place. i feel a lot of people and the southern part of the city have very fond memories and very strong attachments to the arboretum. we tend to look at this that only impacts tourists. in reality, this is a disservice to our residents. all of us have family and friends spread throughout the entire bay area due to economic conditions. people cannot afford to live in san francisco. most of our children live outside of the city. what an insult to this to our san francisco in residence and to our native san franciscans to have to go back to visit the garden and to be told that you have to pay to see the plants and gardens. thank you. >> i would like to make an

announcement. for anyone who is currently in the overflow room, we have seats that are open in the board chambers. if you would like to make your way over here, i have about five or six more speakers and line. >> if this fee is extended, i would personally feels cheated. if we went out and work hard, this fee would be done away with. that is not happening. if you extend this fee, -- i went door to door and i stood in front of the farmers' markets. many of my friends did the same. we work hard for that.

we work hard because we were told that if either of those were adopted, the fees would be rescinded. if you do not do this, you have made yourself a bunch of liars. i think that the people that have come here and spoken for the fees are also being cheated if you do this because what they don't realize is that all we're asking for is 1% per year of the new revenues generated by proposition 9. 1%. certainly, the recreation and parks department enjoys at least 1%. if you are not willing to allocate 1% of that revenue, you are not allocating one penny to the recreation and park department. that is not fair.

the recreation and park department has been cut year after year after year, more than any other in the city. this is something that is important to the people. this is a place where many of us raised our children. my child lives with his throat friend in berkeley. we used to go to the arboretum to remember his mother. now, he will not go there anymore because we have to pay $14 to walk around the arboretum. >> i was not originally planning on speaking. i heard a few things while i was sitting there. i am a ticket taker. i definitely know the numbers that come in.

i am for keeping the fee, not just from my job but as far as working there, it is nice to be able to educate residents. we house plants that are almost extinct. we give them maps, they get to walk around. at one point, people feel free to yell at us through the plexiglass. they come up with nasty attitudes. a lot of times, they don't come with their id, i will explain to them that it is our policy if they don't prove residence. if they choose to walk away mad, that is a choice. as far as working there, there is a daily visitor who came up to me and witnessed a master

bitter but she did not feel it was important enough to call the police herself. i have come across lost children who need to call their parents. if the? this not there, what do they do? it does not seem that people take responsibility to make a safer place themselves if they don't want us to be there either. thank you. >> thank you. >> excuse me, can i ask you a quick question? you are employed as a ticket taker? >> yes. >> how many days a week do you work? >> in the summertime, i am working four have shifts and during the winter hours, i work

six hours. >> in this season right now, is it a winter? >> this is technically 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.. i work for and a half hours. i have been working there since august 7th. i know, if i can. we had a lot of tour buses that have said that we were free. a lot of people were turned away because we were told -- they were told we were free. there are still a lot of people that don't know that we charge. there are some that are happy to pay when they don't have their id. >> are you working today? >> i was working and then i came over here. >> thank you. >> next speaker, a priest -- next speaker, please. >> i am in charge of the docent

training for the garden. we only have two choices to talk about today. one of them is keeping the city going, the other is taking a one time donation from the board of supervisors. unfortunately, those are the only choices we have. if they said, we will give you what you need every year for the next 10 years, we would not have had this meeting. that choice apparently is not on the table. maybe we will get the money next year. i think that the botanical garden needs the feed because that is the one that is probably going to be more sustainable. that is why i am for the fee. i think the fee is the one that will start making more money and the people who are angry who

lives in the city will start coming back and that is basically why i am for the fee at this point. those are the only two choices. this is the better of the two choices. thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon. i wanted to thank you all for your work, especially the supervisors working with the people of san francisco to really craft a solution that even if it is now one time, it can be since considered as a first time because this is the way to go to open up new streams of revenue. i would like to apologize to the workers who are brought in here by upper management who are being used against us and we are being divided. there are a lot of images of

people who are against this fee. we are all san franciscans. people have come from other areas underserved to talk about the rec centers and all of these other issues you have found a way to fund this institution and without making it a private and discriminatory institution. we hope that you will look at what has transpired. if they can use this to bailout the situation, perhaps other things can be utilized. this is discriminating against san franciscans.

if you work and you did at of work at 4:00 or 5:00 and you come down to the arboretum, you cannot get in. the fine print is that we close an hour before closing time. i've spent some time, we have been publicizing this issue. if you can look at those faces and see how people get to the gate and they cannot get in, both -- this is affecting working people getting off and have been the place to play. >> thank you. >> i am coming to the conclusion that the lack of money is the root of all people. this has been going on for two years now. i think we have discovered a source of money. we have never tapped into the money for visiting people,

tourists. i think it is important that we have to look at this if you know anything about statistics. you have to be very careful about the sampling that you do. we started to sample how many people came in after the height of the tourist season during one of the coldest summers we have ever had. this went on for 8 months. i don't think that that is a really good sampling. if you have to think about the future, not just how much you will pay or how much you will make this year but down the line. we have -- that cannot be stored like a painting or a sculpture. we have to continuously take care of them. a few observations that i have made is that when i was doing

chores of the japanese tea garden, even today during the height of the cherry blossom season, i could stand at the entrance of the japanese tea garden and i see a lot of people walking away because they don't want to pay the money. this past sunday, before my scheduled morning tor, 80 people were walking out of the arboretum and they had finished looking at it. they went over to the donation box and put a donation in. obviously, they did not speak english. the zoo, they're charging the residence. >> thank you. >> good afternoon.

i want to say that i do feel the pain of some of the testimony i've heard today. i grew up with the free japanese tea garden and conservatory and the botanical garden. when you watch this arboretum of golf in two and a botanical garden with a lot of complicated collections of plants and realize the upkeep and what it really takes, i believe our existence is threatened. we have limited resources even on the board and in this nonprofit world. there are the demands that are set on parks and recreation is and the cuts made there. it would be impossible to maintain the collection as is.

you have a program here that seeks revenue from non-residents that not normally be normal taxes or support the garden. this just makes sense. this is needed, if we don't get it, we will lose the maintenance gardner's. i want to speak one -- to one thing that was mentioned i feel that we have less than a year's worth of data. if you don't remember, we had a very cold august and september. san francisco, you know that those are great months. the visitation is really climate-driven. we had a couple of great weeks of really good weather in february. we need a little bit more time on that.

>> thank you. >> a final announcement for those who might be in the overflow room. we are ending public comment fairly soon. please make your way to the board chambers and line up in the center aisle? >> good evening, supervisors. i am representing the san francisco green party. i want to bring in a big picture of why this is important. whenever there are great recessions like the one we are in. people want to exploit that.

budgets get cut and then up the corporate entities go to you and say, we have to have a fee. well, we have to cut labor wages and benefits. ology labor folks that have been speaking in favor of this feet are not getting the lesson of wisconsin. this is the same as what is going on in wisconsin. -- all of you labor folks that have been speaking in favor of this fee. people are trying to privatize every single aspect of our lives and make us pay fees or show our ied to get into public spaces paid for by public funds. check out "the shot dr. income" written by naomi claim -- check out "tjhhe shock

doctrine," by naomi klien. i saw a sign that said, no trespassing. on the other side, it did not say anything. that sign was made for you and me. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i just want to say that i am uncomfortable every time i go to the arboretum now and see those kiosks, the checkpoints, which is what they feel like more to me. i think it it is more important to speak a little bit more about the quality of the arboretum

because to me, this is very different from other parts of the park. this has a definite spirit and this is a place where you feel -- from doing the research, and just feeling the essence of the place, this is a place that was designed to draw u.n. and to welcome you. that is what a garden is. i know that this is what this one was designed for and it breaks my heart and it makes me angry at the same time, every time now that i see those checkpoints. i can attest to the fact that before the checkpoints, it was a lot more crowded and now it really does seem much less crowded. that is very sad to me. i know that i would not be able to afford $7 to just walk into a

place. that is a lot of what this place offers. i would like to read some quotes from the historic record that i took the trouble to find. i expect that the necessary funds for the maintenance and botanical gardens will be furnished by the city and county of san francisco from the master plan. the basic considerations, there must be careful attention paid to circulation so as to interfere with visitors as little as possible. you get the picture. change the tax code so the wealthy pay their fair share. >> thank you. >> this will be the last two speakers. >> i am a resident of the sun sets district -- the sunset district. >> the place is beautiful.

if by eliminating the fee it we will eliminate the gardners and those plans will not be able to be taken care of, i am for keeping the fee. i am for doubling the fee if we can keep the arboretum more special. if they end up going up and we make more money, maybe they can open my local club house that is closed and my kids cannot go there. i am for doubling the fee. thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon. when this fee went into effect last year, we work very hard to >> amendments. this would also provide for a way and a solution. we brought that.

we brought that forward. there are many people here who worked hundreds of hours to bring a solution. we have actually satisfied what the demand was for the initial fee which was to provide gardners and maintenance and operational funding. we have brought that. that is in place. that is a solution. we are not here to solve the whole budget crisis. we have had a very focused attention to providing a solution. i see all of these promises, all of these speculations ahead. this is something that has been in place for 8 months and has data there. we have a solution there and that is that we can bring a sustainable funding source that supplies maintenance, supplies the gardeners, it provides a solution.

i would ask you to support the ordinance and take away the fee. thank you. >> are there any other members of the public that wish to comment? anyone in the overflow room? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> i know there are probably questions and comments from the committee. >> thank you. i would like to thank everyone for coming out and speaking. there are many different perspectives. what it means to workers come up visitors, the thriving arboretum folks. this is a very difficult and painful process that we are involved with as the decision makers. i will not be able to vote

today. this is something that we struggle with in our deficit and there is no easy decision. the mistake that we made in drafting the amendment about revenues coming in and replacing the feet, we had to do and two- step process. i was hoping that we could do it automatically. the general fund increases, we can use the money to replace the fee. i was told that we had to do -- i did not expect that was the case when we made the amendment to talk about the revenue replacement. here we are with the supplemental appropriation. this is not the process we expected would happen. we expected it would be automatic. i do hope that the panel here can understand that that is what

the intent was the amendments that it would happen automatically, that there was a lot of work that has already been done by many people in this room and we are still here. hundreds of people who work on these revenue measures who managed to get the real estate tax increase to pass. that was a monumental effort. i think that this is something that should be recognized. this is a positive vote for replacing the fee. this has been characterized as a onetime solution. it is not. this is the potential to be much more. the increased revenue from the real estate transfer taxes, this will be here year after year. we made decisions about priorities.

we fund the entire city and county budget. this includes a wide array of services. of all of those services that we found, $250,000 is about what we would use every year or potentially $500,000 every year. this is what we want to use to replace the fee. i don't think that this is asking a lot. i hope that colleagues, you can join me in your vote on that. >> thank you. >> i want to thank all the stakeholders that have been so patiently part of today's discussion both for and against this feet and thank you to the rec and park department for bearing with us as we try to

understand all of the rationale. first, i will recommend a procedural solution. i will make a motion that we advance both ordinances' forward with that recommendation to the full board mindful of the budget analyst amendments in the ordinance. so, that is the motion i will make said that we can way in which will be critical. second, i would like to suggest -- asked the society and rec and park to provide us with the data on the financials. i feel we have been dancing

around this a little bit. it is frustrating that analysts and us are without the data. i am looking for budget information this year and last year. that will help us are arrive at some of the understanding that they are not -- and as having a more thorough discussion. third, i have to tell you that i was one of the very strong proponents of proposition -- and i was delighted to see such a strong turnout thinking in advance that the revenue generated from that, would it be assigned for this express purpose? it does feel like false advertising.

i think that that needs to be corrected. all parties involved who are part of that process who are now against the idea of the fee being reversed should really think it through a little bit because what that does is it undermines the integrity of what that process was about and i think that people are betting on the fact that short-term memory will certainly become a casualty and no one will remember. i do not want to inflict the possibility that my imagination thinks otherwise without data, if you spend $7,500 on a consultant that is advocating for these kind of strategies, that equates to approximately $90,000 a year. this debate has been really

ruminating for almost three years. you could have taken the money that is being applied for consultants and uplight it almost at three-quarters of the cost by not needing a consultant and help in this society transfer that to what is needed and expected. this is helping us cover what is to be desired. i mean member of the botanical society. this area is for the adjacent to my district. i rarely go there but when i do, it is amazing. in the intermittent times that i have gone, this is a lot less -- this is more empty. i see a lot less people there. i don't know if this is coincidental