employer on top of the highest minimum wage in the country. there are a lot of high-cost jurisdictions that have significantly lower minimum wages and do not have mandated costs on top. i think it is important that policymakers and also the city understands that when small businesses are advocating for some control in our costs we are not necessarily advocating against the program. healthy san francisco kind of got pushed into the firing line, and i think it has been very difficult for businesses that do not make high income per employee to cope with some of these costs. my concern is that we keep our employees census as low as possible. people do not want to go over

either threshold. they are very careful about that. also, it incentivizes some businesses to locate outside of the city. and i am aware of the study from the berkeley center of labor saying it did not really cost jobs in san francisco, but i would take exception to that. it has incentivized some businesses to invest and relocate outside of the city, and invest in their expansions outside of the city. again, this is about the cumulative cost of doing business. it is nothing to do with the program, which i support. but looking forward, it is important for us to get this information to policy makers. that is my comment. >> i just had one question.

with the health service's board figuring out the dollar amount on january, is that because of a specific reporting time on the dollar figures for each of the county's? is there a way of getting that information a little bit earlier? i think a lot of businesses go with the calendar year in terms of working on their budgeting. if there is a way to get that information earlier -- the end of the calendar year is also when the county's two they're figuring on the health care cost. -- when the county'ies do their figuring on the health care cost. >> we are getting in 2011 rates for 2012. >> you did. >> i can tell you that the

charter mandates that the survey be completed by mid-january. we have done the survey since the early 1970's. i do not know, in all honesty, whether that data could be accumulated earlier. i will say that the mandates -- that number is calculated by mid-january at the latest. [inaudible] we do everything we can to disseminate the information before the requirement in march. we do it as soon as we can and put the information on our [inaudible]

>> thank you. i am sorry if i missed the calendar year. vice president clyde: this is a final comment for my fellow commissioners. you may be aware that the health care reform bill is now allowing 35% tax credit to small businesses for health insurance and the provision of health insurance. these expenditures do not qualify because they are not health insurance. for the medium and larger employers who are choosing the city option for the reimbursement accounts, they will not qualify for the 35% tax credit in this year. one of the questions i will have for the future is if there is some way that these programs that cities, counties, or states implement with their public health department, that these

expenditures also qualify as insurance. i would like to see it. currently, it does not qualify for the tax credit because it is not insurance. but i would like to see some movement that it qualified. ,u

in the legislation, we increased that. there were previously 10,000 taxpayers who had to file even though they paid no tax. we now estimate that about 3000 of those taxpayers will not have to file. one last piece of paper work. no one's tax is going to change. but it is something that, because we were just getting -- the other piece in the legislation was that the deadline for renewing business registration has been moved out to the end of may. the deadline for renewing your 2011-2012 year was coined to beat a very 28. that was moved to may 31. we found that with taxpayers in

many cases planning 120 days up for their renewal give you quite a large time frame. we are a little bit closer, having 30 days prior to taking effect. we thought that was good for taxpayers. "we have done so far -- what we have done so far to assist folks is we had a mailing go out in december explain to taxpayers -- explaining to taxpayers what they are. we are going to have folks saying, "how come i am not getting my business registration at the same time?" we are trying to make sure people are aware of that as a goes forward. with that, we think this will benefit our office by decreasing confusion and increasing efficiency, by separating the

renewal payment from the payroll expense tax. with that, those were the two items i wanted to present to you. i am happy to answer questions. president yee: your mailing went out in december to taxpayers. what kind of outreach to you do with tax preparers or cpas? >> we have a really strong relationship with the financial planning community, and we are going to be working with folks in april doing some work around personal income tax filing and having a profit for that. -- having a probate for that. we are doing everything we can to get that information out there. president yee: a lot of small business owners rely on a cpa or tax preparer to inform them about the new law. it is important to make sure that group of people are aware of the changes. commissioner adams: i think

these are great changes you have made. your office doesn't excellent job. one of the things i was thinking -- your office does an excellent job. one of the things i was thinking about was neighborhood meetings. this is something that comes up a lot, especially with the filings. i appreciate that you are trying to get rid of the confusion. vice president clyde: i think i am confused. i just want to rerun this. last year when i renewed my payroll tax, when i sent in my first payment of payroll tax i also did my business registration on the same form. that is right? >> that is what you did last year. vice president clyde: and that was a change from several years prior. there were separated at one time. then the were combined, which i loved. i paid them both at once.

no confusion. now they are separated for all taxpayers? >> that is correct. payroll expense filed at the end of november, and for your business registration you renew at the end of may. vice president clyde: will i be able to pay both of those payments on line, submit those forms and pay online? i will be one of those people, to keep my calendar close. thank you. president yee: any more questions or comments? if not, thank you very much. public comment. seeing none, public comment is closed. thank you very much. >> thank you. president yee: we will be inviting you to merchant association meetings. [laughter] next item, please.

>> commissioners, item number nine, discussion of possible action to make recommendation to the board of supervisors on board of supervisors file number 101522, amending sections 18 4.69, 18 4.70, and one in 4.72 to ban distribution of handbills on private premises unless the handles are securely placed upon are attached to and do not damage the premises, specifying a minimum of 30-point font size for "no handbills" signs, and making environmental findings. we have a director who sat on a task force. >> supervisor david dhu is the

sponsor -- david chu is the sponsor of this legislation, but it was put together by a task force. we have someone from the neighborhood organization. in the task force, we also had the golden gate restaurant association represented. we have made some changes which i think your good changes to the handle. -- which i think are good changes to the handbill ordinance. one thing donna had brought up was that in the old ordinance the size of notice not to post handbills was huge and big. if you had that on your building, it would not look very attractive. the font size was changed.

and with the ability for, with donna's recommendation, to be able to make it look a little more attractive and to be able to put a tree on it as a reminder of saving trees, saving paper. other components are specific attaching requirements. another key component that i think is a significant change for the better is we removed the misdemeanor elements of it. it takes it now out of the san francisco police department for enforcement. now it is administrative penalties, which puts it into dtw enforcement, which is who we tend to turn to for dealing with this matter. so it is going to give them a greater ability to be able to track. we have also set up a system within 311 by which people can call and make complaints.

dpw is doing a greater education and outreach program. once the law passes, that information will be on there website in multiple languages. we will also be working with printers to print the handbills to work to educate them, to educate distributors. i made a recommendation that we put the distributors' bundles on the handbills, but the city attorney said we are not able to do that. it still comes back to the business that is advertising. it is their responsibility. should they not be posted on the property correctly, or if they are posted on a property that says "no handbills," or if they end up in the street, causing

lictor, that business is the one that is held accountable to it -- causing litter, that business is the one that is held accountable to it. i would like to invite donna up and to have her give a presentation from the neighborhood side. it was kind of fun working on this project together. >> i am with the middle poke neighborhood association -- polk neighborhood association and collaborate with several residential neighborhood organizations. we combine with a safe space groups and neighborhood services groups. it has been great working on this project. i learned so much about how the city operates. i also am thrilled to have a

project that i think is really rock-solid and will answer a lot of issues that many of us have concerning handbills, concerning advertising, concerning the cost to small businesses, concerning littering issues that neighbors have. by way of a small introduction, both my parents and my in-laws were small business owners. i very much understand every little bit counts and every little bit makes a difference. i also clearly understand that having the health the merchant corridor -- healthy margin corridor is key to any neighborhood. our small businesses in san francisco mean everything to us. they define san francisco. the neighbors have been very concerned about the litter of handbills, menus, different

types of advertising, and the ineffectiveness of current processes of saying "i do not want these." handbills continue to be left on doors, on porches, and on sidewalks, in spite of the wishes of the property owner, renter, etc. there are also security concerns with leaving handbills. if you are not home, you do not want it to be so obvious you might be troubling. your place might be littered or might have a lot of different advertising in it. in addition, we also understand that it is the property resident's responsibility to keep their place clean. just because a menu happens to show up on your door does not relieve the renter, the owner,

of the responsibility of keeping their porch and side or clean. that would remain with our solution. we met last spring with the hope that we would have a recommendation on this legislation before the july 1 fiscal budget. as we started getting into the issue, we realized there were many significant concerns that we needed to address before we could say we have a better way to do it, we have an answer. i feel very good about what we've come up with. what we are recommending is instead of a sort of hard to define eight square inch sign being required for no handbills -- if you do the algebra right, that is about 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches to get a square inches. other people's interpretation of

that would be you need something like that on your door, which many people, me included -- i do not want something ugly on my door. but i do want it to be known that i prefer not to have handbills and that i want advertisers who are going to spend their money not to come to me and waste their money on me, but to put that hard-earned money to people that want to get advertising that way. it has gotten to be so severe that i have heard many neighbors who say, "if you put a handle on my door, i am not ever going to do business with you. i do not care where you are offering me." we have come up with a process that starts with a much more attractive sign. a 30 point font could be something like this. it says, "save a tree, reduce litter."

it gives the ordinance no.. we also have an education program included in the plant where we will reach out to advertisers. we will reach out to printers. we will reach out to distributors and let them know there are new ways of doing this type of advertising in this city. finally, there is an enforcement component to this, which is sorely missing from the current process. in theory, there should be enforcement, but there is not. right now, it falls under criminal penalties, which is ridiculous. i cannot mention anyone who is committing a crime by advertising with a handbill. this goes into administrative type of process if after several attempts of education and notification -- if you are not getting it, there is gentle prodding that you are not going

to jail but you may have to pay a fine. i would be happy to answer any questions you have on this. this is the first time i have done anything like this. i am new at it. i apologize if i am not doing quite -- i have high hopes that this is going to do a lot to improve the situation for our city. president yee: thank you so much for your good work. commissioner dooley: it is a great project. i am concerned about distributors versus small businesses. i have seen people in action.

sometimes, they will dump their whole load in a corner. i just hope there is a lot of education going out there from small businesses to distributors. it is not ok just to toss them willy-nilly. i guess we have all seen them on a corner, where there will be 500 handbills dump somewhere. i would like to see as much our reach as we can do have that eliminated. >> we represented small businesses in an extremely strong manner on this. we do not want small-business is to be hurt by this. we would hope that this process would give them more targeted advertising. if we could have listed distributors, there were many things we but that as far as other ways we can do it -- other

things we can do to make sure there is no abuse of the system. we are a little bit hand tied by what the attorneys would let us do, in that the responsibility does rest with the small business, but we do know that the distributor and the printer also need to be part of this process. if we educate them properly, it can go a long way to making this successful. >> just to add, as dawn said, the city attorney advised as we could not do that. that is why dpw will be doing some gentle reminders to the business. if a business gets one or two complaints, they will probably then talk to their distributor and maybe then look for a new distributor. the pressure on the distributor

is hiring people to do the job they are paid to do. that might have to come from businesses putting pressure on the distributors. president yee: thank you. commissioner adams: i want to commend you for your work, and i want to commend the director for her work. there was a lot of outreach for this with a lot of small businesses. i know from several other neighborhood groups that there was. i am very happy that dpw is now taking charge of this. when dpw is in charge, you see action. i am very pleased with this new ordinance. >> i can just go on my computer and create this in any fun? what are the other requirements

for the sign? "requirement is that it be in a minimum 30 point font. -- >> the requirement is that it be in a minimum 30-point plunge. >> ideally, it would be great to get funding from organizations with something like "save a tree. it is not just small businesses. it is a little issue. it is something that concerns all of us. take the high road, the area of common ground. commissioner dooley: a lot of us are involved with merchant organizations. i know that i am certainly going to carry it back and suggest we do something that symbolizes our neighborhood and promotes putting that out there i think that would be a great art project to have to work for each neighborhood through the