want to use their bikes in this city. great to be here. great for san francisco. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. next, we would like to hear from the chairman of the bicycle advisory committee, burt hill. >> one of the important things about this network is that it is truly a network. it not only covers the downtown city of san francisco, but it also applies to the west side where everybody lives and a lot of people drive. from my house, from there to park for free in this facility was 20 minutes. cheaply with the bike lanes, safely, healthy, at very low cost. all the economics and time and efficiency support that, and that is what this network is all about, offering multiple forms

of transportation to get where we want to get easily, quickly, and healthy. thank you very much. [applause] >> that was a good question period that ends our speakers. we would like to take any questions you may have, and then we're going to quickly go across the street, and the mayor will be striping the first of many lines that will be built over the next few months. this topic only. ♪ >> it is has been quite a few weeks here in san francisco. mayor newsom: we balanced the budget and celebrated we did not lay off police officers.

we expanded our universal preschool program. we did so without raising taxes. we got our budget on time. we did not borrow a significant amount of money. we were able to address significant concerns of the school district by using dollars from the rainy day reserve and transferring them over. we are proud of that. then we kicked off 12 pieces of legislation i signed establishing the framework for the southeast sector redevelopment deal. [applause] supervisor maxwell and other community leaders established the framework where we will provide 10,500 units 30% below market. we will provide hundreds of thousands of square feet of new retail with acres of open space and new parks, literally kne

millions of feet of space for r&d, areas for outdoor amphitheaters and an outdoor stadium, we hope that is for the san francisco forty-niners. the artist colony was preserved. we will be rebuilding the ellis griffin public housing site. -- we will be rebuilding the alice griffith public housing sites. it is 30 years of hard work coming to fruition. we are marking the economic development of this part of san francisco and marketing at the economic development of san francisco for the next 30 or 40 years. that means tens of thousands of jobs and all kinds of infrastructure improvements. if that was not enough from the budget to the hunters point deal, we were also an extraordinarily proud to have had speaker nancy policy out here, senator barbara boxer out

here, and countless others celebrate our groundbreaking at the terminal. we will be developing a world- class grand central station on the west coast of the west coast. i call it a grander station. it is a new intermodal facility creating a regional transit hub. 11 transit agencies will feed in from 88 area counties into this world class hub. there will be ground-floor retail. there will be 2600 new units of housing. 30% of them will be available below market. there will be the ability ultimately to connect the high- speed rail from san francisco to l.a. and ultimately down to anaheim and eventually to sacramento. to have the key terminus there

at the terminal. the speaker was there. she has been extraordinarily helpful for decades. she was disproportionately influential with the great support of secretary lahood who was also of the press conference. they got $400 million of the stimulus money. $400 million will be going to this site to create this framework, a train box will allow for the terminus of a high-speed rail and extension into this new terminal. it will be the heart of the new downtown of san francisco. it is a $1.6 billion first phase in terms of the new frame. then it will be $400 million for

the structural frame for the new train box that will allow for this facility to truly be everything we are hoping and imagining it will be. this is something will also anchor our economic future. we will be doing that for the economic future of our city and for the entire region. at the end of the day when jobs and the economy continue to grow, we will see congesting. people forget that in the 1990's when we saw job growth, we saw commensurate transportation congestion of roughly 200% as a consequence of the job growth.

when our regional economy comes back, the key differentiator will be transportation, alternative means of transportation. we cannot build enough freeways, highways, bridges, and roads. it has to be public transit. the buses and light rail will affect the economic fate and future of the region, particularly in san francisco. tens of thousands of jobs, some estimate up to 48,000 jobs will be created over the life of this terminal and a new neighborhood development and redevelopment. both of those projects are of such magnitude and significance that if we do nothing else in the city, that should give people confidence about our future in terms of the ability to set the course for revitalizing our city and being competitive on an international

basis. it is not about nations and states now. it is about cities and immature regions -- metro regions. these metro regions will be competing with others around the globe. there is the commitment now from the federal government that we will have the resources to development this infrastructure and transportation hub that will give us the anchor into san francisco in terms of job creation and the like. those are two significant things in addition to the balanced budget. this week, we are celebrating a third. none of this was easy. all of this came together in the last couple of weeks. this came together just a few

days ago with treasure island. >> signing this endorsement, we ensure that this site will remain a source of jobs for our community for decades to come. >> 8000 hhousing units to be developed with additional space for open space. there will be the ability to create a new town center and ferry service to the island. there will be a new strategy in terms of the straddle is age -- of the usage of wind, water, and solar. all of these things are remarkable planning. it is a visionary plan to take an old navy base that was literally a wpa project that was sand and rocks them into the bay for the world's fair.

it was to eventually become the san francisco airport. it never did, thankfully. the navy had it for over 50 years. they began the process in 1993. it was in 1994 that things started in earnest. mayor willie branown and mayor frank jordan worked hard on this. we created this new framework of profit participation, the first ever in the history of this country where a news polity like san francisco, a private developer, and the navy came together. each one has a stake in the other's success. this is why the secretary of the need avy was here with speaker pelosi. it will not officially be executed until the environmental

review is done next year. we signed an agreement, the three of us. again, this is all about jobs. this is all about real imagining our vision to include jobs, housing, and a light to focus on taking an old property that is not servicing a lot of good in terms of what it produces economically and creating a framework where we think we will be doing something that will be in the -- envy of cities around the world. it is something to really celebrate. even if you feel pessimistic about your city and that there are a huge amount of challenges, i think people will mark this moment in san francisco history as a really proud moment as we look forward to replicating the success that is now taking shape in mission

bay and replicating the best we have to offer in terms of sustainable values as opposed to situational values. we're thinking about how the city will look imagine how we will look as people in the next 20 or 30 years. i wanted to mark this week' and this message in light of those extraordinary projects that have all gotten to the next phase and level. now it is all about application and implementation having a framework where we are creating jobs and opportunities and revitalizing these areas. that is it for the week. i also wanted to note that we had some success in the central part of market street this week. we're down there with the partnership. it is a more modest redevelopment strategy and new

business just opened down there. we will be doing these arts markets at u.n. plaza. it will be happening on august 19. in a couple of weeks, i will be announcing that we will be doing dance, music, and theater. we will be bringing it out on the streets and sidewalks around the central market area starting at the old navy plaza. this will be happening in late september. we will use it as a catalyst for revitalization and change in the central market area. as we look big, treasure island, hunters point, trans bay terminal and redevelopment. we're going to look small at fifth, sixth, seventh, eight st. and began storefront by storefront -- and began

storefront restaurant to look for change. the national endowment recognized our efforts. we hope to do to market street what they did to times square in new york. large and small, but a lot to be thankful for and excited about as it relates to the future of this area. ♪ >> good morning, everyone. thank you so much for joining us at el cafe. we want to thank lourdes for housing us this morning. this was a really wonderful opportunity for us to get the community more involved. as many of you know we've been working really hard on our truancy and wanting to get our kids in our schools, staying in

our schools, and make sure they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. this effort has been a true effort between the city, the school district, and so many of our partners in the community, and this launch today is really about involving our community, our larger community, in what it is that we're trying to do. and so we want to just thank all of our community partners who are here, urban services, maria sue from the department of children, youth, and families. the s.f. police department, who has been really instrumental in making sure that our truancy process goes well, and captain lazar is here from the police department. want to thank him for all of his efforts and supporting what we're doing. and i have from the school district superintendent garcia and our mayor, who have been partnering on so many different efforts. but today is about bringing our communities into the fold. when we see students out on the street, we're not going to walk by them any longer and just

allow them to stay on the street and miss hours of school and miss opportunities, to be the kind of citizens that we want them to be. and so this is really about showing the support for our students and that our community is here to be with them. and i also wanted to acknowledge regina, who has been really instrumental in connecting us with our merchant associations, and then we also have erica, who is here, who is our representative of the merchant associations that we're going to be walking and meeting with this afternoon. i did get maria. so without further ado -- there are so many people here -- i think part of the efforts that we wanted to really do too -- and lourdes, this is for you and your compadres around the neighborhood, so bring the staff to you, so you know who's part of this. we have our star from tarp, from

sfpd, people that actually work directly with our families who are in crisis. so this is an opportunity for you to see who the people are that are touching our students when you let us know that they need to be touched. so this is really an opportunity for all of our merchants to see what we're putting in behind this effort. so without further ado, i want to welcome our superintendent of schools. our first week of school went off without a hitch, thank goodness. and the efforts that he's been doing around truancy and the support he's been giving and receiving to the city to make sure our students stay in school. superintendent carlos garcia. [applause] >> good morning. for me, it's like a dream come true. i have to tell you. i've been a superintendent in three other places before i came here, and finally my dream has come true. we have a mayor who is actually walk tk talk, stepping up and

saying what we need to do is if this isn't just a school district problem. this isn't just a parent problem. this is really a community, a city, county problem. it's everybody's problem. anybody who thinks it isn't their problem, boy, they really have big problems, because the reality is the impact of truancy affects every single one of us in this great city and state. look at the kids who are incorrespondent rated, the people who are prisoners in our state penal system. it's all people who are truants. and 70% of our prisoners aren't literate. they can't read. so you can't learn to read unless you're at school and you're actively engaged in school. so finally, we have a city, we have, you know, departments. we have a mayor, we have a superintendent. we have everybody, teachers, now merchants, because we had to cast a bigger net. the net keeps getting -- every time we get together, somebody comes up with a more brilliant idea of saying, well, ok, you've

gotten the parents involved now. you haven't had the d.a. involved. you have all these different people involved. who's missing? and the one that was obvious to us is where do kids hang out if they're not in school? some of them stay at home, but we also know that a lot of the kids roam the streets and they go around commercial areas. so this now goes to the next level of saying, ok, now what are we going to do? this is something that needs to happen. if we want to turn this around, and i think we can, the results are in from last year, where it's a 30% increase on improving our attendance in our school district. i think we can get it to the point where it will be a model for the entire country. this doesn't happen by itself. it's been great to partner. this is the start of my fourth year, and we've had such a great partnership with the mayor. i'm stealing the show, but it really is my honor to scombruse

i think a world class mayor here in san francisco gavin newsom. [applause] >> i don't know what more i can possibly say, because i appreciate the spirit that carlos offered all of us, and that is we're all in this together. that there's no school district, truancy problem, there's not a city truancy problem, there's not a truancy problem as it relates to the issues at home and how they manifest in terms of attendance that we have in our community, not just in san francisco, the communities large and small across the state and across this nation, a major problem with truancy and dropouts. as carlos says, it manifests in the most acute ways. if you're fiscally conservative and care less about social justice and the issue of poverty and race, you should care about this issue as one of your dominant issues. because the costs are

extraordinary. the economic costs and terms of lost wages. the economic cost, as carlos was saying, of incarceration. the economic cost in terms of issues that manifest if someone is not going to school and someone is a dropout are self-evident. i think everyone can recognize those. the second thing is if you actually do believe in social justice and you do believe that we need to reconcile the issue of race and poverty, particularly in the african american and latino community, this needs to be top of your community. the facts are overwhelmingly so, that truancy and dropouts disproportionately affect the african-american and latino community. yet we somehow on both sides of the political aisle are playing the margins on this. and i said this with the superintendent, i guess it was your counselors, carlos, and with the district attorney, i

said it feels like every year we're trying to fail more efficiently. which is just not good enough. last year we made some big progress, and carlos was right to recognize that progress. but it's still, with all due respect, not good enough, because we know we have the capacity to do so much more. we've done a lot of good things. it's not as if we completely neglected this issue. we developed some innovative partnerships and programs that really are a model already in the region for the state and the nation. but it hasn't produced the outcomes that we were hopeful that it would produce. now with this new tarp -- this truancy assessment referral center, which is the first of its type in the nation with the new partnerships with the police department that have actually been embraced by the community, meaning it's not just law enforcement coming in to solve the problem in the community, being wary of that. but the community is now supportive because they understand the sensitivities that law enforcement has to how they can be a partner in this. and how we're now casting that wider net to the business

community, to also say we need your help. if there are folks out there in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the school year that are just hanging out, they shouldn't be hanging. we need you to get engaged. we need your help. we need you to call the referral center. we need you to call 311. just call 311 and say i need let you know there's some kids out there that seem like good kids, but they could be better kids if they were in class, not necessarily hanging out in front of my birks or in my business, as much as i love them, i know their parents would love it more if they were at school, and encourage them along. we've never had that kind of partnership. so really the spirit of the day is we're going to go out, knock on doors, meet with the merchants, hand out these fliers. these are the fliers. say "keep it real, stay in school."

we reference the new truancy school that we opened up, first of its type in the nation. we have a telephone number that's direct to them. 437-1700, or they can call 311, as always. and talk about the opportunity to be part of this solution. we're going to ask if they put this up in their windows, because we want some of the kids to go uh-oh, i guess they're more serious than ever about staying in school, and it may trigger a sense of responsibility to a lot of the children, or for a lot of the parents that may say, you know, i've had trouble with my kid. but here's a resource center. here's a place i can call to get help with my children, because they're not listening to me. i get this all the time when we knock on doors and meet with parents. i know how tough it is. this is not an indictment of parenting. this is not about pointing fingers. this is about offering our support and help. we recognize the stress of, particularly parents in this economic climate that are doing

more than ever and have to do more than ever and they can't do it all. so they need our help as well. that's really the spirit of the moment, the spirit of the day, and the spirit of a new school year. final point, we're not waiting in the statistics come in. that's probably the most significant thing, as we're not waiting until the middle of the school year. i just just want to thank car loaches it's an incredible temptation. mayors all seem to want to take over their school districts, because no one returns their calls, they don't feel like they're being respected, and everyone on the street is always blaming them for the quality of public education. it's exactly the opposite. to me, that is truly a solution in search of a problem. it would actually create more problems. in this city, we have a model partnership, we have a real leader that cares deeply about not only the school district, cares about his community and the city and recognizes that we

are all again in this together and that he has a remarkable wealth of opportunity to resource capital and the human resources of a 28,000-member city family, and we want to provide those resources. we want to provide that talent to help him do his job more effectively and vice versa. that's why it really is wonderful to see department heads in the past working together, community leaders that haven't been working together, everybody coming, stepping in, and stepping up. so that's the spirit. and i'm very grateful, again, for everyone's leadership and your stewardship. and captain lazar, for wearing a tie, making the mayor look bad. and eric for his great support and the great work he's doing down here. [applause] thank you. >> i always feel like any more a privileged position, because i also work with carlos very

closely on the school board and i'm also a parent of a middle schooler and a high schooler. so if i find them at tark, they will be if a lot of trouble. i'm grateful, though, that there will be folks like all of you that are out there look out for kids like mine that just, you know, thought that today was a beautiful day and wanted to go hang out. so tark will really focus on our chronic and habitual truants, and we'll also be able to redirect students so they don't get into that pattern of not being in school. i want to thank our deputy chief of staff, who was really instrumental in bringing all of this together. [applause] i think the mayor has made it extremely clear in our office that truancy is a priority, so all of us have gotten deeply involved in it. christine worked ve

with eric to make sure that the merchants were aware of what we were doing. she came out and spoke to them personally. she made sure that this is not the only corridor that we'll be hitting. we'll be talking to all of the merchant associations to find out where there are hot spot so we can reach out to the other communities. this will be one of many. i want to extend our gratitude to eric and give him an opportunity to talk about what this actually means for him as a merchant and somebody who organizes the community down this way. i think this will be really helpful, not only for his membership, but for our students. eric? >> thank you. i just want to thank the mayor for being here today. it's always good to see you here. thank you to lourdes for hosting us here this morning. [applause] i do want to say, this is a great opportunity for the merchants to really be involved in this program.

i know that walk that christine and i did together today, some of the merchants already have passed that number on to some of their parents regarding the program. so i think it's going to be a greet partnership. it really takes a community to really deal with this issue. the non-profits, the local businesses, the residents. the merchants are really the eyes and ears of what's happening along the corridor, so they know the families, they know the kids in the neighborhoods. their -- they're comminets and they speak -- clients and they speak to them every day. this is a great opportunity for everyone to come together and tackle this issue. i look forward to working with the mayor and talking to the merchants about the program. so thank you. [applause] >> we have lots of folks -- could actually all of you raise your hand that are involved in the school district, or tark. these are the folks that can answer questions if for you as