we have a 75-gallon tank that we used and we have someone take it from here to recycle. >> so far, we have 35 people. we have collected 78 gallons, if not more. these are other locations that you can go. it is absolutely free. you just need to have the location open. you are set to go.

supervisor mar: good morning, everyone. we can to the regular meeting of the transportation authority finance committee. i am chair eric mar and i am joined by commercialers chris

daly and sean elsbernd for my right. i would like to take a moment to thank bill differently leon and jeffri of s.f.g.t.v. for providing ack to this meeting. erika cheng is our clerk. would you call the first item? are item number 2, approval of the october 1, 2010 meeting. this is an action item. >> supervisor mar: let's open this up to pickup comment. is there anyone from the pickup who would like to speak. see none, comment is closed. we move this forward without objection. clerk next am? >> recommend approval 6 a resolution authorizing the executive director to execute all amaster agreements and amenityment for receipt of federal and state funds.

this is an action item. we have the deputy director. >> good morning, commissioner. i am the deputy director for finance and administration. i am bringing before you a routine administrative item to alou access to grants. typically we receive notification that the grants have been awarded. and as part of the grant procedure, we are required to obtain authorization from the board of commissioners before entering into these grants. we have had a limited time to execute the grants. we have before you a request to continue authorizing the executive director to execute all master agreements, and anything related to the grants so the authority can begin spending and working on projects. all we had was previously

approved by the board last june. in terms of fiscal impact we will be bringing before you all the grants by mid year by amendment in february of 2011. the ccac has not yet been briefed, but will be on the next meeting on december 8, 2010. with that i am seeking authorization to renew the authorization to allow the executive director to enter all grants awarted from the caltrans -- awarded from the caltrans organization. if you have any questions, i would be happy to answer them. >> are there any members of the member who would like to be heard on this item? seeing none, i would like to close public cox. colleagues, can we move this forward with recommendation? yes. of next item.

>> report of internet counting report. >> cynthia fong. this is an information item. this is the first quarterly report of fiscal year 2010-2011. as of seven 30, again, we had $106 million in cash invehement ys -- invehement as and other outside accounts. assets totaled to about $106.5 million for cash. liabilities totaled to $218.9 million at of september 30, 2010. sales tax revenues have been received up to $15 for the first three months. sexeend tours are at -- expenditures of -- are at 2-1 million for the first three

months. we have 93% sitting in the pool and the amount of money we have provides sufficient wick lidity -- liquidity to anticipate the next six months of expenditures by the authority. >> mrs. fong, could you explain about the $110 liability under the end reserve? >> sure. on page 11 we have a balance of unreserved fund balance of $109.8 million. for our organization, the transportation authority fund sponsors many of the capital projects with caltrans -- i'm sorry caltrain, with bart, with city departments such as m.t.a., b.p.w. -- d.p.w., and tjpa. all they are passioned through

these sponsors, but the assets for building these projects are not an asset we book on the authority's books. instead what we have is $150 million commercial paper we issued back in 2004 to fund all these projects. as a result of that where we don't have the option to record these assets on our books, all these assets are recorded on the respondents' backs and leads to a negative number of $108 million. in c0r ands with the budget approved in june, we intend to -- in accordance with the budget approved in june, we will have a positive enough. supervisor mar: let's open up this up for public comment.

seeing none, poub comment is closed. colleagues, can we move this forward without objection? >> this is an informational item. >> mrs. cheng, could we have the next report. >> a report on the results of the november 2, 2010 general election. this is an information item. supervisor mar: i know mr. watts has some interesting news. >> briefly i was going to cover two themes as it relates to the elections. first, what happened in the state legislation, and second aerial i was going to address the key impacts. in the assembly, there was one seat that changed parties. out of the 80 seats, there was only one, and that was a seat that had been held by republicans for quite a while, the 5th district out of sacramento and areas east. democrat richard pann succeeded

in taking that seat. and then the 31st district where the incumbent had switched to independent in mid course. that was filled by democratic henry pierre. the caucuses will line up with 52 democrats and 28 republicans. that is the strongest majority the democrats have had no a couple of decades, i think. in the senate, there was no real change. the one competitive seat had been formerly held -- or had been held by a republican, and that was the 12th senate district in the central valley. the incumbent is off to congress and the race to replace him was between two

candidates. that didn't change the proportions in the caucus. there will be two special elections. in the 28th district we had the sad passage of the incumbent, vacating the seat a couple of days before the election. nevertheless, the electorate elected to fill the seat. it will now go into special election. in the first senate district, roger neli, a sitting assembly republican squared off against ted gaines in the primary. gaines is now going to go against democratic rancho cordova kell cooley. he is a very experienced sacramento hand if he is able to pull off.

supervisor mar: supervisor maxwell has a well. supervisor maxwell: can you say the independent in central valley went back to being a democrat? >> no, the seat went back to democrat. it had been a democrat seat and a democrat prevailed. that keeps the numbers at 52. in the senate, once the two seats settle out, both expect to go the way they have for decades. we expect gaines to win, and we expect a democrat to replace peza. and that would put their proportion at 254615. >> so in your memo, you recorded a rolling wave with the democratic governor, lieutenant governor and both house us. this is the first time in how

long that much of a democratic power shift? >> yes, it is significant. you would have to go back to -- in greg davis' administration, there were prompt proportions in both houses but not at the level we have in the assembly. you might have to go back to jerry brown's governorship to have that dominant of a caucus in both houses. [inaudible] >> that's true. supervisor mar: but it does sound like california is bucking the trend of the nation? >> yes. supervisor mar: it is interesting. if you look at how the california voters voted for the propositions, where it looked more like the rest of the country. but in terms of the elected efficiency, nowhere near the kind of sweeping wave. in congress there is only the one seat that is still under contest, and that was congressman jim costa. if you think about the

so-called blue dogs across the country, a bunch of those were swept away in the wave. >> what about mcnierny. supervisor mar: you are right. on the ballot measures, there are several i could talk about, but the two prominent ones that affect transportation are 22-and 26. i will note that the passage of 25 will have and's yet undetermined positive impact on agencies buildingings. 26 is the measure that allowed the legislature to adopt a budget. i subscribe to this argument, but i'm not trying to push people into adopting my perspective, with the comment penant numbers we are seeing in both caucuses, by the time we

get to a budget vote in june and july, if we hold to that schedule, it will be much easier for them to put a budget together with this governor on time. what that means for the transportation agency, for the last several years the late budget has gone so late that it has threatened to interrupt the payment of ongoing contracts for work underway, and halted noah aloccasions and new distributions -- allocation and distribution decisions. it probably feels real to the contractors on workers on the job when the jobs shut down. that is one measure that is going to have a beneficial affect. proposition 22, if you recall, sponsored by the league of cities in combination with the california transit association, sought to lock down a number of

revenue sources at the city-county level. it locked in redevelopment funds and prevented funds from being shifted, and it also protected tax revenues and regional and state level. so in a transit-dominant community -- and i was at the sacramento regional transit board last night talking about this -- the very important aspect of prop 22 is is that it protects about $1.4 billion. that is t.d.a. money that goes throughout the state, and $400-plus million is the amount provided to mass transportation at the state or local level as a result of a fuel tax swap earlier this year. it providing over $400 million

from the state to local agencies for transit. one of the first things that prop 22 does is protect both those sources of funding. in addition, it protects, and this will be prosecutor for projects like the presidio parkway -- it will protect the highway users tax account from being borrowed and goes a step further and prohibits the use of highway users' tax account funds to pay for general obligation debt service. the legislature in enacting the swap was trying to generate some revenue to help the general fund, and they did. it is booked at about $1 billion. proposition 322 those thorough -- proposition 22 throws that into doubt. some say that relief will be lost. at this point, the pretty clear reading that the general fund is going to be hit at the state

level at about a $1 billion level on top of everything else. there is a provision in there that says anything enacted from october of 2009 through the passage of that measure that is not in compliance is in invalidated. some folks have said the fuel tax swap may violate that in some regard, but it would take some sort of action before anybody would ever say the fuel tax swap is undone. >> i know supervisor maxwell is on the league of california cities and national league of cities. i sit on the california state association of counties, and it was kind of a battle. what will be the impact of passage of 22 on health and human service programs that go to the counties? supervisor mar: the $1 billion that was booked from the fuel tax is vulnerable, is likely

gone as a resource to the general fund. now i have been meeting on baffle of the coalition i lead over the last three days trying to come up with an approach to take to the lendl slache that re-- to the legislature that protects a vast majority of the $1 billion and protecting the fund i have been talking about. prop 26, the key thing it does there, at the state level it does two key things. the first one, it does away with a tool the legislature has had for years where if they want to make an adjustment in taxation, particularly it has been helpful in federal tax conformity. you can combine a tax increase

with an equal amount of tax reductions. this past year there has been the ongoing potential for an oil searches tax on california home oil companies,off set by minor reduction ns a host of other taxes -- reductions in a host of other taxes. now that result requires a 2/3 vote. so it pretty much takes that revenue blending tax shifting off the table. the second thing it does at the state level is it redefines regulatory fees and taxes and requires them to be passed with a 2/3 vote. if you have heard of the sinclair-paint division -- decision where it was used for

other cases, that is now illegal. unless it is passed by a 2/3 vote of the legislature. that is the key things it does at the state level. >> at the local level what prop 26 is requires us to public -- put regulatory fees before the public? mar or a regulatory fee. supervisor mar: commissioner maxwell? supervisor maxwell: give us an excellent? >> alcohol. >> that was passed prior to 2010 and just stays the same.

you will be able to leave that on the books. if you increase it or extend it, if it was sunsetted, then you would have to play by the new rules, requiring a vote of the people. >> one i have wondered about if we were to ever impose a congestion fee impacted by prop 26? would we have to go to the electorate now? >> it could be. you could design the fee and have fight findings and dedicate the revenues. you get outside that and use the fee revenues for other things, it becomes a little more subject to 26. supervisor mar: economicser maxwell? supervisor maxwell: no. >> one last comment is there is a school of thought that the

fuel tax swap, either in part or in whole, may be in validated. now a provision in prop 26 that anything that was enacted in 2010 that is in violation of the provisions of the act have a weir from election day to be revalidated, but under the new rules. that is where the new scrutiny is going on in sacramento. on the one side, the statute actually says the tax, the tax that is in violation of prop 26 has to be revalidated. it doesn't say the act. in that case we could have a situation where the sales tax which was eliminateded under the fuel tax swap and replaced with an excise tax, if that is found to be in violation of 26, and we don't get a fwirds vote of the legislature to restore

the excise portion of the fuel tax swap, we could lose the equivalent of 17 cents a gallon. the other professor is the whole fuel tax swap is undone, and we return to a world where we had prop 42 plus the spill 46 over -- spill-over for transit. and the loss of the excise tax. we have had discussions with drafters of this to give us some breathing room to figure it out. this did not draft prop 26 with the fuel tax swap in mind. it is possibly a casual bystander. they don't see the state losing over $1 billion in transportation revenues if they can work it out.

that is my record. i will conclude with one update. there were seven of the sb-83 campaigns, the $10 registration fee. congratulations to you. 51% or approximately, and as well four of the our seven counties were successful. the bay area showed the rest of the state they can pull off a fee increase at a time when the rest of the state was not even willing to put it on the ballot. that is pretty remarkable what you were able to do in this part of 9 country. supervisor mar: thank you, mr. watts. any other questions from colleagues? let's open this up for public comment. is there anyone that would like to speak? seeing none, public comment was closed. this was an informational item. mrs. cheng, are there any other items? >> yes. item number irks, introduction of new items. this is an information item. supervisor mar: seeing none. let's open this up for comment.

is there anyone that would like to speak? already seeing none public comment is closed. >> next i'm? >> public comment. supervisor mar: public comment is closed. >> item number 8, adjustment. supervisor mar: with that, the meeting is adjourned. thank you. >> welcome to "cultur"

today we are visiting southern exposure in san francisco alison prepares to launch a fantastic new project called beautiful possibilities. we will send them on a two-year adventure crisscrossing the united states to investigate american history and contemporary culture. it is using a traveling road show as inspiration. she will sit down and talk with residents in search of stories and experiences that reveals exactly what makes us americans. >> beautiful possibility is a traveling research project that i will take on a five-month journey across the united states and lower canada. i document this tore on a map that i painted for the project and also from previous projects called the road map to lost america.

on the map i have taken all of the contemporary borders off the map and replaced them with native territories, and then overlaid it with contemporary highways. i have scheduled venue stops at different areas along the tour, from california to south dakota, that will serve as headquarters for my local research. when i was researching the traveling medicine show, i came across this. they had put out an elixir, and it referred to the elements that came out because of the high stress, high-pressure life, mostly because of the industrial revolution. anyway, i was fascinated by the term american-itis, and i thought it did a lot about the stress-related illnesses, and i was impressed that they picked up on that and the 1800's.

i did a survey to see if it was irrelevant element today. i have a series of eight painted banners that are retellings of american history. i am particularly interested in transition history between native and european histories and retelling them as if they were a popular myth. there is a mix of eras and characters and times drat these banners. -- and times throughout these banners. i use the olympics and the melting pot, or things reduced down, and come out of this reduction. and something else transforms out of it. they had this strict code of who we should be as americans, and then i had andrew jackson fanning the flames. this first contact, down to george bush in 2008.

all of the characters that appear are real characters that are taken from my research. we are an interesting mix and i want to provoke wonder about who we are. every one of the characters are taken from actual photographs or documents that i found in my research on american history. in a lot of my banners, you conceal -- uc the melting pot, the imagery and myth that we use in our culture. talking about these reductions of all these different mixes of people, how you distill the experience. that is something i want to think about, collecting the ideas and ingredients, and i wanted to do the san francisco de lexie. -- elixir. we found a spring water underneath a church in cow hollow.