>> i'm a burnel heights resident. i live in david campos' district and i walk his dog. he's very fit. he's been going out with me since he was a puppy. winston and i and about five or six of our canine friends go to various san francisco parks. i have never seen an empty park. i usually walk between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. they came right after the dog walkers started taking the dogs home. to ever find an empty park in san francisco at 5:00, the dog owners start coming home from work and then they take their dogs out. it's often very crowded there. if i go to a small park, some of the enclosed dog play areas are no larger than the size of this room or possibly twice as big of this room. once you have two dog walkers you're fine. but if the third or fourth dog walker comes in, as they will, it is chaos. there are fights, there are

problems, there are parking issues. all sorts of problems develop. another park that i like to use is mclaren park. it's fabulous. it is the largest off-leash dog area in san francisco city, this area. there has been a proposed takeover of some of the only dog leash area in that park by the fress bee golf club and they are trying to overlay their golf club frisbee course on the off-leash dog area. they also have a poison pill in their rules about it, that if there is conflict, dogs will have to leave the area. put a dog and a frisbee together, that could be a conflict. another poison pill. and they have not yet gotten permission, though i have seen them already start to level some of the land, put up posts, drop concrete and it is not permitted yet and they've started. thank you. >> thank you.

>> hello, my name is fracesca. as we all know, the beach is a narrow strip of lands. when you look to the rest there's the whole rest of the world. when you look at the east you look at the homes of 800,000 people crammed into 49 square miles. yet we heard today in the first presentation that relative to national park policy, there's no real difference between yosemite and playland at the beach. if the presence of 800,000 people next to a beach is of no consequence, then i'm not surprised that we have a problem. my major use of the golden gate recreational area is to run our dog at fort funston. before we had a dog, we had a small child who is now grown up and we used to go to the beach. and my son would get sticks with his friends and run up and down the dunes swinging his swords and yelling and hooting

and hollering and having a generally good time. i know now that that was probably more damaging to the habitat than anything my dog would ever do. but if we're not going to leash the children and we're not going to leash the dogs, then probably a better solution is to identify the critical habitats and fence them off and then slay the beasts or the children. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you for having this hearing today and in case i marked my card wrong, i'm a little jet-lagged, i am for the resolution. i am the proud owner, owned by a 12-year-old black lab named otis who is an in incredibly good shape for an older dog. the reason he is in the good health that he is in is because he goes out with a dog-walking group, positive tails, three times a week to fort funston and often goes to either

crissey or fort funston with me on the weekends. let's not pretent that the dog parks in san francisco are equivalent to the experience you have taking your dog to kris z- field or fort funston. they are not. some of the san francisco parks are great. some of them are glorified dog runs. they smell bad. they're small. these are not appropriate ways to -- for me to get exercise and for my dog to get exercise. i'm very concerned about the 75% compliance, as are many people. i see it as the equivalent to, you know, if 10 people run a red light, then you close up the intersection and tell everybody to walk. i think we need better enforcement for people who are violating than we currently have. i think there are ways to make the status quo work with better enforcement, better sensing for these protected areas, clearer signage and education. one of the other concerns that

i have that i wanted to mention is that part of the fort funston plan has us getting our dogs down to the beach on leash. i would like and i would challenge anyone in the ggnra to take an enthusiastic water dog who's anxious to get to the beach and try to get down that steep slope with them on leash. i believe that's all i have to say. also, in support of the dog walkers. there are plenty of professional dog walker groups out there who will be impacted as small businesses if this goes through. thank you. >> hi. my name is susan adams and i'm a resident of san francisco as well as a native. and i've been taking my dog for over 30 years to fort funston for our exercise. and i have to say that i have not experienced one serious

problem in all those 30 years. and you would think that in all that time i would have seen -- except i was around the time a man stabbed a dog. i didn't think that was the dog's fault, that was a human problem. it seems to me in listening to all the environmental organizations that came forward this afternoon, it seems incredibly disingenuous to me that they would single out dogs as the sole or the primary cause of disturbance of the environment without considering human events, like fleet week, when hundreds of people go to chrissy fields and trample the habitat without any restriction or guidance from ggnra. or what about the turkey trot, where 1,500 people ran down ocean beach right through that area, and that was encourage bid ggnra. and then, what about -- how

does this work? turn it over? ggnra themselves thousand dollars over a section of ocean beach in 2007 that was the plover habitat area. that's why they are not residing at ocean beach anymore, because they did it in order to prevent erosion. this is all online, there are pictures, and i'll probably email you some more. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hi. my name is robin buckley. i'm a fourth-generation native san francisco ann. my parents still live out on 39th avenue, where i grew up. being out by the beach, i used to go to fort funston as a child to play army with some of the neighbor kids. this was when it was still a

military installation. but you could go out around the edges. now i go out there on the weekends and i can hardly walk through -- i mean, there's so many people out there walking their dogs. we need more space, not less space. this was supposed to be -- when the city gave the property to the ggnra, it was with the stipulation that it would remain -- we'd be able to use this property as we have traditionally. traditionally i have used it to walk, but primarily to walk dogs. i've had several dogs over the years and i hate using dog parks. i walk around in a circle, because the dog park isn't very big. so you just ends up going around in a circle on a path. i would much rather have an experience walking along the beach. i don't necessarily -- right now we go down to the legal end

of the beach down by sloat. there's an area less than a block long. when it's high tide, you can't even walk there, and that's what they've given us. they've given us this little tiny area to walk in, and i'm disgusted. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> hi, i'm john keating. thank you, supervisors. i've been following the ggnra issues for about a decade now, since i arrived at the coastal bluffs, to find that the park service has closed the only real good disabled access trail in the bay area without any concern or contact with the public beforehand and subsequently watched as they closed down the only large sand dune that children could play on in the bay area, while completely ignoring the last public comment you received on that. i want to thank the ggnra,

superintendent dean, howard leaf itch, smith, and whoever is behind us in this process for being here. i want to thank them for their public service, and i think this is the highest public service, when you listen to the public and in a public hearing. i think that goes to the central issue of what's going on here. and make no mistake about it. the change in process by the ggnra fundamentally changes the way it deals with the people and with the city. what they have done -- well, let me first say, i agree with many of the comments about the technical deficiencies of the process, when there is an analysis presented for impact review. it ought to be scientifically sound and not read as an advocacy piece, rather than an impartial presentation, and there is that risk in this process that's been identified

by the courts before as a process with the park service, which is to railroad through such changes. going to this current process, what is fundamentally different that impacts the city and the people is a change from the mandate in gold to listen to the public's interest, concerns, desires -- [chime] >> thank you. >> -- change to do a back-room technical analysis. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. my name is reuben gars and i'm a union organizer. how are you doing? thank you very much for having this hearing. i want to echo the previous speaker. this is a hearing that the ggnra didn't want to have. they didn't want to face the public who are upset about what they are doing. that's why they created kind of like an easy for them process. when you go and you talk to one of them, they don't care what

you say. nobody is listening to you. there's no record. there's a record of this and i think that's the way that you conduct their business. anyway, we're talking about 1% of the total ggnra. and i'm a lifelong environmentalist. believe me. i used to be part of the sierra clubs, where we used to take san francisco kids to the beach. believe it or not, a lot of our kids in the mission, they never make it to the beach or to fort funston. we used to take kids from there to the beach or to yosemite or whatever. i also have a letter here from over 50 businesses that are related to dog ownership, and they are protesting. they are protesting the ggnra policy that they're trying to impose. i went to the draft that they have. i was trying to find the evidence of some situations, and i just couldn't do it. so i truly believe that this is a process that they have developed to really weigh this out, where in five years or

seven years we won't be able to go to fort funston or one of these places. so i urge you to introduce these resolutions as a way to bring them back to the negotiations table. this is a city. i'm -- i really feel sorry about them. they probably used to work at yosemite or one of those beautiful parks and then they got transferred to the city. now they're running a park with over 1.5 million people next to them. and it's very hard to adjust to that, and i understand that. but they have to understand that this is a recreation area. this is an area where they have to bargain we have to understand each other. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you very much for introducing this resolution and for having this hearing. it's the only opportunity to be able to be heard. my name is bruce wold from president of dog pack here in san francisco. and i just want to say, supervisor wiener, your opening question to the ggnra is about whether this has been done anywhere else in the country

with regards to dogs just lends itself to me to be that it's one big huge experiment. that we don't know what the outcome is going to be. we don't know how enforcement is going to go. we already know, even from the environmental group's own admission, there hasn't been very good enforcement as it is. with the current areas that are protected. i also want to say that i did -- i am a person with l disability. i'm also a person with a disability advocate. along with my colleague, bob, who spoke earlier, i do want to say that i did contact him disability organizations, one of which is disability rights advocates who has now a lawsuit, which is possibly going class action against the ggnra for ineffectively making the ggnra -- all of the ggnra accessible to people with disabilities. and this has been an ongoing case since 2008. also, nobody had mentioned with regards to the science what's

happening at drake's bay, and i think that needs to also be part of the discussion here. ggnra butts up against the city and county of san francisco which you know you don't have control or jurisdiction over since the transfer, and essentially it would leave san francisco landlocked without any access or control over the future of its coastline. i'm a person with disabilities as i mentioned. i have a service dog that i adopted from the spca. he's 14 years old now. why? because he's able to have those large open spanses to be able to run and to be 14 years old and to be almost a 90-pound german shepherd is quite a feat. so i support the resolution. thank you very much. >> my name is jose maldonado. i'm a young athlete. and i think dog off-leashing

parks help people exercise more, stay healthy, and i think we need more parks like this. i don't know what the business purpose is of this, things that we don't know, but seriously people enjoy so much, as well as my girlfriend, family, friends, people that we meet and dogs that we interact with. so i think this is a very beautiful thing to have. please do not take it away. >> hello. my name is dina kate. i'm here as a dog lover -iron/advocate. i want to say how we have a family dog who's 13 years old, and as long as i can remember we've always taken her to ocean beach and fort funston. some of the greatest times that me and my friends and family

have had, especially after your stress with school and work, you don't want to go to a little tiny city park that's going to be overcrowded. you want to have a nice beautiful area with mountains and beaches and very friendly dogs. i haven't -- i walk there several times a week, three or four times a week, and i never see dogs doing anything except playing with each other. you know, ok, we can -- they say that we can have the dogs on leash, but everybody knows that dogs cannot have the same exercise on leash as off leash. and obviously there are many capable of running as fast as their dog. obviously for many reasons, physical condition, age, disability, whatever the issue may be. but that doesn't mean that their dog shouldn't have the right to be healthy and get socialized with other dogs. i fostered over 25 dogs with

rocky top rescue and each one of those dogs i have taken to fort funston. so i oppose the plan. >> thank you very much. hi. >> i know it's been a long day for everybody, so i'll try and keep this short. my name is alison. i am a dog walker and trainer in the city of san francisco for the past 13 years. i also own a pet store in the westport area. there's a couple of points that i don't think people have made enough. i'm at fort funston every day, and i pick up a couple of big bags on the beach. this isn't left by my dogs. cigarette butts that are left by human beings. i've also rescued several sea birds that have been caught by nets and hooks. there's no regulations for them. i have rushed several sea birds down to the humane society that have been caught in those lines. when you take the dogs out of

an area, for instance, john mclaren, and i walk there, too, on the weekends it's not safe. i tell my clients don't go if the dog walkers aren't there because there's tons of gang violence. when you don't have dogs in an area, you won't have a bunch of gang vial silence and people that are possibly up to no good. taking the dogs out of fort funston is going to open up a huge number of problems that i don't think anyone has really looked at. the monetary thing of policing those areas from those type of things happening. thank you. >> thank you very much. hi. >> hi. i'm barbara, and against my better judgment, i'm up here speaking. but i do want to make two points, and one is that i'm against the ggnra's proposals, their report, their plans, because it's blatantly discriminating against dog owners.

if we can't go to these areas, we have a responsibility for our dogs, then we can't go to the areas that are being blocked off. and the other thing is that as a frequent visitor to crissy field, i have noticed that when the park put a more substantial fence around the plover area, it actually helped greatly to prevent people from coming through the areas. so all they need to do is make provisions like that to help and to not discriminate against dog owners. thank you. >> thank you very much. hi. come on up. >> hi. my name is janet, and i'm a professional dog walker in san francisco. i've been in business now for about three years. and my reason for going into the business was because there were so many different problems

with dog walkers that i felt like i could really make a difference. and so i started my business using -- i have six crates inside of a van, so each dog has its own crate with bedding and it's safe. i only take six dogs at a time. i have a first aid kit and i'm certified in first aid. all the things that dog walkers should be doing. i just feel that because i've been doing this for three years, i've kind of like been the trial person. i've done six doings' work, the number of dogs you take out. and what i feel is is because the employment in the city and the economic environment have been so bad, that it makes our

business unpredictable. i have dog walkers cut down, and they'll call me at the last minute saying, can you please take my dog. at any given moment, even though i have a list of six dogs and a limit, i may have a customer add in another dog. so the reality of it is is if you use the -- the second part of it was the fact that in the problem sal they are -- [chime] >> you can finish your sentence. >> ok. they were saying that we have to keep our dogs on leash. as we get out of the advance.

that's really difficult. the people who hire me are people who are -- who have very difficult dogs. and so, you know, taking six dogs down the beach off leash is really a very difficult thing to do. thank you. >> thank you. ok. is there any further public comment? ok. hearing none, public comment is closed. thank you all so much for coming out. superintendent, would you like to say anything? >> i'll be brief. this is the hour's late. this was informative for us, we've listened cavely.

this was a difficult and challenging issue for us all. we are the second most national park area in the country. 14 million people. and we realize that a large part of that is because we live next to six million people who come here many times during the week. i'm not going to get into rebuttals or disputing some of the things we've heard today. one thing i want to point out, we manage 80,000 acres that's within the park, but only manage directly 14,000. but it seems like a lot of the areas that we're focusing on and that we studied for the plan is the same small percentage, sort of the prime real estate, where everyone wants to go, the beach areas and some of the more popular areas, like crissy field. we understand that, and that's part of the challenge that we all face. we will continue to work with the city as we go forward and at the end of the day this will be a plan that attempts to balance the recreational needs and also protect resources, and

we'll be deeply informed by what we've heard. i also wanted to mention that through the previous meetings that we had, the public meetings we have, over 180 pages of flip charts that are being translated and put into informing us in our planning as we go forward and will be incorporated as public documents in the final plan. in the ends, though, this will be the most ferentzly national recreation area in the country -- friendly national recreation area in the country as far as dogs, whatever final details, it will be the most friendly national recreation area in the nation. we take our recreation very seriously and we have to consider and balance the needs of all users. so thank you again. just a reminder to everyone. we have been taking notes, as i said, but continue to comment subsequently through our website, so that we can account for all the comments. thank you. i appreciate that. and if i may just ask, going forward, will ggnra -- will you

be in a position, in terms of interacting with city representatives, not simply to listen, which, of course, is a good thing, but in addition, to engage in an active dialogue? because i think you heard today and you've heard before what the concerns are, but actively dialoguing with the city departments to try to address those concerns? >> yes, we are. and we're happy to work with sarah and phil ginsberg and the professionals there or at the board of supervisors. there is legalities here that we're in the middle of this process. there's some things that we can't necessarily totally abrogate, but we are willing to work with you, engage with you and help shape the plan. >> ok, thank you. i appreciate that. >> you're welcome. >> quickly. >> yes. [inaudible] >> no. we're postponing the hearing -- the aspect of the hearing on

the regulation of commercial dog walkers. [inaudible] >> yes. we have a quorum. yes, two out of three is a quorum. so i want to thank everyone for coming out today and especially ggnra for not only coming out, but sitting here and listening and actively engaging. we appreciate that. this is -- i know it's a difficult issue, like i said at the beginning. any time you're talking about our scarce public spaces and all the different users, it's difficult. but i think that you -- i think that today we heard a lot of different perspectives and good perspectives from san franciscanses in terms of the needs of the people of this city. so i am going to move that we continue item four to the call of the chair. and that we forward item five as a committee report.

>> ok. recommended. [gavel pounded] >> madam clerk, any other matters? >> no, there are no further items tonight. >> all right, thank you very much. that's it. [applause] [meeting adjourned at 8:38 p.m. eastern standard time.]