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: ok, good. i wanted to talk to the young leader of power. he pointed something out -- this is not just us all of a sudden deciding that it wouldn't it be

nice to hand this out. the explanation is there is a cut in school bus service that is out of our control. the school board would tell us is out of their control. there is something new that has arisen. it is not just us trying to give something away. this is our responding to something new. that is an important point that was brought up today. i am sorry i did not mention it earlier. chairman nolan: i understand the issue that was raised. there might be summer -- some ways around that. i understand a number of the kids in the city do not take advantage of the lunch program because they are feeling stigmatized by it. one final thing -- how many fun of things that i said? -- how many final things have i said?

we had a president several years ago who was forced with a serious budget shortage. he cut service by 10%. we were urged by the mayor and supervisors to restore as much of that as we could. we restored 641% -- 6.1%. there was an effort by the mayor and supervisor david chiu who wanted to know when funds were available. that is a responsible template. we could come up with our initial program. director reiskin, what you to do about this? director reiskin: very helpful comments from the board. what i think is great about this is that it is a grassroots

effort. i saw the testimony, not only today, but much of the testimony from last week at the board committee meeting. as supervisor avalos referenced, a better and, more compelling group of speakers and then we see at any age. i give great credit, particularly to the youth that came out for this. this is a pro-muni initiative. this is not a group of folks in organizing against transit. these are people who want to ride muni and want to ride in a legal way to do important things in their lives like get to school and to extracurricular activities. i think that is great and fully consistent with our transit-

first policy to. i think it is a great direction and it is great to hear the support to export this in more depth from the board. just a few points -- in my mind camara -- in my mind, the vast majority of the public testimony, discussion in the media, discussion of the board, is focused on affordability. from a policy standpoint, there is a case to be made. while there are broader goals, there is a policy case to me made that this is about affordability. my kids do not need a free fast past. with that said, i think it could also be true that it is not only the 61% of kids in the public schools who are eligible. there is this paperwork hurdle.

while i started this thinking that the right thing to do would be on an income- restricted basis, i think we would end up missing a lot of kids that we are trying to reach. we will explore that further. i have someone come around to the idea that, not only is there a big administrative burden on trying to do this in an income- limited way, i think it would fail to reach some of the kids than we would want to. [applause] do not clout yet critics -- do not clap yet. in terms of free verse is reduced, it is worthy of consideration that some even nominal fare for a monthly pass is something that we would consider. not just to offset the revenue

impact, but because, for a lot of services, people value something more that they pay for. even if it is very nominal, i think it's something worth exploring in. i appreciate the direction on that. i think there is a question, we have heard some people say free fast past or free muni. we are trying to move people to clipper and get away from fair transaction. it does not give us all of the data benefit that clipper provides. there is a case to be made that free or reduced would apply to the pass and not the single pair. it also helps address the problem of san francisco people that this is intended for versus everyone else. we cannot make that restriction

of clipper, but people coming from out of town are more likely to pay cash bear whereas people here have better access to put the card in a monthly pass. that is something that is worthy of looking at. i further call to appoint a staff person. it has not been well defined enough for me to figure out who the right person is. is it operational? is there finance? we do not have financed ministers sitting around waiting for projects to come. we have offered quite a bit of staff time. my own and others on this issue will continue to do so. we will make sure the right staff resources are there. and we will identify someone who can serve as the single point of conflict. whether we have someone designated as that person or not, we are fully committed to talking with the various

stakeholders to move this forward. one thing i want to emphasize that supervisor campos says and i want to give him credit for this -- it has been his goal, working with us and the other stakeholders, to identify three years' worth of funding. to enable this to happen. to the extent that that could happen, or to the extent that that happens, we need to wait for our own budget process to develop. if we determine that the need is $8 million per year between the mtc and the school district and transportation authority, we can jointly develop a financing plan for that. we do not necessarily need to wait. as for us and bringing something back sooner, should that finance plan, which some are confident

would come forward sooner, if that is possible, then we would not need to wait. we want to be mindful of not having parts of that finance plan that would otherwise come to us. i will ask that the private sector is something that, at the mayor's direction, we have started to explore. in that could be part of the solution here that would reduce the burden on the public resources. a few folks mentioned education. rider education is something that, when i have discussed with the unions, it is something they feel very strongly not just for youth but for all riders. there is a real opportunity here for a little bit of a quid

pro quo. the people of san francisco making this bold policy move to reduce or eliminate shares in exchange for help from all of those community groups from the school district, from us, to do that education that will not only help educate the next generation of transit riders, but that the system work better for everybody. this education system is an important part of whatever we do moving forward. goodlatte to all those who came to smoke, not just to advocate, but for all the different bodies will be seeking funding to help us put together a package to inseminate that kind of education. in terms of looking around the country and establishing a precedent, i would say, there is not really a strong precedent for this.

in the whole country, we found to cities that have done it in limited ways that we have heard we may not want to do or would be practical for us to do. ironically, because of the clipper system. i think we would be blazing new territory here. i think we would have to be comfortable that that is what we are doing. i do not think we are going to get a lot of insight from elsewhere. there have been some issues. with the portland program. the discussion here is at a much larger level. we would need to be comfortable with that. i guess i would just close -- i appreciate the direction from the board. we will work particularly with our operations folks and finance folks to continue to see what we can get out of the school district.

there were some other ideas we should look at -- bear increase and service reduction. those are things we would probably bring forward in a future budget. i think we have good direction to move forward. as soon as we can to bring something back for action in korea -- bring something back for action. director ramos: in the comments i made fort youth -- for youth in to ride the buses. we talked about there's possibly increasing. that is the last thing i would want to see happen. i would want to see the movie other way. i am not going to make the call right now, because it is unrealistic. at the same time, we ought parking that is free on sundays. people do not pay to park after 6:00. at the same time, we are paying to it ride