it, but forums that would help the community understand more about the value of proof of payment and what really happened there or what all of that demand. the other they now want to talk about with respect to open forums is building awareness of why we are doing what we're doing. i was taken aback by the grand jury report the failure to mention the need for that project with respect to that community that rides the 30 stockton. it felt like there was not enough due diligence with regard to purpose of the project. it is important to create jobs and i value that anyone doubt love this project just needs to ride the 30 stockton any day at a time and will cut off a believer. really take into are what that community needs in terms of what's the most immediate avenue for relief. we might also be able to talk

about the benefits of parking and anything else, clipper, all of these things need to happen. i'm really looking forward to something like that in the future. >> maybe we could ask the policy and government folks to offer some suggestions on how we might do that. and you are right. if people see things out of comment -- out of context, leigh said a chance to talk about it. >> the discussion is happening at the federal level right now with taking all of this funding away with regard to transit. that is one i hope all of us as san franciscans would be calling policy-makers in d.c., we are up against the ropes and we cannot afford to lose more money than you already taken from us. i would like to have these conversations with the committee so we can all be advocating to get us out of this mess we're in. >> thank you. we can ask the committee to take a look at that.

any public comment on the executive director's speech? next item? >> this is the advisory council report. mr. murphy is not in the audience today so there will be no report. number seven is public comment. members of the public may address the board. nobody has turned in a speaker card. this item 8, approving an employment agreement with deborah johnson to serve as acting -- >> there is a change to #eight? >> we have one member of the public to speak. you want to speak, come forward.

>> good afternoon, directors. when any [unintelligible] why is it happening and who is the target. anything happening against the mta is very well watched in this city hall corridors. we made many efforts and we mentioned this morning in e- mail's that we are trying to talk to debra johnson but she is not attempting to make any effort to speak with us. about this 5% imposed on the driver's and there are other cities where 5% as charged, but they know the fact that in other cities, it is way cheaper than san francisco. san francisco, drivers pay $104.

in chicago, drivers pay $50. that is no competitor to san francisco. in other cities, there is no competitor with san francisco. $104 is the highest rate drivers are paying. about the terminals, the word is this second credit card backseat machine. this machine is to benefit somebody personally and push this machine through our throats. there is no need for this machine in san francisco. she promised this would be stopped and about 100 machines are there. that will be it until we do further studies, but a few days ago in the meeting, they say you cannot stop us. we will sue you if you stop us.

we need debra johnson to pay attention and have a meeting with us. >> next speaker, please. >> and good afternoon, board of directors. i'm from aero cab co. and black- and-white checkered cab. we are the third largest cab company in san francisco. there are two things about who we are that may not be readily apparent. the owners of aero and checker are former caddies who believe in looking out for the best interests of cabdrivers. we employ and partner with members of various ethnic and racial minority groups in this city, along with drivers with disabilities is independence knows no bounds. even though we do not represent the interests of big business, we do represent the interests of a considerable portion of

your constituency. last month, we presented to this board our second complaint against the sfmta which enumerates discriminatory practices against aero and checker analysts situations in which administrative decisions were made without public oversight and legislative codes are in the process of being change without being vetted by the industry. how does this continue to happen under your watch? while we are grateful for the warm response we have received at the executive level of an eta, we have not received responses back -- executive level of the mta, we have not received responses back from the other board members. this is not just about arab checker and the discrimination, this is the community we represent. what does it take to get your attention? >> next speaker, please.

>> thank you chairman and directors. i want to talk about the credit card fees specifically. i know the chairman has talked about finding a way to reduce these these -- these fees. that's going to be extremely difficult if not impossible to do. but even if it were able to accomplish, i did believe it meets the needs and i don't believe it is the answer. the fact is these credit card fees are inconvenience to the public in a variety of ways. many drivers, have to say are either discouraging the use of these cards or they simply refuse to take them. sometimes they will say the machine is broken. i know this from conversations with my own passengers and

conversations with other drivers. it is not something that should be condoned but it is inevitable and it's human nature that someone who can make a little more on a transaction is going to do, even for requires a little fib to do it, they're going to do it. this is inconveniencing passengers, it could potentially lead to conflicts with passengers and very uncomfortable situations. you are never going to be able to police this adequately. there is also a safety factor here because it is a good thing to reduce the amount of cash in the cab. cabdrivers have among the highest assault rates, homicide rates fell for a long time of year, they had the highest homicide rate of any occupation. to the extent you can reduce the

cash in the cab, you make drivers less vulnerable to these attacks. the current policy has the opposite effect. thank you. >> next item. -- before we leave that, i think a comprehensive review of taxi policies was proposed. ms. johnson represented that could be done in september but i trust that included members of the community as well. >> a point of clarification. what i was saying is we could do that assessment and bring back the ideas in an outline. not a fully vetted plan, but a skeleton of a plan we could discuss. >> thank you. >> on a regular calendar, deborah johnson serving as acting executive director.

there is an amendment to the resolution that needs to be considered and discussed by the board. the agreement makes reference throughout to the city's memorandum of understanding with the municipal executive association and needs to be corrected because the mta has and mou and that is the appropriate reference. the results clause needs to be amended to read the san francisco bids will transportation board of directors approves a -- approves an agreement for deborah johnson to service a active -- acting executive director -- >> do we have a motion to approve this? do we have a second? all in favor?

does anyone in the public want to comment? >> for the record, but was on a motion to amend the agreement. >> we did it as the whole thing. >> you did as the whole question are >> i thought we were doing the whole thing. >> when somebody comes from another town and gets appointed here and we don't know much about the person, we can say okay, fine, we will wait and time will come. debra johnson has been here for work many years. i did not play too much into your meetings, but a couple of times i got a chance and i found her not cable to communicate with the people. -- not capable to communicate with the people.

with a flick of the phone, they can come on the line and talk to you and the issues, one strike in front of city hall and this department failed to communicate. if they would just pick up the phone and talk to 23 representatives. the issues are self decree -- herself created inside the department. these people are involved to approve these things and to cover their faces they did not want to talk to the people. this blow up and went bigger and bigger and is still going more bigger, like a snowball coming down the hill. the way she is performing now: how you can imagine how she will run this agency. i never came and never said to view the city was cut up 50 times from sunset to downtown --

that is my district. this agency failed to deal with the situation in five years. this is a very small issue of taxing drivers that can be solved in less than five minutes and she did not show any potential. please look into this and i know you are appointing her, but this question will come back to you very soon. >> does anyone else care to speak to the motion? >> my thought we were adopting the resolution as amended. >> it has been done. >> thank you. item number nine, approving tom to serve on the joint powers board of directors. no members of the public have indicated their issues with this. >> i have a lot of reservations. [laughter] >> i will move the item. >> second.

>> any further discussion? all those in favor? just a little history while we are added [laughter] -- while we are at it. [laughter] i was on the body would was founded in 1988 and was the chairman for five years when we purchased the right of way, selling off the right away between gilroy and san francisco. three counties came together to do that. they put together sales tax measures to help support it and it was going along really well. "there is no dedicated stream of revenue, so i look forward to joining -- i know pretty much everyone on this already. this is a vital part of bay area transportation so i accepted

with reservations -- i will report to you periodically. thank you. >> item 10, room -- appointing roberta boomer -- no members of the public have indicated addressing you on this matter. >> is there a motion on this one? a second? all in favor? congratulations, mrs boomer. >> i have no speeches. >> since nobody has indicated an interest in addressing you with matters in closed session, it would be appropriate to vote on this -- on having a closed session. need for discussion? all in favor? before we do that, we are going in here to discuss the mta director position.

i want the public to know the efforts we have made to solicit input from the community, we received, we sent out a survey it and had over 600 respondents from all over the city. we talk to the citizens' advisory committee and ask them for their input. they had a vigorous response and we appreciate that. also, the many groups we work with, the bike coalition, walked san francisco, senior advocates and the advocates for the disabled, members of the board of supervisors, the transportation authority, we have sought as widely as we could the inputs and i had a meeting with the senior staff recently and i want to tell you that this agency is extremely well served by the intelligence and professionalism of our senior staff. there are about 40 or 50 people

there and everyone offered what i thought were very responsible -- responsible and thoughtful comments. we have done a great deal about reached on this and now calls for us -- falls to us to do the next debt. i wanted that to be known to the public that we have in fact done that. >> if i could just add to that. to the folks who gathered and compiled the stakeholders' survey, that was very well constructed and well done. i would note that not only have we got a great deal of input from the community as to what factors and traits we should be looking for, thanks to your efforts, we received a great number of applications from a varied number of people. it is important the public understand that as well. we have had a great many people express interest and we have been able to look at those applications as we narrow in

this process. >> we will go in then to a closed session. thank you. >> of the board of directors met in closed session to discuss the lawyer hiring. the board of directors took no action. it would be appropriate for your action to disclose or not disclosed. >> move to not disclose. >> would there be anything wrong with everyone going out there? >> your microphones are on. >> are you adjourning the meeting? >> the meeting is adjourned.

>> there has been an acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and

we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill.

it survived although the structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill. it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested

in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money. >> it was going to be a wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features. >> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would

choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a sudden, he was excited about the coit tower. it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little

diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what did you know about it? we were with him almost every day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals.

this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives. things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and

managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy

about the coit. i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower had been pretty much neglected from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality

of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the hustle and bustle of the city and finding this sort of oasis, if you will, at the top of the hill. when i walk through this park, i look at these brick walls and this lawn, i look at the railings around the murals. i look at the restoration and i think, yeah, i had something to do with that. learning the lessons, thank you, landmarks meet landmarks. the current situation at pioneer park and coit tower is really based in public and

private partnership. it was the citizens who came together to buy the land to keep it from being developed. it was lily hitchcock coit to give money to the city to beautify the city she loved of the park project worked to develop this south side and still that's the basis of our future project to address the north side.