free muni for youth. also, something for those who turned 18 and still have to commute. hank here -- thank you. [applause] >> [speaking spanish]

>> good afternoon. i am a member of power. i want to thank everyone for being here today. i am here to be in support of the campaign to make him uniquely for all youth -- make muni free for all youth.

i am asking you to point to a member of your department like to work with directly to for this resolution. i it sometimes do not have money and i am a mother of two daughters. as a person who does not have money, i have to figure out how i'm going to move myself and my daughters to go through the back of the door. i often have to risk having the door slammed on us sprint i have experience that have -- i have experience with doors that have been slammed on my daughter's legs. i hope you all can support this campaign. chairman nolan: thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. >> i am the sfo in use leader. i catch the bus to and from school every day and two extra curricular activities. sometimes, i do not have the money to pay for the card.

sometimes, i do not have the money to go to my basketball games. i have to risk getting on the back and being harassed. i think free youth passes would benefit all because it students can i get where they're trying to be, that could hurt them in the future. thank you. [applause] chairman nolan: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. i have worked in the community for more than 20 years. seven of those years in an after-school program. i have been an interpreter. i was also called to school district meetings to me with counselors and teachers. one of the number one issues that i have dealt with with the kids i worked with is arriving late to school because they are looking for change to get on the

bus or the parents left them money or they did not have money. it is critical for me, as an educator, i always tell them accountable. i think this is the opportunity they are holding us accountable, as adults, for their education. it is critical and one of the simple things we can do to help children with their education. so they do not have to worry about how to get to school every day in. the last point i want to make is, it is important for you guys to set a time line for this. i ask you to please set a time line. we need this to start by the end of this year. it is a much-needed service terry hay que. -- it is a much-needed service. thank you. [applause] >> i am the director of the youth commission triet we have had a bit of the interference of the last years in britain we have been trying to create a and

use lifeline passed since february of 2010. the chairman of the use commission spoke to that. i want to speak to the necessity of committee staff to work on a time line. we are not trying to meddle in business that is not ours. who it should be or what kind of staff. the reason i am speaking of staff is that i did not hear it in the commons before. in -- in the comments here before. there was never a half-price fast pass sold at all in fiscal year 2011. hopefully, we can make that happen. and i love to hear from the board. chairman nolan: next speaker. here >> good afternoon.

i am a teacher in the san francisco unified school district for over 20 years. i am also immune the writer -- a muni rider. i urge you to provide free passes for use 24-7. it is important that they all have access to the great opportunities that are provided in san francisco. we do not have it when so many youth cannot afford to get on he muni. this would be a great equalizer so that everyone would have an opportunity to access the services of our city. it would also reduce stress. so many students are stressed out because of the difficulty getting to school if they do not have the money. i urge you to provide this service as soon as possible. [applause] chairman nolan: thank you. next speaker.

>> [speaking spanish] >> i am here this afternoon, like everyone else, to tell you that it is important to have free fast passes for youths. >> [speaking spanish] >> this is a country governed by laws. one of those laws is that kids have to go to school. i have seen parents get into trouble because their kids are

not arriving to school because they do not have the money to get there. >> [speaking spanish] >> for people who live close to schools, like i do, it is ok because they can walk. for people live farther away, it is a big hardship. i urge you to make a decision now. to give free fast passes. [applause] chairman nolan: thank you. secretary boomer: this will be our last public speaker. >> muni has been the family car since the early 1960's for me.

whatever decision is made, i urge that there are present -- there are provisions for telling people how to ride the vehicles and the resources we have. this group is very well behaved. i do not believe there are representative of the general population that i have seen. the young people on the bus. funding sources, you could either get a $50 franchise fee for the commuter buses to go to santa clara valley. i would recommend you look in the gazette for billionaires' in billionaire a row for them to make some choices whether they can provide funding for this source or to provide free cultures in golden gate park. one of you can make to them is, if it wants to be a billionaire and a first world country or a billionaire in a third-world country. we rely on these people for the future. thank you carry -- thank you.

chairman nolan: the public comment period is over. i want to thank everyone for their testimony grid it is helpful. understanding the place we are in, i appreciate that people understand that. we need to work with the support of people like the supervisors, who were here. and all of the others that were mentioned. with that, i want to thank everybody for free -- for being here. i would like to hear my colleagues thought at this point. director ramos: if i could address the audience in spanish in. [speaking spanish]

[applause] chairman nolan: do you offer -- what we are expected to do is to offer at least some -- we're not taking any action, but a direction for director reiskin to go for it -- to go. director ramos: we have heard the call, not just from these wonderful folks, but from our board of supervisors, that we should pursue something. i would love to start to offer some direction, but i would like to hear from everyone before offering anything assertive. i want folks to recognize that this is a valued that means a

lot for me. i grew up on the school buses before proposition chretien happened grid when that happened, they took away our buses and we all had to take public transit. i grew up on the boss, but it was affordable back then. it costed 50 cents for me to get on the bus at that time. now, it is no longer affordable for our young people. it is not their fault. it is not their parents' fault. it is our fault to have it get to the point where the folks like these, who are doing the right thing by taking transi pae people it is unaffordable. i look back at my parents' generation and my grandparents' generation and i wonder how they could have tolerated things like segregation or things like being against interracial marriage and civil rights.

having to pay for transit, particularly young people, it is one of those things we're going to look back on and say, what were rethinking? these are people who are trying to get where they need to go to be better people and positive contributors to our society. we are making it difficult for them. someday we will look back and say, what are we thinking? i want to make that day sooner than later. that said, would like to your from my colleague's story -- i would like to hear from my colleagues. [applause] >> my thoughts are that we should work towards this. in growing up, there was a yellow school bus. i did not even think about it. it showed up, took me to school, and that was the end of the story. the thought of having to worry about it and having to sneak on the bus, it sets a bad precedent to teach our children to be frightened from authority

figures. that is not where we want to go as a society or a city. as we all said, there is no such thing as thingmuni. -- no such thing as free muni. it is their job to go to school. it is our job to help them get there with the least amount of stress. i support having a staff person working on this to find the money and resources. i am glad there is support beyond the mta board. i am very encouraged by this. [applause] >> i want to thank the speaker is that king today and spoke on behalf of supporting in the free muni for youth. you give some compelling argument to. you have touched my heart in terms of what is going on out there.

i grew up with immigrant parents and we could not afford it either. you brought back a lot of memories. the thing i like to see is, from a department standpoint, we take a look at this program and i want to see an analysis about here is the operational standpoint that is going to happen. we want to make sure we maintain a service level three we do not want to say, it is free for everyone, but you will have to wait longer to get on the bus now. we need to look at a funding source. i do not want to be able to say we will do it this year, but next year we will not have the funds for it. if we do this, we need to stick with it. i am willing to support it. >> i also grew up on his muni.

i ride every day and when i get on the bus, i see a yacht -- i see a lot of youth debt in the back of the bus. they cannot afford it. they say they do that or walk to the mission district. that is a long walk. i understand and am sympathetic with it. it must be sustainable. we cannot start and stop and then start and then stop. if we want to implement a program, we need to make it one that we can maintain. we do not want to be a policy board that says, this is a pipeline to the criminal-justice system. you are committing a crime by getting on the back of the bus. we do not want to be that type of system to. we want to help the youth get the education they need to get where they need to go.

that is important for it is important to you as a young person, a citizen of this city, to be able to afford what the city offers you as a citizen. i will work towards the effort. i will work with our team to see what we can do to make it supported by everyone. [applause] >> i just want to say that i think that it is obvious to me that we need to have a source for funding that is going to be there forever. that means that somebody is going to have to pay for this service from now until eternity. who knows how long that will be?

however, education for our kids is not a choice. it is a requirement. we need to get our kids to school. there is no way around it. how do these people get their kids to school? the public transit. that is what i heard. in we need to work with other city agencies to make this project, we need to make this doable. the supervisors came here and said it would help us find the funds. i'm going to hold them to this because i realize that we have an obligation to regular adult muni riders.

people with disabilities. to keep their costs down. somebody is going to have to hk to afford this service free to youth. at this point, i am not ready to say anything is a solution. obviously, we are going to have to look at raising fares. i do not like that idea. but nothing is free these days. when i grew up and took the bus, it was 15 cents.

that is how long ago i've been in this life. i fully support it. we just have to find the money. chairman nolan: german -- vice chairman lee suggested it was only a nickel when i wrote it. -- when i rode it. [laughter] >> i would most closely aligned my comments in vice chairman lee, who stated in a balanced and appropriate way. i did not ever pay 15 cents for the bust, but i come at this with my own unique perspective. i have three young children. as a citizen, i often deal with the city not paying him

credence yfamilies and family rn the way other cities might. i think it is important. this is an issue where we can send the message that san francisco cares about its families, particularly those in need. as a trend that advocate, i believe that the way to make lifelong transit riders is to train your children to ride transit and the benefits of transit early in. i do that with my own to children. one of the problems i make to my little boy it every now and then is that he gets to go on a muni ride. when i make promises like that, he better keep them. i do not want to make a promise that i cannot keep. i have heard everything that you have said. it is an effective presentation. everyone on this or like to make this happen if we could. i do not think there's anybody

who says, we do not want young people on the bus. or that this might cause other things we were not intended. people want to make this happen. the reality is that we have a financial impact here and a service impact here. i want to be honest just like i tried to be honest with my little boy. that brings me to the point of your effective lobbying. we sit here and hear from a lot of people. i cannot tell you how powerful you are by comparison. i would urge the young lady who came and told us how she wants to ride muni but her mother cannot afford it to go and lobby the other sources that we are in the -- we are going to need your help lobbying on to make this happen a. what we have here is a presentation of a program that has very strong merit. you are hearing from all of us that this is something we would like to explore but that we

realize we have to have a better understanding of the budget impact. right now, we have some competing voices, but no real unity -- a unit in may -- unanimity. is it the case that these people are not writing -- not riding muni such that there will be a service impact? i want to find out about that. you want this to be an all- encompassing and youth program. i hope staff has heard that. there is a stigma from people who would be on a low-income program, perhaps denied access to our immigrant community, that sort of a king. i think we need to consider that. i would urge that, as we flashed this out, we fleshed out the

best low-income program we could think of. while i would love for my children to ride muni for free, the reality is that i can afford that fare. it would be nice if everyone a road for free, but there might not agree that opportunity. we would be remiss if we waited to a later day to explore robust low-income options, when the community is obviously in need of it. i hope that helps the chair. those are my views. chairman nolan: let me say couple of things. i have thought about this in terms of options going forward. i would ask if members of the board agreed to ask staff to look at -- option a would be

totally free to everyone under the age of 18. the second option is if we did it free for only certain hours, certain days, that kind of thing. option c would be to reduce fares to make it more affordable, although not totally free because we do not have the resources. and of course the basic option is the status quo, which is really unacceptable. we always start with the baseline, so i would suggest we look at something like this. i would also suggest that we consider a person on staff to talk to about this. someone that would take this on and know what this is. someone who could work with power and others who are involved in all of this.

somebody else i would mention would like to have his done by the end of the year. this is not going to happen by january 1, two dozen 12. in my opinion, it is possible that we could do some of it. but not the entire thing. most likely, if we were able to do all of this, the full impact would not be until july 1 of the new fiscal year. a couple of things about the testimony. in addition to those options, the important thing is to see this in the context of our budget. we will see pieces of that very shortly in our workshop. from individual departments and how this would fit in about service implications, additional

vehicles, police, all of these things that we might have to do. more information would be helpful about these other cities that have some version of it and how it has played out. have other communities learned lessons in terms of implementing a policy like this? at the end of the day, the end of my comments would be the most compelling argument i heard was that 61% of all the kids incenses go would be eligible for reduced or free lunches. that is a startling statistic in a city as affluent as san francisco. that there are that many people in that much needed. to me, that cries out for some kind of a solution. i appreciate supervisor campos' resolution. he is calling on multi agencies

to work and make it happen. we do not have the ability ourselves. but the transportation who commission, which is the funding body, that is a possible source. the transportation authority, which is the sales tax measure. we need some specific things about where the money is coming from. and where it is going to be taken from. we have been through this a couple of times before where, you will do this and take it out of something else. it is almost impossible to do. those are my thoughts. director reiskin: i do not know if your list meant to ex glued exploring a low-income option -- chairman nolan: i did mean to say that. director reiskin: