senior former resident of south park community. that is something that we have. this is a picture of the old south park. these are pictures -- these are our ancestors. i have raised the kids, i have grandkids. this is my mother. this is where the other ladies. all of these ladies have served different positions in san francisco. all of these people are gone. we get together every year, the first saturday and every month to have this picnic with family

and friends. we have issues because the city. one year we pay $65. we need a park ranger, we need two bodies, all of this stuff. we don't have any of this money. we just get together with family and friends, we share pictures, and everything. that is what we do. we have been doing this for 30 years. actually, we have been doing this for 45 years. what i would like to say is that i would like to invite the supervisors to our function to cc -- just to see how we do it.

[applause] >> i am a gay activist. i am here to talk about the public property at harvey milk plaza. this property is controlled illegitimately by the merchants of upper market. i approached them to honor game marriages. they have refused to work with activist. there is a lot of disappointment

in the gay community from coast to coast because -- refuses to cooperate with people on making the flagpoles, the rainbow flag, and occasionally flying a new york state flag. they are not cooperating with us. and all but it is ok the public property has been handed to an organization. we are talking about harvey milk plaza. i assured that that symbolism around the world is a beacon of hope, a peaking of tolerance for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people. right now, because of --, nothing happened in the castro in solidarity with new york this

weekend. shame. >> i have come to appeal to this body to get your people off of my back. they have been trying to

incriminate me and criminalize me. my family has been under assault from my family has been under a major assault. i have a granddaughter to has been piqued, abused, neglected, terrorized. because of your people's decision that this person should be at the place that they were. this has been going on for two years. recently, they had to take that kid out of that house because of what was happening. i have been trying to relate to the people for the last three

years. since it was me, it was overlooked. this is another situation that in the court room, in the courthouse, a person was yelling violently to the top of their lungs in a ruthless manner, this is worse than the way it was at that meeting. of a sudden, the >> thank you very much.

>> could evening. i have spoken many times here in the past. i will address three issues very quickly. supervisor wiener brought about the federal courthouse in san francisco. the city has been renting them off for 40 years and as one reason why the 49ers are leaving. the middle class no longer lives in san francisco. that is reason why the forty- niners are leaving. over the years, i have used the a fiction defense initiative. -- the fiction defense initiative. they helped me on a dispute, on a piece of property where they

were doing the best of the abatement with no guidelines. the city has only one error controller. this will stand on campaign financing, running for the mayor, and other city officers. as an employee of the city and county of san francisco. i think that has to come to an end. either resign your position or run for mayor. we are financing you on the public payroll to become the mayor we're getting a salary and pension with no risks whatsoever. this has to come to an end. i think you for your time.

>> my name is nancy and i am asking for for an agenda of out auden's and a situation about the local homeless coordinating board. we have been reading about the people from the state prisons coming to san francisco and needing housing. of course, they are in meeting housing before that. then we hear about the veterans coming back. how will that affect the health and longevity and the burden on the health department and social services in other regards? we find the situation of the number one cause for the premature death of males is

smoking. we find to win it is number two. what we find in the shelters which are targeted by the tobacco companies for sales for people that are depressed -- depressed and in difficulty. they are targeting the homeless and mentally ill. what is the city doing to educate people into the impact of smoking if they use that for depression rather than going for mental health care? mental health care has a work group that is costly to the city. they are smart enough and educated enough. reviewed not have the burden on the city and the number one cause of premature death. if you ask the people in shelters, they say they would like smoke-free housing.

>> thank you very much. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i speak in support of supervisor campos' resolution on taxi credit card fees and urge you to vote for it. the san francisco labor council has adopted a similar resolution. they did basically the same thing. these fees are unfair to thousands of low-income workers, the city's cab drivers. there is a disincentive for

drivers to take credit. that creates inconveniences' for the public. it creates safety hazard for drivers. it is a bad thing all around. it also does not make any sense. fees of 5%, far higher than other merchants pay. the mta, why they're doing this, one excuse is that it is being done in other cities. cabdrivers are powerless everywhere. you may have heard this from a cab company owner that drivers actually make more money if there is a back seat terminal in their cab with a tip prompt.

the person that is saying that is a paid consultant for one of the providers of the equipment and the services. it is baseless. thank you. >> hi. my name is john. i am a san francisco taxi driver. i still like the people over there. i am a san francisco taxi driver. i just wanted to echo what he said. i know the resolution for the credit-card fees. i hope you will support that. to make taxi drivers rent their cabs from a cab company is like making a kid pay the property tax. i hope that you will support the resolution. i would like to address the issue of taxi availability. there is the concern, why is it

so hard to get a taxi cab in san francisco? one is that there may be a shortage of cabs during certain times of the day and evening and certain times of the week. that is the key. it is at certain times. that is why we would talk about the issuing of more taxicabs. you have to think about cabs that are flexible enough to operate part-time. i know you are not familiar with my proposal for the mta board of directors, but making it really short and would allow taxicab drivers to own their own cars. it would give taxicab drivers more flexibility to service the time that they choose. consumers would know the times they would be. they know the business and they know where it is at.

the other thing is that cab companies are against centralized dispatching and technological advancements that would allow people to flag cabs from their smart phones or home computers. they are highly specific car rental services. they are not there to serve the public. >> my name is david. i am a san francisco taxicab driver. thank you so much for putting up the resolution for allowing the cab company is charging 5% on the drivers, which is totally unfair. by regulation, drivers have to take credit cards.

why do the drivers have to pay for their cars? if i do anything on my own, i have to pay for it. i have to obey the law. it would cost them extra money. please consider that. i am so glad that the supervisor came up with the resolution. the supervisors came up with this at the last meeting. we need more taxis. instead of adding more taxis, we can use the resources that we have to eat fish and play instead of scattering around and making it a better fleet and a better service for everybody. there will be a lot of ideas that could come up. thank you so much.

>> members of the board of supervisors, i am from san francisco open government. i am talking to the board and i am talking to the public who is watching the proceedings on sfgtv. instead of focusing strictly on the podium, i think it should be viewed to show how does respectfully the majority of the board tree public comment. some walked out before public comment is over. some are so in tune to that they are not paying any attention to the public. this is supposed to be a country where everybody has equal protection under the law. other people have unequal access to you.

they have it -- they can get 10 or 15 minutes of your time. for the people in this city that are not that powerful or rich and they want two minutes and you watch people get out of their chairs and they go out to take a leak, showing the disregard, disrespect, disinterest, whenever you want to call it for what the citizens have to say to you. you are denying people access to their representative in city government. i made two calls to my supervisor. in each attempt i said, could i get five minutes stocks could i get five minutes to talk about something? you get an aide that says no. they do not care what you want to talk about. the answer is no. between now and november, every citizen out there in sfgtv land

should come out and observe public comment and see the respect it would give to you if you were here. >> good afternoon. i am peter, director of a users association. the library two weeks ago became the first and so far only department that was found by the ethics commission to have violated the sunshine law based on a referral from the sunshine ordinance task force. in this case, the sunshine ordinance task force has found that the commission president violated a member of the public's rights by making a comment by telling her to shut up and sit down at a library commission meeting two weeks ago.

the ethics commission decided that because of jurisdictional questions, they needed to send a letter to the mayor, essentially recommending that the library president be sacked. this was an important step. the library commission president presided over the last meeting. for two years, the library commission has never once uttered a word about this matter. they have never discussed what the sunshine ordinance decision was. last thursday, nothing was on the agenda again and nothing was said about that violation. i think that is pretty shocking. continuing with the library commission and the library's apparent disinterest in how they're treated and how the

library may have made administrative proposal to change all of its materials to the same length of time for borrowing the same number of renewals, basically, everything is the same, which is not. >> mr. president, supervisors, i am pretty upset about what is happening. washington is a budget train wreck. you know it is going to go badly. i am upset that president obama's own fault goes completely on known. the voters did the only thing that they could do to relieve stress in voting republicans to congress. they said in a contest between political ideation and reality,

reality always wins. i see that we are making the same mistake in the homelessness policy and we have for some time. gavin newsom's positive contribution will remain completely overshadowed by unable to being able to get sustainable services. we cannot supply a hotel room to every indigent that wants one. we have not been able to meet that standard ever. as we work through this in a methodical way, what will probably come out is something that looks suspiciously like the premier -- before san francisco model. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i represent the san francisco taxi drivers.

in the last three months, we have had three protests in front of the city house. there were two hours of honking around the city house. police were called in. there are 7000 drivers, at 3511 san francisco. 3500 drivers in san francisco with their families. they are well organized this time. historically, this is the first time they will vote in favor of the people. i am doing all of the work together with these drivers. the drivers of the taxis have the cab company president and

then when she came back. $1.5 million that the cab companies are paid for credit card fees. that was taken off. now the drivers are paying $4 million to the cab companies. our credit card fees were built in. a gift from her to the cab company for $4 million. a gift from my friend who is also like a paid consultant for the company. to benefit that question, she is putting in a second credit card machine. please stop this situation.

>> are there any more -- other members of the public who wish to speak? general public comment is now closed. colleagues, why do we not now go to our adoption without committee reference calendar? >> items 46-54 are being considered for unanimous adoption without committee reference. if a member -- once discussion of the item, it will be called separately. >> colleagues, would anybody like to sever any items? supervisor campos: item 47. supervisor elsbernd: 54.

if week to take a roll-call vote on all of the items except 37, 47, at 54. supervisor chu: aye. supervisor cohen: aye. supervisor elsbernd: aye. supervisor farrell: aye. supervisor kim: aye. supervisor mar: aye. supervisor mirkarimi: aye. supervisor wiener: aye. supervisor avalos: aye. supervisor campos: aye. president chiu: aye. >> there are 11 ayes. president chiu: these resolutions are adopted. >> the move meant to urge the fda to ban all tobacco products. on item 46, supervisor chu. supervisor chu: no. supervisor cohen: aye.

supervisor elsbernd: aye. supervisor farrell: aye. supervisor kim: aye. supervisor mar: aye. supervisor mirkarimi: aye. supervisor wiener: aye. supervisor avalos: aye. supervisor campos: aye. president chiu: aye. >> there are 10 ayes, 1 no. the next is to reconsider the abandonment of shifting credit card merchant charges to the city cabdrivers. supervisor campos: colleagues, i would ask for your support of this resolution which urges the mta board of directors to reconsider its decision to pass

on to cabdrivers' credit-card fee is when a person pays for the credit card. we heard from a number of taxi drivers today. i want note that yesterday the taxi cab advisory council voted against passing these fees onto drivers. taxi drivers had only had a 1 25 cent per rise increase in the past five years. we have seen the price of gasoline double. that is not saying anything about the larger economic issues that we have been facing. what we have been talking about when we look at passing this fee to drivers, we are asking them to incur a 5% pay reduction.

for a lot of reasons, we believe that is the right approach. it is not fair to pass on this fee. i want to speak about the impact this has on consumers. when you pass on these kinds of fees to drivers, the costs start refusing to carry passengers that are going to pay with a credit card. it is not a good position for a good experience for the consumer. what this resolution calls upon is that the mta reconsider the matter and it brings all of the players to the table so that it can be more fair and a reasonable doubt --