share the most accurate and up- to-date information, in a defined means. lastly, we really heard from our town halls and surveys, that there is an increased need. we appreciate supervisor mirkarimi's efforts to get this through. this is critical, both online and offline. we are happy to offer our support for any electronic for cat -- format that decreases the number of trees used. that just means more parks to be enjoyed by our community. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> members of the committee, alex clemens. there seems to be general unanimity of support for it. instead of exploiting the reasons why it is great, i will

encourage other members of the panel to take it even further. you are offering pull technology to san franciscans. if you want to find out about something, there is some place to go find it. i would encourage that you expand this through legislation to allow people to sign up for all committee reports, and perhaps a year or two from now, certain key words, but maybe if -- the way people operate these days, you're right, and they do not look much at newspapers or public notices. this is a fantastic first step. this should have been implemented five years ago. the second-best time to do it is

today. >> it is an honor to come up here again. i want to voice my support this. there are a lot of small businesses and smalin san franc. i think they are actually helping our country to survive because they create jobs and they bring resources back into the community. you would be surprised how many small businesses in the city are not taking the advantage of the most basic tax incentives, enterprise zones, etc. the reason i bring that up, if you want to try to get information, the smallest piece of information takes so much time for a small business

person. there are programs out there where you can do stuff, get some of the incentives for free. the point of why i am saying this, there is a newsletter. i do not know what i found out about it. i started looking through. if it is late, i am like, where is the newsletter? i have to have it. it is critical information in a centralized place. it deals with monday, urban solutions. now that have an account and coming in to help small businesses to bring businesses together to teach them how to fill out those forms and maybe even share resources to pay for the same account. this will help every department.

i just want to say that this is important. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> i also want to speak in support of this. thank you, supervisor mirkarimi, for your ongoing support with sunshine and legislation. the only question i would have is, again, i would advocate departments be strongly encouraged to post notices in a text searchable fashion. .pdf is very lamenting -- limiting. people also used for restores

for research. i wonder if it would be useful to have a clearly delineated, how long the information needs to be posted and available. retention issues should be addressed, i think. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am speaking in support of this measure. my name is marilyn cohen. i have a question for supervisor mirkarimi. how long and advanced to these notices have to be posted? -- how long in advance do these notices have to be posted? i have been following the rec and parks commission for months and will be speaking there this afternoon about their lack of transparency and the way that they do things in back rooms and present the public a set of countries.

they're doing it again today. we really have got to make the department open, acceptable, and accountable to the public. that department is not being run like that right now. thank you. >> thank you. before the next speaker comes up, when public comment is done, i will bring the department's back up to speak -- those are two excellent points. retention of notice and how long in advance. i will address that. >> first of all, ross, you are the boss. i am supporting when you're doing here. when it comes to transparency and information. i have been here for over 27 years. i do not get the amenities. i do not have any of the amenities they have, but transparency is great. i have been trying to get

information. hats off to you all for putting together an audit of the redevelopment agency. we need transparency. this is one step of putting together an internship of you for coming here to city hall to learn about the structure of that. our first assignment will be a transition team. this is one way to turn this into silly hall into city hall. an opportunity of a generation through communication. this is exactly what we need to open up the doors. we can bring the youth in to find out exactly what happens in city hall. with this transparency of information, -- i am one of the founders of san francisco government channel. i used to bring the cameras around. i am one of the pioneers. i do not get the credit, but

that is ok. i am bringing in a new generation through communications. i am going to present that we have community new services. like we have the government channel, we need a community channel to cover the community meetings. we will be here with our cameras to tell you what is going on. this is a case, in your face, on the case. >> thank you, mr. washington. the speaker. >> catherine howard. golden gate preservation alliance. government transparency is very important. navigating very city websites is challenging since many are organized to different formats. i have the most experience with the department of recreation and parks. if you are a member of the public, you go to this web site

for the first time, you will see a list of categories, but none of the talks about the commission, meetings, commission hearings. you have to go to the bottom after you spend time clicking on irrelevant things, and then you will find us. when you click on that, you will see a lot of topics, including the rec and parks commission. then on the left-hand column you'll see agendas, minutes, supporting documents. finally, when you see that, you will see the agenda minutes. at the very bottom, if you are lucky, within the time line specified by sunshine, you might see the supporting documents. this legislation will simplify the process and increase ease of access. i think it is very important. i would also like to encourage the supervisor to find a way for sfg to always record the rec and parks commission meetings. oftentimes, there is a pecking

order and rec and parks often gets bumped. a few weeks ago, a group of environments said they would be suing the department. that meeting was not recorded. this was the way that lots of community members found out about rec and parks. for sfgtv attics like myself, suffering from insomnia, you can see those things late at night, but it would be better to get the information. >> any more public comment? >> i am the vice president of sales and marketing of the san francisco examiner -- "san francisco examiner." i want to commend you, commissioner, for having these public notices published on the website and available to the public. i would like to point out one of

the important roles that a newspaper, like "examiner" plays, is a time stamp document independently distributed in the city. as you talk about making this available, making sure the public can see what meetings are occurring every day at city hall, you are suggesting potentially that some of the notices will not be published and the city clerk's office will decide which will not be published. this potentially create an issue because what the newspaper does is, once it is published in that newspaper in a timely fashion, before the meeting, it is a public record that that meeting happened. if you take some of the notices and not put them in the newspapers, how do you intend to do with the fact you are controlling the website? it is not necessarily time

stamped and will not be put out to the public in a timely fashion. i think that is an issue you should consider. i also think that the paper -- not only distributes hundreds of thousands of copies a day in the city -- all public notices are available on our website which is well visited. in fact, you can request a version of the paper. for those who cannot read it, it can be blown up and read. we are addressing not only the print but the electronic version. have a great day. >> thank you. i appreciate that. any other public comment? i think public comment is closed. i want to bring up mr. caldera from the clerk's office. in addition to your previous points, retention of the notice when it goes to website, and how

long in advance, which i believe is dictated by both brown and sunshine. the gentleman from "the examiner" brings up a good point, and i think we should have a chat about that. >> thank you for having me back up. i have been listening to the questions raised in the discussion. the retention piece of it, we are required by brown and sunshine requirements to post things within 72 hours of meetings. for publication purposes, for regular meetings, we have to publish 36 hours in advance. for special meetings, 18 hours in advance. all the court staff works diligently to make sure we meet those deadlines. san francisco, the city and county, is unique and different from the rest of california.

we are required, from the sunshine ordinance, to publish the agenda is, minutes, and legislation introduced documents. especially at the board of supervisors office. [inaudible] [unintelligible] ] they are just posted outside in a place that is visible and on the website as well -- [inaudible] publish our agendas and minutes. >> you may want to put the microphone closer to you. to the point which is important, with regard to being able to affirm what i understand is the foundation of onset of one we are supposed to post something, the issue that was brought up

for consideration is, you have something that is time stamped. you have something that is memorialized, essentially. how would we make sure that that would not be compromised? >> we will be working with the department of technology on the process, as well as other departments to get the information out, and what they need to do. one piece that we are thinking about is, there is an actual proof of service, posting, which some weone will sign off on. that is important, in case we are sued or something else happens, that we are in accordance with the brown act. >> even though my initial legislation -- before i introduce an amendment -- it was

more in the direction of moving completely into the internet, but we stopped so that it is shared with newspapers. we wanted to find that balance. that is my objective to the folks from the industry. it is not one or the other, it is both. it is to increase the orbit of obligation to make sure that both fronts are used as tools for notification and information transmission. >> just as a recap, in my earlier comments, this does not preclude us from printing the other requirements pursuant to state and federal law in the official newspapers. this includes fee adds, general plan amendments, the zoning in turn controls, ground leases, eminent domain, free vacations,

cids, and ordinances. >> i hate to make your life and staff costs life more arduous with regard to responsibility, but he reminded me of the time advance of when you are to post things based on sunshine and brown act practice. what if we were to extend that? instead of the minimum of hours, what if we were to say, instead of 18 hours, that it be 72 hours, one before? that is not before us, and i don't mean to put you on the spot, but you reminded me that sometimes is a challenge. we don't give that much of a preview of what are things to come. i'm wondering, is that something that you think we should start looking at as well, too? >> well, the brown act requires us to post things 72 hours in

advance for regular meetings. that is something that we do. in addition to that our administrative code says that special meetings are posted 772 hours in advance. it's difficult to get something out before that and working with the committee chairs as well as coming to the board agenda, it's very difficult, you're working up to that last minute to get that stuff posted to meet those timelines. >> i know that's a different subject and a different piece of legislation. what it does is it sets the floor, it doesn't set the ceiling with regard to how much advance notice that we provide. i think to many departments, i think that is worthy of a further conversation. thank you, i appreciate it. colleagues, i also just wanted to let you know that we had guesstimated based on the budget of what the city does spend on the current practice of notification that the office

of contract administration guesstimates that we would spend $346,000 in 2010-2011 and that by us moving together the strategy, not only will we be able to increase i think access to information and notification toward the citizen ry on all fronts and modernizing the tools that are already in the city's assets and underutilized currently and newspaper notification, we're still realize a savings of $200,000. in the scheme of things, it looks like a lot of money, but right now we're looking for every nickel and dime that we can in the fourth year of this deficit. supervisor campos: legally every individual has to be given the same amount of time. so you get, so you get one opportunity. so those are the rules, i'm sorry, thank you very much.

supervisor mirkarimi: i'd be happy to take a question afterwards, if you like. supervisor campos: we have some amendments that have been introduced. before we act on the item, can we have a motion to adopt the amendments. supervisor mar: so moved. supervisor campos: take that without objection. on the underlying item, if we can have a motion. supervisor mar. supervisor mar: i move this forward as a committee report on the december 7 board meeting. supervisor campos: great, i would ask if i could be added as a co-sponsor supervisor mirkarimi. supervisor mar: i would like to as well. supervisor campos: if we can take that without objection. supervisor mirkarimi: i would like to thank everyone that came and waited on this. supervisor campos: thank you very much. madam clerk, if you can call the next items. >> items number 8 through is 1 are regarding existing litigation. would you like to adopt the

motion to go into closed session with the city attorney. supervisor mar: so moved. supervisor campos: we have a motion by supervisor mar to go into a closed session. are there any members of the public that would like to speak? seeing none, that is closed. we will take that motion without objection. we would ask the clerk to clear the room so that we can go into closed session. supervisor campos: we are back on and before we turn it over to the city attorney, if we can get a motion not to disclose the closed session discussion. so we have a motion by supervisor mar, if we can take that without objection. mr. deputy city attorney. >> on above of the city attorney's office, i want to thank the committee moving forward with items 8 through 11

as committee reports for december 7 with recommendations. supervisor campos: thank you very much. i believe this is the last meeting of the calendar year for the rules mmittee. again, i want to take this opportunity to thank all of the members of the committee, supervisor mar, supervisor alioto-pier, to once again thank the clerk linda wong for the tremendous work that she does, to the city attorney's office, to mr. chen and also to the staff of sfgtv who have been covering the meeting for the last, the entire year and to all of you who have been watching, happy holidays. madam clerk, is there any other business before the committee? >> no, mr. chair. supervisor campos: great, thank you very much. meeting adjourned.

. >> san francisco. . >> san francisco is a sanctuary city. . >> san francisco is a sanctuary city. san francisco is committed to providing safe access to public services to our community. .

>> welcome to everyone. we thank you all for coming for the opening day celebration of the new cap. or kept as of the new corporate headquarters. i'm honored to introduce the speakers today, who will be

making opening remarks. we are also especially pleased to have with us san francisco mayor and lieutenant governor elect gavin newsom. after the speaking portion, we will have a former unveiling of the new sign, after which we will move inside for a champagne toast and food and drinks. a number of scientists are here. with that said, i am pleased to hand the podium over to the nectar president and ceo, howard w. robbins. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, jennifer. it is great to see everyone. obviously, we're very proud of our new facility. that is a state