. will make a grand entrance in just a moment. i want to thank everybody for coming. as many of you know, kempton has a very long history as a leader and a pioneer in the hospitality industry for our earth care program and practices. really started back years ago when bill kempton in his first hotel here in san francisco nearly 30 years ago. and since that time over the last 30 years, we've been able to add a lot of hotels to our system. we now have 10 hotels here in san francisco.

actually one in coopertino. 54 fine dining restaurants. during that time, since our first hotel, we've been amassing high-impact, non-intrusive, eco-friendly operational business practices, to reduce energy and waste consumption in our hotels, and we do things that include trying to find the smartest and best price to use that have the least impact on the environment. we've been a very big supporter of the trust republic land and the nature conservancy as well. and we've done all this without sacrificing the care and comfort that's so important to all our customers. and now we incorporate more than 100 ecofriendly business practices every day at every one of our hotels. and over time, that's added up to a very big effort. and we like to talk about the impact that it's had, and the way we talk about it has been

how many olympic swimming pool sizes of water have we saved, or how many thousands of houses that we could have lit up with the energy that we saved. so we decided that maybe we need to be a little bit more scientific about that and maybe have somebody come from the outside and actually validate our claims of what we have been doing. so a couple years ago, we started doing some research, and we now have come to an organization called green seal that is in the business of validating and finding the best practices for ecological companies like ourselves. they came in and they said, hey, you guys really are doing a good job, you really are saving a lot of energy. so i've got to tell you that, again, with 50 hotels and 50 restaurants, it's really a big

impact that we've made. so this week, we've announced on monday, we're announcing today, actually, excuse me, that we're green seal certified in all of our hotels here in san francisco. and we're not only green seal serlt if ied, we're green seal certified at the silver level, which is a very substantial accomplishment. giving you an idea what a big deal that is, in california, there's only nine other hotels that are green seal certified. so with one move, we more than doubled the number of green sealed hotels in california, and making san francisco the most ecologically and environmentally responsible city in california, and probably the whole nation. but i've got to tell you that les more good news, and the other good news is that there's -- we're rolling this program out throughout the country. we're close now to having all of our hotels green seal certified, and that's 50 hotels in 22

cities and 16 states, so it's a rather big deal. so we're on track to be the largest hotel company in the country that's green seal certified. and we have a lot of fun things planned to commemorate our earth care program and the green seal certification. nicky, our president and chief op right officer, will share a few of those with you. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, mike. hi, everyone. it's great to see you all here today as we share this important milestone to us here at kempton. i actually happen to get very excited about quantifying some results, so i want to share with you today some truly staggering statistics about earth care statistics in our hometown. in our hotels alone, switching

all of our standard c.f.l.'s removes 32,182 pounds of carbon dioxide from the environment per room per year. in the bay area, with 2,181 rooms, that's approximately 321, 824 pounds of carbon dioxide gone in the environment. our san francisco hotels in just one month achieved 65% diversion rate. that's about 151 tons of garbage diverted from landfills. that amounts to about the equivalent of 75 cards stacked on top of each other, eliminated from landfill. and in water conservation, our bay area effort saves two million gallons of water per

year, per hotel. for all of our 10 hotels here in the bay area, that's 20 million gallons per year, the amount that would fill roughly 33 olympic-sized swimming pools. before i go on, i want to acknowledge the employees of kempton hotels and restaurants, many of who are here today. while bill kempton inspired so much of our commit toment the environment and social responsibility, from day one, it's been our employees who have helped us move this program forward. it has been our employees who have ground kempton's earth care program into a program that other hotel companies aspire to, and that civic and private sector organizations have molded and watchdog organizations that protect consumers from green washers have endorsed. some of our best practices across the country have come from our bright and passionate

young employees at individual hotel and restaurants and throughout all levels of our organization. it's our employees who have raised their hand and asked us important questions about how can we be better, what can we do differently. they've asked questions like, do we really need two phone books in every hotel room? no, we don't. they've asked questions like, all these uniforms come in on hangers that need to be recycled instead of dumped into landfills. can we work with the dry cleaning companies to change that? it's our employees who are responsible for the continuing evolution of our earth friendly efforts. and i need to give a special shoutout today to our facilities and engineering teams for taking us through the rigorous, meticulous, and at times painstaking detail and documentation that was necessary to earn green seal certification. without them, we couldn't be announcing this today. so as mike said, as a symbol of kempton's commitment to

environmental stability, today we're inviting our public to come in and relinquish a standard lightbulb, and exchange, we'll replace with it a new energy-efficient lightbulb, on us. that's going on right now between noon and 2:00 at all 10 of our san francisco kempton hoe tells. that include the sir francis drake, the prescott hotel, the serano, the monaco, and the tuscan inn. to reward people for doing this, we're making a nice offer available from our restaurants in the city as well. little cards right there. pick one up. with that, i'd like to thank car are of kara's cupcakes who's helping us celebrate today by taking her caravan around to all of our certified hotels in the city and giving out free

cupcakes. you might catch her before she leaves for the next destination, which i think is the prescott hotel on post street. so just chatting with kara and want to acknowledge the earth care commitment, the commitment to the environment that kara's cupcakes has made also is pretty substantial. now i'd like to introduce you michelle perrault, who is with us today. michelle served on the better of drook or thes for green seal in san francisco and we're very happy to have her here. thank you so so much, michelle. [applause] >> i'm very pleased to be here representing green seal and also say that green seal is so proud to be able to be working with the kempton hotels in greening not only san francisco, but the nation. green seal is the oldest independent third party that deals with ecolabels, and it's celebrating 20 years of its

work. green seal has been working to improve the lodging industry across the nation since 1996, and it has at this point over 100 service hotels. the -- certified hotels. the standard for green seal helps to increase the products, the green products, the green services and assist in aiding green jobs within a city. a certified green seal hotel gets rid of the -- approximately 400 tons in average to a regular hotel. that's like taking 73 cars off the road. the strict standards that have been employed to address the certification for the kempton hotels have included an audit, not just energy audit, but a

full audit of each of the hotels. so, again, i would sigh that green seal couldn't be more pleased to be here and to say how important it is that kempton hotels have provided environmental leadership, not only here in the city, but as a model for their industry. [applause] >> thank you, michelle. now i'd like to ask the mayor to make a few comments. thank you very much. >> thank you all for taking the time to be here. i just wanted to congratulate kempton group for their example. i appreciate intimately the work you are doing because it's the work we are doing in the city and county of san francisco, trying to lead by example. we talk about leadership not in the exacts of the spelling lead, but leed, the leed certification

that has allowed san francisco to have the toughest standards of any city in america. we take this very seriously, not just because we're concerned about our global footprint in the context of our local footprint, not just because we believe that the issue of global climate change is real and is now more real than ever. and by no means has gone away just because you had a cold, cycle, where everyone decided it was over. we also recognize the jobs component of this. let me give you brief specific factual example. you put $1 billion -- take $1 billion, and you invest in a cole plant, you'll create about 870 jobs. it sounds fine until you consider you could take that same billion dollars and put it into a nuclear plant and generate about a thousand to 1,500 jobs on the high end.

but if you get in the renewable energy business, you take that billion dollars and put it into solar, you generate 1,900 jobs, but the big game-changer is in greening buildings. when you renovate, when you take buildings like this and their legacy systems and you convert them with more energy efficiency, you generate through the effort of that investment for every billion dollars, over 7,000 jobs. this is the number one ticket to a broad-based economic growth strategy. investing in our sustainable future. you don't have to give a damn, with all due respect, about climate change, but i imagine every single one of you do give a darn about what's going on with our economy and unemployment. and if any of you are associated with the buildings and

construction trades, you're talking about unemployment rates, and i was talking with some people where some of those trades have 40-plus unemployment right now. they care deeply about the issue of jobs. and what they're celebrating here today at kempton is job creation. what they're celebrating is that multiple, not only of the jobs that's being created, but the job that also can be saved because the operation of the buildings are lower. which means not only the shareholders and investors in the kempton group do better, but so do their employees that work in those hotels because they're more likely to be a few extra dollars lying around for bonuses, for retention commitments, and for new hires. so this just makes absolute sense, no matter what your political ideology is, be it you're on the far left that only believes the worlds is going to collapse if we don't turn out every light and get out of our car and start walking, and i'm

saying that tongue-in-cheek, or you're someone that just bleeds conservative and doesn't care about anything to do with social construct or believes in social compact or believes the environment matter at all, but you just have a raw desire to reduce costs and create jobs. so i'm here wearing both of those hats. so extending to those extremes the narrative of progress and pragmatism, which is exactly what the kempton group is leading again by example. and showing the way for other hotel chains, the boutique hotel companies, not just in our city, but across the country, that this can be done. it's not going to bankrupt you. it doesn't matter what the economic environment is. doesn't matter what your a.d.r.'s are, you can make this invest. today and you're going to pay not more, you're going to pay less and your dividend is going to increase to the shareholders and the folks that are your team members and your work force

because you did the right thing and you did the smart thing. so let me just acknowledge formally that, michael, your leadership has has eliss ited -- or allowed us to consider, especially when bill was around, because he would have us doing something. we'll add to the list. it would probably be in a basement of some hotel somewhere. but not the first mayor, is my point. not the first time. but today is only one day in a year. and this year, this day, will forever be known as kempton day because of this example and this leadership. [applause]

>> that's quite an honor. thank you, mayor. maybe you would join us, nicky and i, and we are going to be passing our compact fluorescent bulbs. perhaps, mayor, you could help by as passing out the first bulb. >> oh, yeah. >> many people are f

this building was built in 1936. as a board to preserve the history and make the students aware of that history. the partnering between sfmoma

and the arts commission means they will be more aware of the artwork that we have here, the artists that painted a, and the history behind this itself. >> students came from george washington, and it was wonderful to have them on a panel. people from the school board, those who have been painting for years, some conservative errors from the getty. to have them tell us about the works of their school was important. it represents african-american artists to during the 20's and 30's used an incredible body of work. it is one of the most incredible works of art in the city, bar none. it is a huge mural of incredible

works. >> the san francisco civic arts collection has been in existence since the turn of the century. it consists of everything from monument to golden gate park to market street, other works in the collection, from the wpa era, the quite tower, the works from the george washington high school. we have the contemporary education, where they depict some of the vocational arts that were taught at george washington high school. what is interesting is the artist's and corp. of some of the -- incorporation of some of the architectural elements. they used the speaker from the p a system as part of the design. on the opposite side of the library, we have a large fresco which depicts the academic subjects that were taught at the time.

it serves as a foil to the other fresco in the library, we have academic subjects on one side, vocational subjects on the other, and result is the concept of a well-rounded education. additionally, what we plan to do is the academy of hospitality and tourism will be part of, so the students can share with other students, faculty, the neighborhood, and others to come by and what to look to the artwork we have. >> by working with the students, we hope to raise awareness of the collection and foster stewardship. we brought diego rivera to the city. i think the wpa art work is

characterized by stylized robustness and a pervasive occupation with a historical. in this panel, we have a depiction of george washington moving west. what is interesting about it is the image of lewis and clark here is in black and white, something that is occurring in the future, painted as though it was in the past. what is interesting about it is the very obvious conclusion of slavery. the number of students were expressing unease around some of the themes. the additional mural would be placed in the school, one with more positive representation of the student body. in 1974,