a creditor to sign the papers. like anything else, if you go to university and you get something to write, you have to study. the next time you go back, you have questions for the professor. the same applies to hear. elderly citizens need this help. particularly people who do not speak the language. if you do not have a creditor, you need an attorney, and people do not have the financial resources. the organization that i went to, i must say was extraordinarily helpful and gave me a lot of support, and it works. so, please, keep it going. thank you very much. >> supervisors.

thank you for hearing us today. i am here with a confession -- i'd died at a nert triage drill this year. i was triaging a victim and brushed against a wire, and our instructor killed me. embarrassing? yes, but i am so thankful that we have our professional fire department nert instructors to teach us these lessons that will save our lives. when you send volunteers out to help our neighbors after a disaster, our lives are on the line. that damaged building we enter to search for an injured or missing neighbor in a heartbeat can become a death trap.

it is. nert instructors that help us learn to be safe and effective. we do not ask for salaries. we do not ask for benefits. but what we do ask for are the best instructors the city can give us. and to me, those instructors are our san francisco fire department professional firefighters who live what they teach every day. if you must cut nert, please do it in a way that will not devastate our program. we need all our instructors to keep us safe and effective for you and for our family and city. >> good afternoon. i am president of the merced extension triangle neighborhood association and proud member of nert volunteers.

your story here to support the full funding for the nert program. the comment penny wise and pound foolish its the proposed cuts perfectly. you have a program that trains volunteers to act as a first line of defense in emergency situations. the more certified nert volunteers, the better the resources for the population, especially for the disabled, for instance, and for the elderly. at a time when the emergency resources continue to be cut and when resources will be stretched to the limit during a disaster, it is imperative that we have a nert force that provides services needed during any disaster. full funding for the nert program is cost-effective. citizens of san francisco will be watching each of you vote on this important public safety budget item. thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. next speaker please.

>> i am with merced extension triangle neighborhood association. why are we even considering cutting funding at all, much less buy half, for nert? i took the training offered by the fire department, and one of the first things we learned in the class, which makes perfect sense to me, is that when the big one hits, which is a certainty, emergency personnel will not be able to even come close to responding to all the catastrophic occurrences that will happen. nert is an excellent way to empower the citizens to help themselves, to be a vital link in containment of the damage, to band together as communities to do something about a harrowing experience that threatens their very existence. nert is a perfect partnership between government and citizens to provide direction to the citizens at a time of peril. guidelines on how to shut off

power, help people in need, and so many other topics covered in the glasses will help people not only to deal with earthquakes but other emergency situations such as terrorist attacks, etc. at a time when the mantra seems to be the citizens cannot expect government to do what they can do for themselves, nert is a terrific way for government personnel -- the fire department -- to impart knowledge and tools to the citizens to help in the effort to restore and revitalize the city community by community. do not cut this program. thank you. >> good afternoon, members of the budget and finance committee. i am here to speak in support of the neighborhood emergency response team members and the firefighters who teach them and assist them with drills. i value the professional firefighters from home i receive my basic and recurring nert training. it is not that i want nert

instructors to be paid overtime, but i wanted to be so identified as instructors who have a passion for nert and the ability to teach it, and is that i did not want them either to be pulled from class to fight a fire or respond to a medical emergency or to be pulled from a fire station to teach a nert class. for over 30 years, i worked as a nurse in the operating room at ucsf. the number staff on duty shift of each day had to match the types of surgery is block schedule for each day. an operating room is like a fire station in that there's not always a patient who needs care at a particular moment. that does not mean there will not be won in a few minutes, and it is imperative to have staff available are trained to care for the patient when he or she actually needs the care. before i retired, i spent my last three years working nights. even without patients needing care, there were operating rooms to stock and preparations to be made for procedures get up for the next day. there were emergency cards to

check so that help would be available for patients. also the firefighters to do not have a firefight or patient to treat have things to do during the downtime. they maintain their bodies, their minds, their fire stations, their equipment, and their apparatus. more importantly, they are available to serve the residents and visitors of san francisco with fire suppression and advanced life support. the service should not be jeopardized by their assigned to teach nert while assigned to a station pure i urge you to provide qualified and passionate instructors. thank you for your consideration. supervisor chu: thank you. >> thank you, members of the budget and finance committee. i am evident district 8 where i live with my wife and our 1- year-old son. so you to speak to you about the neighborhood emergency response team. our model is to be the most good for the most people, and i am certain that as a goal that we

share with you. yours is not an easy task, and in the event of a catastrophe, the task of our professional responders in the city will not be easy. they will be overwhelmed. it is known. an earthquake will happen. that is known. what is not known as when it will happen. we need more neighbors, more people, more employees who come to the city every day to be able to take care of themselves, take care of their families, and take care of their neighbors. i urge you to maintain the funding of the nert program and allow us to continue to be prepared when the earthquake hits. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good afternoon. i am a resident of potrero hill and the chairperson of the nert advisory board.

since for neighborhood emergency response team training, and i want you to keep those words in mind as you consider the budget. each one of those words has a very particular value to the program and to what we can and will do. as you have heard so eloquently from our other speakers, and i'm sure you are seeing a lot of letters -- at least i hope you are -- that we will speak more eloquently, better, and more personally about what we can do. rather than repeat a lot of that, i want to say one thing about the focus for the budget analyst statement seems to be the issue of overtime for our instructors. if you do a cost analysis of it, for the 26 hours of training and drill instruction that we received, that 260,000 multiplied by 1500 nert's at less than $7 an hour -- this is not a value you can get in any kind of education at all, and it is an education that as we have heard already teaches people to

take care of themselves and their neighbors and our city. we know you are facing difficult decisions. we cannot ask you to do more than this -- please consider carefully the benefits, the cost, the need for nert. thank you. >> these pictures represent faces of our nert instructors which we would like you to have. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you very much. next speaker please, and thank you to nert. >> i work at seventh as good general, and i am here to speak against the prop j contracting out of our community. i listened to some of the nurses

who came before, a full disclosure, 3 our brand-new who have hardly been at san francisco general at all, so i think you need to take that into account when you listen to their testimony. the other thing is we need to keep the same kind of security. our patients deserve to be safe. even if there were five or six nurses up set in the emergency room, they do not have the right to take away security from the rest of us who are safe and do want to keep the ip's at the hospital. i know there is an issue with the sheriffs, but it is not about them. outside security guards who will not be experienced with our patients -- it will take years for them to build up to the same level of the people we already have, and in the meantime, we all suffer and the patients suffer. it cannot always just be about money. it is about the safety of the people that come to san francisco general, and they deserve to have a safe environment. the other thing i wanted to speak about is when i was

listening about the l.i.f.e. program, i would like to support that, too. i hope you do not cut that. 25 years ago, we had a young resident who came and got diagnosed with hiv positive. he was from a strict muslim background. his family turned on him. he did not know what to do, so he checked himself into a hotel room downtown and blew his brains out. i wish he would have had a program like that to go to and somebody to help him in his time of need, so i really hope you do not cut that, either. but please do not contract out our security in san francisco general. [applause] supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker. >> i live in scott wiener's district, and i have worked with ross mirkarimi before. i did work at san francisco general, and you're so glad for the services that the

institutional police provided. i would like to question the $4 million figure that the doctors said would be saved by privatization. countless studies have shown that those figures are not always correct, so i would like to really look at at cost savings. and as a member of the mission community and someone work there, there's institutional police are needed every day. they are needed every second of. with respect to the previous speakers, san francisco general sometimes is not a very idyllic place to work. it is, as you know, very large, institutional. it is a hospital, and unfortunately, some of the visitors that come are not always very peaceful. so we need the institutional police. i would like, as a member of the community who lives very close to general hospital, and as a

worker, i would ask you to reevaluate the privatization figure. i do not think it is correct. also, just for the safety of the visitors that come and the people who work there -- i was a clerk there. all the clerks, all the doctors, we need the institutional police. thank you for hearing me. i look forward to you keeping the institutional police. supervisor chu: thank you. if i could ask folks to hold the applause so we can get through public comments. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am institutional police officer from general hospital. then the the last 11 years. i am speaking against contracting out security. unfortunately, we before me, i

was watching in the room and there were doctors and nurses in your good did not know what they were talking about. in regards to contracting out, there is no highly trained confecting security force that is going to put their hands on a 5250 or 5150. contract security guards observe and report. they do not put their hands on people. the institutional police has a long history, and if you would research that, i believe some 30 years ago, the then chief of police told the department of public health that they need their own police force because they were getting too many calls that mission station could not handle. what does that tell you? san francisco general hospital is a city within a city. we get everything they're -- criminals, parolees. there is a methadone clinic, a big sigh board. several people come in day in, day out. i have been there 11 years. i have worked in the er. if you go to highland hospital, they have contract security, but there is an alameda county

stations staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. there is no, one hospital in the state of california that does not have hospital police officers or sheriff's deputies. you can check at stanford. you can check uc davis. you can check highland hospital. we are now here. you can also check with los angeles county hospital. they have their own police. i urge you to take into consideration that you do not contract out. dph needs to either keep the sheriff's department or back to what we had before, institutional police, which i want to add that institutional police officers provide the cheapest law enforcement services in san francisco. we are cheaper than sfpd. we are cheaper than the sheriff's deputies. i'm not sure, but i'm sure we make less than -- [bell rings]

thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i have been a psychiatric technician at the hospital now for almost 10 years. when i heard about this, i really gave it some thought. just looking back over 10 years, i cannot tell you how many times i have been in the cross with some very violent people. every time without fail, the ip has been there. what they are talking about doing, getting a new contract with the securities company -- i have seen that before in other hospitals. the level of training that i have seen, the turnover rate -- yes, the lack of people skills -- all these things that make such a difference when you get

to working with psychiatric patients -- is incredible. i am here to support the ip. i think the world of them, and i think we are getting a bargain, because i think we might come up with more expenses if we get the other kind of police. thank you. >> i was here last week to speak about the same issue. i am on the lift team at general. i have been there for five years on the it team, six years at general. i have worked with the ip. there was a time when they could do restraints. that is a problem within the shares apartment, and dph should be working with the shares a partner to restore and make them more effective because they are effective. they are a deterrent. they are a city agency in a city hospital and part of the fabric of what makes general the fabulous health care center, the

world-respected health care center it is. i went through de-skilling three years ago as a budgetary compromise situation where they fired as all, rehired as for 20% less to still do all the same work although there are less of a superior source seeing more and more nurses because of less staffing and more outsourcing and even cna staffing -- used to seeing more nurses calling in sick with back problems and things like that, so the money we save will ultimately be paid back out in back repair costs and medical bills for them. think of when something goes weird with the private security. some bad incident happens in the city, and the city is sued and is up $18 million in settlement on a case that private security was not able to deal with to theip could have dealt with more efficiently, and as a city agency, we would be more protected. we will lose more money by going to private security in the

consequences of not having professionally trained -- much less turnover. i think you get what i ami saying ip makes sense. it is our city. they are part of our fabric. let's keep them at general. i like working with them. they do great work. thank you. supervisor chiu: -- supervisor chu: thank you. >> your site from san francisco general hospital and vinyl services. i feel experience is assurance and inexperience is a liability. thank you. >> i am here to support the security at general hospital.

i have a story -- are not working now, but i did work for social services. i was in the playroom with children, and as the parents came in to sign up for services, we would watch the children. as they came in, they had to sign their children in. whoever brought the child in had to sign them in. when they left, that same person had to come in and sign the child out. at the time, we had a couple of fathers come in who wanted to take the children, and we could not let them go because we did not know if that was their father or husband or whatever. and we had a lot of problems with that. so we had a private security there. i page them. they never came. i page and page. people were going off. finally they came. they could not touch the person. they cannot touch them. to get them out.

they had to call the police to come and get them out of the playroom. private security is not the way to go at all. the other -- it just would not work. it will not work. they actually only carry a guard card. they do not have any training. very little training. you can check that out. i know that for a fact. and most of them are older people. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> thank you. good afternoon. this is really awesome. thank you for this opportunity. i have been living with hiv/aids for unfortunately 27 years or so. you're sorry -- i am 6 of aids -- i am sick of aids literally

and figuratively. here i sit, and aids is still here. i get a phone call from shanti l.i.f.e. program saying there's a possibility of losing their funding. i just wanted to say a few words, and i just want to say that i participated in the program some seven years ago, and it is an amazing opportunity to sit in a room and hear stories from all sorts of different people. we all have our stories. all of us in this room have stories. i just want to stand here and say to you that aids is still here. i am still here. there is an opportunity to say the program, the shanti l.i.f.e. program for people like myself and potentially many more

people. please consider keeping us, keeping shanti going and servicing that project for san francisco. i thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to be here and share that with you. thank you. [applause] supervisor chu: thank you. >> hello, supervisors, and thank you. i am the executive director of the lavender youth recreation and informational center and facilitator for the community partnership for lgbtqt youth. 43% of middle school-age and 39% of middle school age transgendered you skip school due to a lack of safety, compared to 11% of their heterosexual counterparts.

for high school, 18% of lgbtq youth and 15% of transgenic skit school due to lack of safety compared to 15% of their heterosexual counterparts peer over 1000 youth in san francisco so identified as lgbtq you. the services are on that -- and prepared to provide what they need to drive and in many cases, the institution itself is the barrier to safety and success. every day, i experience the resilience, creativity, and power of queer youth. we celebrated our graduates last year, one going to study in london, when hired at gh. has been acknowledged by the mayor and key members of the board of supervisors that lgbtq youth along with undocumented must be made priority

populations, given that no or little funding is available. the work that the community, the mayor, and staff on the board had done together in this work that the community, the mayor, and -- sorry -- should be applauded, but our work is not done. we are part of the community partnership for youth formed in 2005. we're working hard through this budget process, but some eliminations are still pending. we ask that the board of supervisors work to see if there is any available funding once the analyst's report is look at, to close this gap, and certainly to take a hard look at the -- [bell rings] to ensure that we can look at this population. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon. i am executive director at larkin street youth services.

we thank the board and mayor and everyone that has worked really hard on this process to date. and for the adjustments that have been made. we are requesting, however, the there are still -- we have three priority areas, housing, employment services, and restoration of violence prevention programs. there was a 10% cut to violence prevention programs. asked that there are funds available, that housing be restored, the work force development programs be restored. 18 to 24-year-old have the highest unemployment rate currently, more than they have ever had since we have been tracking unemployment data, and the violence prevention programs that target 16 to 24-year-old, be fully funded. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. >> i am executive director at bayview-hunters point foundation and chair person. that is an african-american

foundation. i also would like to say how much i have appreciated the budget process this year. it has been very different and very hopeful for those of us working in the community. i offer my comments, particularly on the san francisco department of health substance abuse service cuts in the mayor's budget that has been presented. as well as the violence prevention initiative cuts. i oppose these proposed cuts as inconsistent with priorities established at the mayor's meetings, particularly preserving programs that meet basic human need and the priority for the underserved, particularly in relationship to methadone treatment, as a key to employment, housing, productive lives, and stable families. treatment works. it is very important, and it is essential for the 3.9% of african-americans living in this city that make up 40% to 60% of the patients in mental health

substance abuse, and participants in foster care and the justice system. as you consider restoration, i ask that you please consider as a priority outpatient services for mental health, substance abuse, particularly methadone, and the violence prevention initiative, as it comes forward in the dcyf budget. thank you very much. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors, members of the community. my name is jason robertson. i am a license clinical social worker. standard disclaimer -- what you saw about to say in no way affects the policies or opinions of the the part of a public health -- what i am about to say. i am here to speak on two matters today. one is the proposed cut to the homeless outreach team, and the other is the proposed cut to the hospitality house. i am a past president of