actions that can be looked at immediately. as well as the longer-term issues that may take more study or more thinking. the reason why we're here today is really to ask the board of supervisors to do something for this report, find a path forward, to have a document that is a useful tool for the groups that might benefit from it -- the board itself, the department of elections, and others. we are hoping you will establish a follow on action -- a body or process or champion on the board that will take this issue forward. the contract for the process expires in 2013. what opportunities can we take advantage of to move the ball forward?

especially given that los angeles is in a similar process, moving toward similar time frames making decisions in their county around 20 14/2015. what could be gained from working with them? and, of course, this is san francisco. we are a jurisdiction that has the benefit of being in the heart of an urban area and a major technology center. our partnerships and collaborations with private- sector organizations who might be willing to assist with non- proprietary support -- possible. what can be gained from this wonderful environment we are centered in? again, it is a complex topic, but sustained focus on it over the next few years is critical. we want to thank the board again for this opportunity to create our task force, and the doe were very responsive throughout the process whenever we had questions. we interviewed many people

throughout the process, and we would like to thank them as well. and for all of those who wrote letters during our two public comment. or who attended meetings over the last couple of years, your guidance was very valuable. thank you, to everyone, and thank you to our fellow task force members here today. so that is it. supervisor avalos: great. thank you for your presentation and your work on the issue. i recall there was a fairly robust debate back in 2007 as we were gearing up for approval of the sequoia contract. i was not on the board at the time. i was a legislative aide. i recall there was a great deal of time about going to an open source system, development of technologies in san francisco that we could avail ourselves here of the talent that could create that technology and that software here in san francisco, not looking elsewhere. i am wondering how much that was

a discussion of the task force in your report. >> the last section of chapter to listen to development and acquisition models. we did do an examination of the possibilities around open source. it is a complex topic. there is a lot of energy around that idea in the community, so we did look at it, and you can see some of our analysis there in the last section, acquisition strategies. we do think it is something that the city should keep an open mind towards, absolutely. supervisor avalos: i imagine that open source has this software issue and also hardware issues as well. on the hardware issue, your exploration of that topic -- what did you find? >> the current system is used specialized hardware, and any

time you can go to a standard off-the-shelf components and things like this, you would be better off because it is less likely -- you are more likely to know what is inside, and it is likely to be cheaper. so where you can get standard off-the-shelf components, it would be better. supervisor avalos: we could probably have significant cost savings in terms of software by doing open source, but in terms of purchasing or finding the hardware to run those, would that be a major problem for major financial hurdle for us to go over as a city if we were to move to an open source system? >> the biggest problem is getting access to a fully certified system. there is none right now. a lot of that has to do with finances and the financial trouble that the state is in.

there are efforts -- there are a couple of efforts to develop open source systems, and at least one of them tries to use standard off-the-shelf components, but it is not certified yet, and they need funding to do that. talking about the methods for getting to this, we talked about a bay area coalition getting together and putting together a task force group to develop such a system. while that is a good idea, i'm not sure if it is politically feasible because the bay area counties can work that closely on it. los angeles county has a lot of money that they should be getting -- $88 million. $50 million of that has been frozen by the state. that was in proposition 41 funds. because of the financial crisis,

it has been frozen, but it ever beckett's unfrozen, hopefully, they will develop something -- if ever that its unfrozen. we do not know. we do not have any control over it, but that would be our hope. supervisor avalos: ok, very good, thank you. just a question about the sequoia contract which is now the dominion contract -- is that correct? when was the acquisition? did that happen? >> that happened, i believe, about a year to a year-and-a- half ago. according to the department of elections, they adopted dominion -- that is one of the footnotes of our report. the doe has indicated they intend to extend the contract through 2013. that was the option as part of the original process -- the original rfp process. supervisor avalos: has the

department of elections noticed any difference from sequoia to dominion? is it exactly the same standards? >> not to my knowledge. >> the service has not changed? >> to my knowledge, there has been no change. supervisor avalos: thank you very much for your work on this issue. i am very interested in the subject, and i believe supervisor campos may be as well, so that is something we can discuss amongst ourselves looking at how to proceed with recommendations and what we can do with the city to improve our voting system, so thank you for your work, and we will open this up for public comment. i have a couple of cards that i will read the names of, and anyone else can come forward and line up in the center aisle for public comment. we will do three minutes per person. [reading names] .

>> thank you. i am here on behalf of the league of women voters of san francisco to present a letter of commendation to the san francisco board of supervisors and voting systems task force regarding recommendations for the city and county of san francisco. the league of women voters of san francisco would like to commend the citizen participants of the san francisco voting systems task force for their exemplary product at two years of diligent work, recommendations on voting systems for the city and county of san francisco. the league of women voters has determined that to insure integrity and voter confidence in elections, we support the implementation of voting systems and procedures that are secured, accurate, accountable, accessible, and transparent.

the mission has in its own terms prioritized these things and provided the city of san francisco with a document which can serve as a sound guide to the improvement of current and future voting systems, a document which can also be used effectively as a resourced, even beyond our own city and county. we would at this time specifically endorse several recommendations in the report, which could be implemented in the near future. these are items 2.1.4.1, which include publishing all election records on the city's website while protecting the anonymity of each voter. specifically, tallies of the vote counts, text files of cast a vote records, which are currently called ballot image files, election definitions, and ballot definition files.

and correcting the audit procedures for rcv contest in such a way that a 100% tally would actually ascertain the outcome. and 2.1.4.2, a longer term recommendation of including organizations that serve the public and all members of the public to obtain timely access to all the anonymous paper ballots and machine audit logs. we applaud this report. recommendation on voting systems for the city and county of san francisco, as a model of education to increase public understanding of voting systems and to raise and address the multiple issues that currently exists. the dedication and consistent hard work exhibited by the seventh citizens of the san francisco voting systems task force on this major effort to restore public confidence in our elections is the essence of participatory democracy. this letter is signed by our

president and by myself, chair of the elections preservation committee. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. next speaker please. >> hello. my name is breadth of turner ofbrent -- my name is brent turner. i'm here to thank the task force for their entire report. i will not pick apart certain parts that i enjoy. i think all in all, it was a well done report. i think supervisor avalos and supervisor elsbernd both recognize me. i have been sort of the canary in the coal mine on this issue and brought it to the attention of the board of supervisors. i also want to thank then supervisor now assemblyperson tom ammiano for taking the lead

and putting this into motion. as far as the acquisition question the supervisor avalos -- the acquisition question that supervisor avalos race, i think rather than waiting for los angeles county, what we're looking for, and speak for the community that is national, is that san francisco takes the lead on this. we have the opportunity to move forward, and we did not take that opportunity and went forward with sequoia, but as jody mentioned, the time is now because this question will come up -- this issue will come up very quickly. we do want to see the county move toward open source systems that have been previously demonstrated in 2008 by open voting consortium. that is a paper ballot printing system that issues mandatory paper ballots that are perfectly printed that avoid all voter intent issues.

regarding the hardware, we can certainly work with los angeles county to put together a consortium and made it will purchase so that the hardware issue would be resolved as well as the software issue. we have the ability to do this. we are looking to san francisco county for leadership. we appreciate that certain members of the board of supervisors are aware the issue and have done their homework on it. we thank you for your time and look forward to the next step. we want to also mention that we have the man known as the for up -- the father of the open voting movement, and others, who are qualified to take this to the next step and implement. thank you. >> thank you very much. i have one more card for one more speaker. roger donaldson. >> i was on the voting systems

task force with my colleagues here. i wanted to add a couple of things based on your comments. one is that you're clearly fairly well versed in this, and i am glad to see the interest. from our recommendations, there's quite a bit to do to make them operational, and some of the complexities that jodie alluded to are also present in our own san francisco government here with the department of elections reporting to the elections commission, etc. i do not know how you actually proceed on some of these things, but i think that one of the things that certainly can be done, particularly looking into the open source issue, and actually executing on some of the collaboration, is to fund or at least direct the d.o.e. in some way, to have them actually do some outreach to other counties. it mentions in the report some of the county's weak outreach

to, in particular alameda was quite receptive. i think you will find. and then, the l.a. effort. but it is not too late to start -- i mean, it is not too early to start. in particular, that issue, by starting that outreach, can start the momentum towards an open source system, which i think we all believe would be the right choice, rather than continue to have the proprietary close or system we have today. thank you very much. supervisor avalos: thank you very much for your comments. with any other members of the public like to comment? >> i would like to underline that yes, we do want open source software and new systems that are transparent to the public. i would like to underline that there are some short-term recommendations that should be paid attention to, which primarily have to do with having election data voting ballots that can be made accessible, either by putting it on the

internet or having academic teams look at them specifically audit logs and ballots so that they can review them as an independent check on what is happening and no matter what kind of system we have, this is something that will be very good to have a double check. it is something that can be done in the short term, and i wanted to underline those short-term things and just focus on long- term things. thank you. >> very good. i appreciate that comment, and also the comments from the league of women voters. certainly for greater transparency and for david to be shared and for the public to have the information available, and often, it is not presented in a very -- it is not available or presented in a way that is understandable, even. i agree with those recommendations, and that is something i will work with colleagues on to see if we can get some way of having that displayed with the department of

the elections. so thank you for your comments. if there are no other members of the public to comment on this item, we will close public comment. and this item we can file. ok. madam clerk, if you could please call item 3. >> item 3, resolution authorizing the san francisco public utilities commission to accept and expend a u.s. environmental protection agency administered grant in the amount of $970,000 for a civic center sustainable resources district project. supervisor avalos: thank you. we have nathan from the public utilities commission. welcome. >> thank you for hearing our item today. i am with the sanford says the public utilities commission. before you today is a resolution

to accept and expend a grant for $970,000 from the environmental protection agency for water efficiency features -- i am with the san francisco public utilities commission. we are very excited that the federal government is going to be giving us these funds to help out with our projects. they are required local matching funds of $793,636 that will be funded through the wastewater capital improvement program budget. we are very excited about receiving these funds, and we ask for your support. supervisor avalos: very good. thank you very much for your presentation. any member of the public to comment on this item, please come forward. i have one card. >> thank you. i am very pleased to be here

today to give you a little background on this grant. i am think your source safe to say that the public realm in the civic center area is a bit of a wasteland. this is particularly true of the plaza, which suffers from a great number of problems. it has deteriorated surfaces, and the event ends their cases are currently boarded up. the current design is good for large events but is not well going to individuals or small groups. we have worked with the historic district. this not accessible for people with disabilities. the garage has not been modernized, and the rams are poorly designed -- the ramps are poorly designed.

in 1997 and 1998, mayor brown spent $200,000 within a minute group of consultants to develop a plan for the plaza. the report was prepared, and then he ran for reelection, and the report was put in the deep freeze and has been there ever since. when mayor newsom took office, and spoke to him a number of times about resurrecting the report or doing something about it, and he turned the matter over to ed lee, the city administrator at the time, who looked over it very seriously and found that there were not any resources to work on this. he then with the mayor developed a sustainable district, some three years ago, and so declared civic center. with the help of congresswoman

pelosi, the grant you have before you was made available. it on the surface does not describe all the activities that are going to occur. or you have to read it very carefully. because the public realm which is mentioned -- several hundreds of thousands of dollars will go to the planning department to do all the things that need to have been done since the 1998-1999 report was prepared. the whole area will be reexamined through a participatory process. the plaza will be redesigned. and an agreed upon plan will be developed. it will then go through environmental review, and of course, that plan will include all the wastewater and conservation ideas that are most current. basically, you cannot do wastewater and conservation activities without having a clear idea of what you want

underneath the wastewater subject on the streets and the plaza, and this will accomplish that. i am, needless to say, glad that this has finally come to fruition after some 13 years, and i urge you to adopt it. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. if there are no other members of the public to comment, we will close public comment. this item we can move forward with recommendation, and we will take that without objection. thank you very much. we will go on to item four. >> item four, ordinance amending the san francisco environment code sections 11 01 through 11 05 to require cell phone retailers to provide their customers with information regarding how to limit exposure to the radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones in places -- in place of the mandatory disclosure of specific absorption rate values for cell

phone models. supervisor avalos: thank you, madam clerk. today, i have -- we have before us amendments to our right to no ordinance that was passed last year. last year, the order is required that at the point of sale for each cell phone that would be sold in stores in san francisco, it would provide information on the specific absorption rate as well as information to consumers about potential health risks for each phone. we passed that, and we actually have changes to how radio frequency emissions are assessed, and we want to make sure that this legislation actually meets the current changes, so the amendment today

here is to provide a broader way of looking at how we will do labeling of cell phones at our stores in san francisco. rather than look at each specific phone, we were going to have a general display of posters that would be at the point of sale, not her phone, but just around where the phones will be displayed. we have the director of the department of environment here to go over the legislation for us, and to provide background information we may need to know in considering this item. thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. i am the director of the san francisco department of the environment. before you today is an amended ordinance, which updates the cell phone right to know legislation. a couple of items to know regarding the changes to the legislation -- a few amendments very specifically -- is that this new ordinance would remove requirements to include without

use in any display materials, and as supervisor avalos said, it would be a more general raising awareness. it would remove the distinction between formula and on formula retailers for clarity. it would require all cell phone retailers to prominently display an informational poster at the point of sale. it would also require all cell phone retailers to provide an informational fact sheet to every consumer that purchases a cell phone and any customer who requests one. finally, we are changing the content of the sticker in this amended ordinance where if a cell phone retailer posts display materials in connection with sample phones or phones on display, they must include a couple of statements, a statement explaining the cell phones to give it radiofrequency energy is absorbed by the head and body, a statement referencing measures to reduce exposure to radio frequency energy from the use of cell phones, and finally, a statement that informational

fact sheets are available from the cell phone retailer upon request. for the sake of brevity, i would like to simply focus my comments on providing information about new developments on this issue since the board first adopted the cell phone order this last year. in may of this year, the world health organization for the international agency board research on cancer published a review of hundreds of scientific articles on the link between mobile devices and certain types of brain cancer. following the week-long review, this international panel of experts declared that cell phone radiation might be carcinogenic and that radiation from cell phones could be linked to some cases of cancer. the 31 scientists on the panel placed cell phones on the list of substances that the world health organization classifies as possibly carcinogenic to humans. this is the third highest category of warning and the same level of warning as ddt, lead,

and gasoline engine exhaust. the new classification does indicate that there is likely a link between cancer and radiofrequency electrical committed by cell phones, but extensive study is still necessary and being called for. according to the world health organization, there are about 5 billion people currently using cell phones. the who recommends that people take simple measures to reduce exposure to cell phone radiation, such as using a headset or texting. the director of the who's agency on cancer did say in a statement that it is important that additional research be conducted into the long-term heavy use of mobile phones pending the availability of such information, it is important to take a pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as handsfree texting and handsfree devices. as supervisor avalos mentioned,

we have determined that the specific exemption rate may not be the most reliable measure of radiofrequency energy that cell phones in mid due to many variables involved in calculating the value, but the potential risks associated with cell phone use now more established, so for that reason, sf environment is here today in support of the ordinance, which the strength in the public disclosure component of the legislation. finally, san franciscans and all cell phone users, for that matter, have the right to know the potential risks of cell phone use and how to reduce those risks. i want to thank supervisors avalos for your leadership on this issue and the committee's consideration on this ordinance. i am happen to answer any questions you have, and i also have a couple of members from my team here as well. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you very much, thank you for your presentation. why don't we go on to public comment.

i have a number of cards here. [reading names] if you heard your name, please come forward to provide public comment. >> good morning, supervisors. good morning, public. i just have a brief statement i would like to say. i just want to note that this legislation would make it more difficult for local small- business owners to survive in this economy. my comment is simply more general in nature than