the juvenile issues because we said so few of our children to state custody already. as you know, assembly bill 109 returns all juvenile to count the jurisdictions. most other counties have hundreds of juvenile that they have sent to the california youth authority and we have relatively few. in other words, the budget impact of 109 on san francisco are not as severe as they are for other places in california because we have been proactive in years past about managing our prison population. president chiu: our next question will be asked by our colleague from district 7. supervisor elsbernd: mr. mayor, can you share with us on the need for pension reform and the need for benefit reform? mayor lee: thank you, supervisor, for that question. i appreciate this question and the sustained question you have paid to this.

the city cannot sustain its current workforce and benefits structure in light of the exponentially increasing benefit costs. we need to reform our benefit structure to provide pension and health care for employees and retirees that allow our workers to work and retire in dignity without unduly compromising important services we must provide to the public. to that end, building on the important work done by the coalition brought together, we have proposed legislation that reduces city costs of long-term and increasing cost sharing by employees in the short term. we are well into the required meet and confer process with our labor organizations. all of you on the board of supervisors will be hearing more about these details during are closed session today. we anticipates submitting the legislation we develop in this process to the board by the may

24th deadline, if not before, for the inclusion on the november ballot later this year. president chiu: our final question today is from our supervisor of district 11. supervisor avalos: mr. mayer, welcome to the board chambers. it is great to see you here. recently, we took two trips to ballpark station and one was the unedited version -- to balboa park station. the other was with our city departments to had sprinted up a bit and had expedited some of the projects we need to make happen there. just wondering what your plans are for improving the site, making it work as a transit hub first and foremost.

i am concerned the mta looks at it as a maintenance facility and not a transit hub. we to have leadership from the board of supervisors and the mayor's office to make it was it should become a first and foremost, a transit hub. mayor lee: i also appreciate the question supervisor campos submitted. thank you for that question. the balboa park station is a very important asset to the city. it is the busiest transit hub in the southern part of san francisco and the busiest part station in the bay area outside of the market street stations. it also happens to be home to the most important made and yard for the light rail fleet. all of this is happening in a neighborhood, not an industrial part of the city. that, i got a very clearly. it is clear the area is designed around a maintenance function.

it is noisy and often unpleasant for people waiting for the bus, train or just walking through. there are few amenities nearby. when we had the tour on march 17th, it was clear to me there are serious safety concerns with the law walkway between this asian and maintenance yard as well as improvements that need to be made -- between the station and maintenance yard as well as improving the cleanliness of the station. the city has recognize the problems and the potential of this area. the bell ballpark station area plan developed by the plot -- the balboa park station area plan recommend the right variety of improvements ranging from creating safer, more attractive places to wait for the bus or train, restoring order reusing the historic geneva office building and reusing the yard parcel for a development that will bring positive activity to that area. i must say i, that upper yard

has to be preserved for the development, not additional space for the art. we will be working toward that goal together. i have asked city departments to take the following steps starting now -- install solar powered signs and improve other informational sign it. clean up the news rack areas. you've got the update on that already. improve the san jose avenue boarding platform that is already funded and will be constructed as part of the larger project. close off the unsafe walkway which will no longer be necessary when the new platform opens on san jose avenue. we are cleaning the area twice daily with heavy cleaning my regular basis. we need a new class -- a crosswalk, countdown signals at ocean avenue and i 280 would be

of the reach city college. this is scheduled to be completed by late 2012, but i have asked the mta to expedite this for earlier completion. i have spoken to the maintenance and safety issues, but we are also working hard on transforming the balboa park station into a mixed used project focused on development -- on affordable housing. it would further many regional goals related to affordable housing, smart growth and activation of critical public areas. accordingly, a residential development on the site is prioritized in the recent development area planned. i'm asking for a complete report for results and next

steps. those steps support a community- led study of potential development sites in the vicinity of the station. [tone] conduct an analysis of current real estate needs to determine which of those parcels are needed in the future for maintenance uses and pecan turnover to more neighborhood- oriented uses. conduct an analysis by the department of public health related to noise and air quality for development near the station and conduct an analysis of the cost of developing the up briard over the bart station. [tone] i think it is fair to say that in the spring of 2012, city staff and community stakeholders' should convene to look at the result of these studies. my office is ready to work closely with your office to make sure these issues are addressed in a timely fashion. we created a matrix of follow-on actions which we have shared with you and a meeting has been scheduled for april 14th with

your offices. again, i think the long term here is we make this more of a residential hub man -- and a transportation hub rather than the maintenance yard has been. president chiu: mr. mayer, on behalf of the board, would like to thank you for your participation. we thank you for your public discussions about our formal policy issues. let me now -- colleagues, i would like to leave this item open for public comment later on in the agenda, which is something called for under the ordinance. i would like to at this time, out of respect for the mayor's schedule is to move to are closed session on pensions. could you please call item 21? >> item 21 is a motion the board

of supervisors convene in closed session to consult with the mayor and the city's labor relations negotiators for the purpose of reviewing the mayor's instructions to negotiators related to pension, health care, retiree health care proposals. president chiu: can i have a motion to gloat -- to go into closed session? any public comment on whether we should go into closed session? seeing that none of, without objection, let's go into closed section. for this item, to discuss our cities situation regarding the pension, health care and retiree health-care costs, if i could ask you to please vacate that chambers. we will open the doors up when the closed session is completed.

president chiu: thank you for coming today and thank you for coming to highlight the importance of san francisco putting residents back to work and reviving the local economy. last september, we announced the city would have its own modified version of the federal jobs now program. if congress failed to extend the jobs benefits. because congress failed to act,

we called it jobs now 2. we have partnered with over 100 businesses and employed over 500 local residents, with 70 of them working in the private sector. today, we are here to announce we saw a lot of financial opportunities for private business to participate in the jobs now 2 program and we will continue to put people back to work in san francisco. we would like to focus is on local, small businesses. local businesses are missing a great opportunity to use this resource to their advantage. this increase in subsidy we are announcing today can help small and medium-size business expand and reduce their overhead costs. jobs now will reimburse

employers for wages paid to the employee to hire to be eligible job seeker pool which would generally cover between two and a three months of wages, a good deal for participating wages. it greatly reduces their risk and cost of hiring new employees which would be a big plus for any business and getting more for the san francisco residence, getting them working for our entire city. this program is funded at current levels through june 30th of this year. there will be approximately 250-300 jobs that could be subsidized by this time. we are here to announce that we still have money and enthusiasm and opportunity focused on local small businesses to take advantage. we have done well with the non- profit sector and public sector

as well, but today, we are announcing the availability of these funds, the increase we have to entice small business to take advantage of this program. with that, i want to introduce the head of human services agency and he will emcee the rest of the speakers. >> good morning, everyone. i'm the director of the human services agency. we have had tremendous success with jobs now. we employ over 4100 low-income job seekers as well as folks receiving unemployment. this is underwritten by more than $60 million in federal funds that expired at the end of september last year. we react to the program using

about $9 million of local funds, state funds and federal funds to target that same pool of unemployed job seekers as well as public assistance seekers. two-thirds of the program has been successful. we've been able to place 460 people in subsidize positions as well as positions with nonprofit partners in the city. i think the shortcoming was on the private sector side. we initially designed the program to offer private sector, principally small businesses, $2,500 to hire an individual. we had about 70 placements and with the help of scott, who is standing here, we decided to double the subsidy amount. that is what we are announcing today. any business in the private sector in san francisco can avail themselves of $5,000 in the wage subsidy, provided they

hire the individual screened through us and is referred to them. we have the budget remaining for the fiscal year, arrived -- room for 300 or more replacements. given the wage level, we think the $5,000 will carry small business between two and three months depending on the person i higher. we believe the private sector will recognize immediately dubbed the of the individual they have hired. over 80% of the businesses that participated say employees increased sales and efficiency. with the subsidy ended, many of these employees were kept on and the private sector paid their salaries. we hope the same thing happens here and 300 or more get placed and add value to the company with which they're working and they are retained after the subsidy goes away. behind me is the man who has

been a champion of jobs now, providing valuable feedback to my staff of around the needs of small businesses in san francisco and how we can design a program to benefit them. before i introduce them, i would like to introduce one of our leading proponents and advocates of the board of supervisors, board president david chiu. president chiu: i am very excited to be part of this announcement because before i was an elected official, i used to run a small business. one of the biggest challenges facing us at this time is our unemployment. i should mention, my mother used to say there is no such thing as a free lunch. jobs now 2 is the closest we can

get to that free lunch between now and june 30th. this was something sponsored by the federal stimulus fund we got under president obama. it was a remarkably effective program. san francisco created over 4000 jobs with over 800 companies which brought $55 million of new activity to our local economy. we were extremely disappointed and congress not -- decided not to continue the program last september. because of the partnership with the mayor's office and the mayor's commitment to jobs and particularly with our private sector leaders, we have been able to move this forward with a combination of continued local, state and some federal funding. i would like to single out scott, the number for the program has been lagging in the

private sector, particularly with small businesses. thank you for bringing this to our attention. we ask you, our media partners, to get the word out. there is still potential for hundreds of jobs to qualify between now and june 30th. i think the latest estimate is about 300 new jobs that could be created if companies take advantage of what we've got here. with that, i would like to thank our partners as well as our friends and small-business as we hope will be using this program to put our people back to work. >> good morning. i'm the founder of small business california, but i'm also an employer. i have an insurance agency with 30 employees. everybody knows small business is the engine that drives the economy. nationally, they hired two- thirds of the net job increases.

is really important that this information get out to the small business community. i did hire a person, for the first person of it. i did so because i knew at some point, in six months to a year, is going to have to hire another employee and this gave me the opportunity to hire someone earlier than i would have otherwise. she has turned out to be a fabulous employee. she is our assistant claims person in the office and does a terrific job. as far as this program, i have not used this program yet. increasing it is a tremendous benefit for small businesses. i would like to ask the small

business community in san francisco to closely look at this program and see what the opportunities are out there for them. to that extent, i gave an application -- information on a job we had available and hopefully we will find somebody to take advantage of the subsidies being provided. thank you. >> thank you. coming from the human services where we focus 90% of our time and effort on the clients we're serving, we're not used to being in the economic development business. about 8% of our placement in the first program are small businesses. let me give you a story about a gentleman i met at our event last year. he owns a car wash and he told me he was hesitant to expand.

what does that mean in the car wash industry? it means more staff. he said jobs now came along and he doubled his staff. he took that risk because it was not going to cost him anything. it was underwritten by federal money. he kept those 12 people he hired and they are still working. his business is thriving. there are dozens and dozens of examples like that. what we are excited about getting 4100 people back in jobs, we lose sight of the import of money pumping back into the economy and helping small businesses not only stay in business but to grow and flourish. we have an example here. a company called book pig. charlotte is here to talk about her experience with jobs nowon