i am begging that you make it safe to go home oh city make the golden gate park safe here are breaking my confidence make it safe oh safety in golden gate park supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors, good morning. chair of the steering committee of the blood of this the neighborhood association. we serve been neighbors around the park, near golden gate park. we have over 400 members and serve 45 under households. i am honored to be a member of the park police stations community advisory board. thank you for calling this hearing, especially supervisor chu and mar.

we fully support the remarks of the general manager, investor kern, police captains, and commend the work you have been doing cover due to consider safety issues not only in golden gate park, but in parks throughout the city, especially in today's tough budget times you are facing, we urge you to consider adequate budgets for part patrol, police department resources, and the park's capital needs to make them safer. we urge further common rules for all parks that will include late night, early morning closing hours. as you consider that, you will hear people object. the truth is, illegal activity makes parks unwelcoming and dangerous for all and a drain resources that are needed to maintain the parks. when i am denied the right to enjoy my park because of others

claimed rights, it is time to clarify the rules. make sure there is respect for everybody and level the playing field. the rules can be written to ensure parks are safely available to all citizens and the users. i think you heard testimony from today that more rules are needed to clarify what is appropriate and legal and illegal and provided foresman tools. i am sure my comments are echoed by leadership of the other organizations and neighborhoods near golden gate park. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. the speaker please. >> supervisors, my name is greg silar. i just want to voice my concern about thgolden gate park. everyone should be doing their

part to make this icon of the city safe and accessible to everyone. like everyone, i use this part, at minimum, of which were times a week. increasingly, i have become afraid to bring my family because of all of the activity occurring in the park lately. especially at night, but also during the day. i continue to see graffiti, violence against homelessness, or alcohol and drug abuse through a park. as a citizen, i do not want the part to decline to a point where i no longer use it. i would urge rec and parks, please department, board of supervisors, to do everything to preserve this icon of the city. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. i in the community manager of the grove festival. as one of the largest parks in

your district, you have always been a supporter of the festival and a supporter of stern grove. we have been the victim to countless acts of graffiti, vandalism and property damage. it is difficult to know when these acts occur, but we can only assume at night. about two years ago, that before an opening concert, vandals broke into one of our buildings and damaged the door and stole five radius. that same year, a dressing room was broken into and suffered $5,000 worth of damages. each season with countless numbers of tax of vandalism. all of these acts result in financial losses, not only for the park department, but also for the festival, at a time when neither can afford additional

cost. we fully enforced enhance patrols not only in golden gate park, but in all the parks in the system. thank you for your time. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors, my name is grant. i have served the city and county of santa cisco as the director of the conservatory of flowers as well as the botanical garden in golden gate park. i am here today to complement the hard work of all of our city gardeners and custodial staff, as well as part control. i think many times their extraordinary efforts go unnoticed and i want to compliment them on that. i have also been impressed with the improved coordination and communication between the richmond station and park station as well as part patrol.

anything that can be done to increase the resources to do an even better job would be appreciated and will come. i am also here today to speak on behalf of the hundreds of volunteers who have come into golden gate park on a daily basis and contributed an immense amount of time to help us serve the visiting public and local community at our major garden attractions and museums. it probably goes without saying that every time there is an unfortunate incident with in the park, and the media communicates that outwardly, there is a cause and effect. we noticed a decrease in our visitation, as well as an increase in the amount of concern our volunteers have, in terms of coming into the park. especially in the evening hours, we are trying to expand accessibility into our facilities. the concerns that were mentioned

earlier, due to limited lighting, visibility of patrol, those all contribute to our challenges. we all worked hard within these economic times to manage a very fragile budgets. certainly, improved safety and improved activation and mintz of the parts will come together to help us to a better job and serve the public. with that, i would urge you to be aggressively asserted in supporting increased funding and resources for increased security, activation, and maintenance levels within our parks. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. i am wearing two hats today. the first is as the chair of the park rangers coalition. this is a brochure that we created. i think you will find it is

helpful of reach. we support rangers in golden gate and throughout the city. i would also like to say, as co- chair of the golden gate park preservation alliance, we have concerns about many of the issues that are brought up, especially regarding lighting. if you read the statistics, more crime happens when there are more people in the park. the western end of the park is very quiet. introducing stadium lighting for the soccer fields is totally inappropriate and frankly overkill. impact on wildlife must be considered. night lighting has an negative impact on wildlife. there are dark sky impacts, and packs on tree roots. more lighting does not always decrease crime. i know rec and parks wants to preserve our parks and protect

our visitors, but let's be conscious of an approach to light everything. there is it an issue of where we are going in golden gate park. there has always been pressure to develop golden gate, and it has been increasing in recent years. again, we support park users safety but we are concerned this will be used as a reason to bring in a private development into golden gate park. i am submitting a lot -- a letter from the sierra club expressing the concerns about the proposed increase in lighting and a brochure on the impacts of night lighting on wildlife, and there is a great deal more information i can provide. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors, san francisco botanic gardens society. we consider this a primary

concern for the people that enjoy the 55 acres of botanical gardens. there are 10,000 k-5-aged school children that come through the park for education. there have been some incidents is that have caused us concern. these all the most of vulnerable of our citizens and we want to make sure they are safe and that their families and teachers will continue to welcome them and urge them to come to these programs. even though the botanical garden is fenced, we have lost property and equipment. we had an approximately 400- pound bell cut from chains and taken away in the middle of the night.

there are large things that disappear at night. we have also had a break-in at the library, thousands of dollars worth of paintings were taken. i want to commend the richmond station for taking seriously that particular theft. those pieces have been recovered, by the way. otherwise, i want to commend marcus from park control because they always show up when we need them. we want to recommend anything that you can do to support that. supervisor chu: thank you. are there any members from the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. first off, i want to say thank- you to the recreation and parks department, to the public speakers, and of course to the richmond part stations to come

and present information to us. i know we have a number of items on the agenda today but i would like to continue this item to the call of the chair. i think there are still some follow-up items to discuss, and in particular, what i would like to request from the pd is year- to-year statistics in terms of what we have seen in the golden gate park. without knowing where we were last year, two years ago, it is hard to give context on the level of crime we have. it is also useful to understand that in the context of the city. over all, golden gate park exists within an urban area. to expect that we have a certain level of crime in an urban city, whether it is in neighborhoods, in the parks, we would all like it to be zero, but realistically, what are we seeing in terms of trends?

are we seeing more or less violent crimes? from the recreation and parks department, what would be helpful to understand is a little bit more in-depth understanding of where you identify your problem areas to be. we have had a lot of conversations on how recreation and parks department staff is hamstrung to address a lot of different things, having to deal with a lot of side issues, like illegal dumping. part of what was gleaned from the conversation between the police station and where there is had seen more prevalent types of crimes and what we can do to improve the physical environment to deter crime, those would be areas that i would be interested in finding out more fully from the recreation and parks department, as well as the potential priorities. you clearly cannot address all of them overnight, or even over a year, given the lack of resources we had to provide.

i want to understand what your priorities are. i think that is all that i have got. any comments from my colleagues? seeing none, public comment is closed. thank you. why don't we continue this item to the call of the chair. if we could recess for

supervisor chu: thank you very much. we are back from recess. please call item no. 5. >> item #5. hearing on park safety within ordinance amending public works code section 184.78 to allow city neighborhood banners, as defined in section 184.78, to be posted on the path of gold lamp posts lining market street, and supervisor dufty: thank you for looking -- welcoming me back to the committee after my brief departure. the rainbow flag is an iconic image of the lgbtq committee -- community around the world. you can go to great cities of the world like madrid and paris

and see the rainbow banner on polls that designates neighborhoods and communities that have a preponderance of people from the lgbtq community in the conference -- in the city. currently they are not be able -- not legal because of the legislation establishing the path on market street that in 1991. if you are in the castro neighborhood there are banners there and they are well maintained and clean. and they are well managed. because of these provisions, market street is not able to have a replacement. i would like to start an

acknowledgement from the bureau street map of public works. it has been difficult for them because of all laws in practice not being in sync with each other. which is difficult. i would like to acknowledge that this recipe -- legislation has been referred for historic legislation recommendation committee and i am asking colleagues that if action can be taken it would be to send this item forward without recommendation. mary rodgers is here from the planning department to speak to that process going forward. i would like to acknowledge my good friend, peter lewis. someone who has been very active in the preservation of the neighborhood. the recognition of all of the contributing preservation buildings.

i feel that preservation in this case needs to be broader in view. in that sense, what we are talking about is also the identity and sustainability of the castro as an lgbtq community. the issue is that there are not many neighborhoods that are left that really have a cultural and social identity that strong. there has been work from the planning department to recognize when a contribution is made by this community to the history of the castro. given the creation of the flag in this city, it is important that we recognize that the rainbow flag is a neighborhood manner for the castro. i have a couple of changes i

would like to make in recognition of the feedback i have received. madam clerk, madame chair, if i compare pass copies to you -- what i would propose is that we would address the issue of fasteners. this has been the major concern raised, that the ones currently being used might be causing rusting on the path of gold historic light fixtures. so, this language would recognize that it is a city landmark and all attachments must be made with fasteners that are reversible and causing no damage pursuant to planning code 1006, temporary modification shall be sent to the commission for certificate of appropriateness. the language worked out with the city attorney would make sure that fasteners and in the future would not be damaging to the polls.

i have further discussed with the city attorney that i would further like to make a modification to the language on page 4 saying that the rainbow flag symbolically representing the neighborhood such as the ones adjacent to the neighborhood, adding that starting at church street west of the castro street, again i am trying to recognize concerns that peter lewis brought to me about the identity in the entrance that market street has. beginning them at church street and carrying them through. colleagues, i would appreciate if perhaps these items could be amended into the legislation. supervisor chu: to clarify, the first amendment reading, 200, where did that get to? >> i believe it will go into the findings.

>> as to that amendment, that language would go into scout -- subsection f on page 5. supervisor chu: just a clarifying question, does this amendment operate retroactively to existing banners? rainbow banners on the path of glory, are they going to get new fasteners? >> i cannot speak to the fasteners that are currently used and which ones can be used from this point forward, that would have to be enacted by the board. >> the banners have been replaced on castro and 18th

street. there are new fixtures and apparatus. subsequent to this legislation being adopted we would have fasteners' more suitable. supervisor avalos: dpw has agreed to that? >> good morning, supervisors. can you repeat the question, please? supervisor avalos: with that these new fasteners being proposed with the existing lambeau banners, would they be replaced with the new fasteners being proposed? >> honestly, i am not aware of that. we do not provide them. they are installed privately by private installations.

in our current guidelines throughout the city we do require protective material between the actual polls and the metal bracket so that it does not stretch. the problem has always been endorsement. we do not have the materials or supplies to have our inspectors basically climbing up a pole to check that. >> i would also add that part of the problem has been that because they have been up without coming down, they only come down when they are in tatters or bad shape and they have been difficult to maintain. maintenance has been interpreted as removing them. i think that they could get a lot better and i am certainly committed to that. market districts have been involved in the replacement of the banners and i think that they would be very active in making sure that we have good,

well fastened banners. supervisor avalos: actually i think it is fitting to have the banner on that ramp. i just want to make sure that moving forward we are doing as little damage as possible. supervisor chu: clarification on the second amendment on page 4, adding the words that began on line 10 adjacent to the neighborhood, was there anything after that? >> starting at church street and ending at castro street. i neglected to add that the city attorney and planning department need to add subsection b that a duly noticed public hearing the historic preservation commission consider this ordinance document on file with the board of supervisors

simply acknowledging that hpc will be considering this measure as they are required to do. we do not require their approval prior to moving this out, but we do feel that the most appropriate thing would be to recommend and reflect this legislation once these amendments are adopted. supervisor chu: to the city attorney, these are non- substantive in nature? >> correct. supervisor chu: let's take up these items after public comment. are there any other members speaking in terms of preservation? >> i think they are fine. supervisor chu: let's open this item for public comment. are there members of the public that wish to speak? i have a few cards here. [reads names]

>> hello, super rite -- supervisors. as the supervisor pointed out, for the last five years the neighborhood association has been working hard to complete the survey work on the neighborhood. on march 17 of this year the same company that oversaw the opening of the city hall palace of fine arts and capital building, they did our survey and it was unanimously adopted by the hpc on march 17. we are very pleased about that. by and reference to the supervisors changes in the amendment, we are still very concerned as this is a citywide issue that will create a precedent for banners and no matter what kind they are on

historic lampposts. yet more than anything we are very concerned that you are considering this issue today without it being considered by the hpc first. what we would ask you to do is not to pass it on to the full board yet and let the hpc have their say. it is just two days away. i do not understand the rush. in reference to the compromise, after word perhaps we can sit down. but for reference we would but not want to have any permanent banners first off. but if there was any compromise the final statement of survey goes to octavia n. sanchez.

requiring the director to take down any abandoned and illegal sign image. considering they have not been doing it for the last 10 years. in addition to that, until recently they had changed the definition. can i finish my sentence? supervisor chu: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> speaking personally as a resident of the boy and a vis the park neighborhood, the castro is my neighborhood for shopping and dining. i am familiar with the banners on the light poles in the area. i very strongly support putting them on the path of gold fixtures as well all along market street. i know that a number of people wonder why they are not there

and if the supervisors proposed legislation addresses that and makes it possible, i see no problem with the precedents being set. this is a specific bank in a specific neighborhood and of others wish to come forward, it will provide good groundwork for that. i urge you to consider the legislation to clear the obstacles that have made this a leftover, tattered banner situation. personally i know from work that i've done that new banners can be properly, safely, and appropriately installed with full respect to the historic resources involved. thank you. >> good morning. i am an architect and a longtime neighborhood activist in the upper market. i actually designed harvey milk plaza years ago. i