ms? >> i know you did this ever you through -- every year through our online training. so the basic rules about open meetings is that all policy bodies operate in public meetings. those meetings must be publicly noticed, and the policy body must fix public comment at those meetings. what is a meeting? it seems painfully obvious, but people in my office spend a lot of time talking about this and thinking about this because we want to avoid the situation in which there is a gathering of a quorum of a policy body, and the members do not realize that this is a meeting, and therefore the meeting has not been noticed, and then it is an unlawful meeting. a basic definition of a meeting occurs when the majority of the members of a policy body come together at the same time and

place. it is important to note that both the board and any of your committee is our policy bodies, so a gathering of two or three would be a meeting. that retreats, workshops, site tores, gatherings, which are now not as common, but when i came into this office, it was very common to have a new gathering before or after a board meeting. those are meetings, and they have to be noticed. of course, there is nothing wrong with having a retreat. no you're having one next week, in two weeks, but a retreat is just a meeting that has to be noticed just like any other, and the public has the right to attend and participate. there are some important exceptions to the basic

definition of a meeting. meetings can occur even though the majority of a policy body is not in the same place at the same time, so the most obvious example is a telephone conference among the majority of the members of the policy body. you are not in the same physical place, but a telephone conference is a meeting, and you would not be allowed to have a delicate bone conference. -- to have a telephone conference. that also be an illegal meeting. a more subtle situation our meetings that occur when members of a policy body and of discussing an issue that is within their jurisdiction, even

though those discussions occur may be between one member and another member. they do not occur at the same time, they do not occur in the same place. the simplest is when they occur by telephone, when member calls member b, and them member b decides she wants to hear what member c has to say about that, and then member c calls member d. those are unlawful, and they do occur mostly through technology, telephones, facts, email, text messaging. they also can occur through human intermediaries, a member of your staff talking to one board member, find out what one board member things about a particular issue and goes to another board member and says,

"well, board member a tells me this. what do you think?" and that process goes on until it includes a majority of the members, and then you have an unlawful seriatim meeting. one thing we have cautioned board members a lot is that it is very easy to have email exchanges turned into an unlawful meeting. someone sends an email addresses it to all board members, and the members start replying. they hit reply all, and then it becomes a discussion among a majority of members about an item that is within the board jurisdiction. that discussion is not taking place in public. the public does not know. today, we're not talking about public records, but i also

wanted to remind you that when you use technology to communicate by email or by text or other means, even if you are using your own, personal device, if you are communicating about the public business, it is at least possible -- the lot is not very well developed on this issue, there have been a couple of cases, but we have not been given enough guidance yet, but it is possible that that could be subject to disclosure. i want to make sure you are all aware of that. ok, so now we know what a meeting is. we can go on to public notice. of course, all of your public meetings have to be noticed, and your secretary is an expert in that in making sure that is done properly, and that notice includes your agenda, and you

cannot act on any matter or discuss any matter that is not on your agenda. i think you all are well aware of this issue, and just a reminder, it includes discussion. an item that is not on your agenda. director: can i ask for a clarification of the process? >> sure. director: for an item to be on the agenda. >> the way that that works is that your agendas are sent by the director of transportation and the president or the chairman of your board, who sets the agenda and decides when items will come before the board, so an individual board

member does not have the authority to command that a certain item appeared on the agenda at a certain time. that is how the process works. president nolan: but as often happens, and during comments, as director brinkman did, that is -- >> that is ok, because you are hearing from the board, know what items the individual members went on, and you are discussing it with the director, especially if it requires some kind of staff action or staff report. you are making sure. you are doing that in your function as a chair as administrative matter to make sure that everything can come before the board in due course. and there is no problem with individual board members stating what they would like to have on the agenda, telling the executive director, that they

would like to have something on the agenda, asking the chair to place it on the agenda. that is perfectly fine. that is what you do. there are some exceptions to the rule about not discussing items on the agenda. they are extremely rare, but there are some in emergencies. you sometimes will be able to discuss matters that are not on the agenda. of course, our office would be giving you advice about this. i have been in this office for 22 years, and i think the only time i have ever seen this happen was after loma prieta. and this goes back to your question, about not discussing items on the agenda. it does not prevent people from asking to put something on a

future agenda, from a board member following up on public comment, for asking for clarification about what their concern is, a public common with the reference to staff or other resources or asking staff to report back on something that a member of the public is commenting about. so one of the other tenants for public meetings is that the public has a right to comment at all public meetings. they have the right to comment anonymously. your secretary asks for people to provide a speaker card, and that is fine, but if the speaker does not want to fill a speaker card, they have a right to address you. they have the right to criticize the policy body, criticize members of the policy body, to

criticize staff. again, they need to keep on topic. and they do not have the right to discriminate against members of staff, make discriminatory comments. that, again, is a matter that the deputy who is present would be advising about if you got into a situation like that. speakers have a right to equal time. you must give speakers equal time on the particular item, and speakers have the right to translation. the members of the public that do not speak english have a right to have their comments translated, and one more point of clarification because we have had that come up a bit, our understanding is, for example, if we are giving three minutes of public comment, and the person needs translation, it is three minutes for their comments and three minutes from the transmitter, but if they are

translating their own comments, it is a total of three minutes. >> i think that is right, click. >> madam chair, three minutes for the speaker, and then i do not time and all the translator. >> the limits on public comment, speakers have up to three minutes on an item. i know you are all familiar with this. sometimes you get less for everybody. they do not have the right to speak off topic or to discuss other meetings. they do not have the right to a response from the board or staff members. that is absolutely discretionary. and they do not have the right to discriminate against city staff. >> can i? so the no right to speak off topic, sometimes in a meeting we have some guy talking about

steve jobs, just going off, and there was another person who came up and sang a song in the past, and i am wondering -- i understand that they do not have the right to do that so to speak, but i am just curious as to how we should be handling those things in the future because i also want to encourage a sense of discipline from within this room, and i am wondering -- >> president nolan: the singer, i understand that he addresses the board, and it is topical. i had someone injected it from the room by sheriff's because he just would not stop. it was a very tense situation. in the event that it was kind of

widespread and people would not respect that, we have the ability as in the chair to ask for a recess and actually clear the room, but you have to allow them back in, is my understanding, there may be only a few at a time. >> yes, and i have definitely seen that happen. it can be quite effective. it can be really effective to recess the room, to allow people to calm down, to tell people that you want to go on to the meeting and that you want to hear from them and that you do not want them to shots of the people can be heard. i have seen that on more than a few occasions. i have never seen a chair just let a few people back in at a time, but our office has advised that you can do that if it is

absolutely necessary. president nolan: there is something that takes their 2 billion minutes, and they are speaking about something that is fairly jermaine, it is sometimes easier to let them finish. director: maybe some directors do not like that so much. >> that is what i have seen cheers do, interrupt the speaker and say this is the topic, or we are on this item. you can comment on this item, or we are in general public comment. do you have something to say about things that are under our jurisdiction, and generally that leads to it. you do have a situation sometimes where people for whatever reason, maybe because of a mental disability, really

cannot stay on topic, and i think years handle it in different ways. director: i have been thinking that you have done a good job so far , so the thank you. president nolan: we had a meeting before the was almost seven hours long. >> the policy body has to meet in public, and you are allowed to meet in closed sessions in very limited circumstances. personnel matters, pending litigation, labor negotiations,

realistic negotiations. there are a few others that occur from time to time. in terms of closed session, one of the most important things to know is that although some actions that you have taken must be disclosed when you return to open session, and, of course, the board votes after every closed session about whether it wants to disclose the closed session. in general, the closed session is confidential, and if the board has voted to not disclose, then the material, what was said, is confidential, and it is a violation of state law for individual board members to disclose the closed session discussion. president nolan: have you ever

seen in 22 years someone disclose it? >> no, i had never seen the city go after someone. director: what is it that allows us to all go to something like the recent streetcar presentation? >> if it is open to the public, maybe a public meeting, but it is not your public meeting. it is the meeting of a state board or a federal board, it is a ceremonial gathering or other gatherings, or even a social gathering that is not put on by you, that is not, for example, a christmas party.

it happened to be in your circle, and more than a majority showed up. the important thing to remember there is not using that gathering as an opportunity without thinking about it to talk about things that are under your jurisdiction. thank you. president nolan: not coming to my house for christmas. secretary boomer: some members of the public that when it to discuss with you, but seeing we have no closed session. president nolan: do we need a

motion to adjourn? so moved. we are adjourned.

>> thank you for joining us. i'm katherine sharp. we are very excited today to have a press release from the mayor and have him join us. this has been an amazing experience for those of us from the very beginning. we look forward to sharing that story with you. without further ado, mayor lee. >> thank you, katherine. thank you very much for being here. i wanted to join this great moment of celebration for fibrogen, which is more than a serial. that was what i first thought when i saw that name. i want to congratulate fibrogen and all the companies that have spouted up.

i had -- the creation of this experiment with bioand life sciences here in mission bay. now a few years later, it really began in 2009 where there were five companies that started in this building. today, there are 23 of these microbusinesses that are doing biotechnology research, clinical laboratory research as well as applications for that. right here, the three areas of work that they're doing. they told me they're here because of the talent, the graduates coming out of berkley and stanford and the school systems are really feeding the kind of talent that they're wanting to have in their companies and the industries are growing, and they're growing from different kinds of bio research to clean tech research. so our formula that began there, and again, i want to publicly

thank former mayor newsom for this, as he had that vision. now as of today, mission bay is 64% built out. as you can see right across the street. the hospital is almost halfway there. more than halfway there. under $1.5 billion build of the medical center. that is another attraction and it's attracting the microbusinesses that come here. their square footage tenfolded right in that very same time. i think the companies here, from what i can interview, they're very excited to be here.

they really feel the cross fertilization of talent that's coming in within the building. that, again, reflects not on the consistent policy we've had here about technology companies as well as bio, life science, and clean tech industries starting here, staying here, and growing here all at the same time. one of the reasons they can continue to grow is they do have a lot of openness to their interaction between the different companies so they get that kind of innovation going on. that's why we call it the mission bay center. i'm glad to announce this today and announce this has been a huge milestone thanks to all of you for consistently being here. i know tom is going to say a few words here. but i know the city has done right, and you can evidence it right here.

we started with good business sense, whether it was attracting fibrogen or q.v.c. and then started saying we can attract other businesses here. we've done the right messaging here. redevelopment has built the infrastructure, and now we see our future tax dollars contributing to the verticalness of these buildings and then the companies have come here in a very open and welcome way. and the talent is still continuing to be here. i exchanged my views that we need to keep our school systems very strong. because if they can continue graduating our kids with strong science backgrounds and they do end up getting into great schools, not all of them will get into stanford and berkley, but if they can get their science now, they'll still be recruited by the companies, where the research that they need, the laboratory work that they need, and the clinical applications are happening here. so i'm very excited to announce

this milestone here and to join all of you here with congratulations, and we're still in one of the most beautiful areas that -- this is why it's getting built right here. you can see b.a.e. from our port. they're here trying to do more cruise ship right next door. behind me, you'll see the future campus. they'll be filling in. all very exciting and we'll build out 100% of mission bay. and then we've got hunter's point and candle stick that will start a focus on clean tech. so the formulas we've had, the tax and business approach we've had not only have been inviting, i think they evidence the success we've seen today and we'll continue doing that with you and enjoy more and i hope not to wait for another 2 1/2 years to get the other tenfold. i think it's going to probably go faster now.

so thank you for being here. [applause] >> thank you, mayor lee. i'd like to introduce our boss, c.e.o. and founder of fibrogen, tom neff. [applause] >> thappings, katherine. let me start by thanking mayor lee for coming. welcoming steve richardson. alexander realty, who is now the owner of these buildings. steve has played a hand in many parts of what's gone on in mission barke not just here, but elsewhere. those that know him know he's had a major role in the leadership and the vision of what's going on and where we're going overall. i'd also like to mention and

thank the innovation centers of the bay area and fizer for coming. nectar as well. those are companies that are nearby now in mission bay. also, the micros and the minis here, they are now, i guess by my count, 25. mayor lee 23. there's a couple that are up in the office area, the fibrogen building that are probably -- i'm counting that he wasn't. there have been 35 total over time. some have gotten bigger and moved into larger quarters. some have venture owners that want them out of the city of san francisco and down the peninsula. some had to downsize. couldn't raise more money. so the picture has been one that's very dynamic. we would expect about 50% growth

year over year. in the number of companies. internally, i would guess that a third of the companies would grow in the space they have inside the building. so it's burgeoning. it's not just doing ok or getting by. it's a place where we reached an equilibrium. it's a turnover and a huge amount of demand out there for the resource. i would also like to mention some fibrogen people. i've had to make a list. pardon me. jenny kosor. rod ferman. rod stanley. katherine sharp. all people that work on this project every day all the time. the part i can attest to is that

katherine has kept me calmed down at various times about this project, and that's her job in part, which is no fun. i think that pat kontraneo, our v.p. of finance, has been a leader and facilitator across the entire spectrum of activities, and pat is very self-afacing and doesn't seek to credit himself. but i know what he does and he does a lot to make sure things get done right in this program. so thank you, pat. when we started, we came from south san francisco, and we came here because amgen, who competes with us in the markets, and jenentech were fighting over space there. there was a period of time when the rents in san francisco were higher than the rent here. the total cost here was still