gentle state of mind, i guess. ♪ >> good morning, everyone. i'm the executive director of the san francisco tradition nor did. the me take a second to welcome you all warmly to this event. -- transportation authority. i am glad that we are able to hostess for the third time in a decade. i have the honor of introducing the official welcome to the city, edwin lee, the 43rd mayor of the city and county of san francisco. a former city administrator, former director of public works for san francisco. he was appointed unanimously as

the successor mayor in 2011 to fill the remaining year of former mayor gavin newsom's term. as you know, former mayor newsom was sworn in as the lieutenant governor in january to 10 -- 2010. mayor lee is the first asian- american mayor in the city's history. 2010, mayor lee was appointed to a second term by mayor newsom. his appointment at the time was confirmed unanimously by the board of supervisors. as city administrator, he spearheaded reform that would be reduced the size and cost of government, from reducing the vehicle fleet, to consolidating departments, to saving tax dollars. he implemented the city's move to cleaner vehicles and infrastructure to support electric vehicles. mayor lee also developed and oversaw implementation of his

first 10-year capital plan, to guide our capital and infrastructure investment. mayor lee has a long and distinguished career in san francisco. since 1989, has held a number of senior leadership positions. he is a fellow cal graduate. as you probably all know, last tuesday, november 8, the people of san francisco elected edwin lee in his own right, to serve as mayor of san francisco. let me say, on a personal note, the day before the election, i was having coffee at my favorite cafe in glen park, and lost in my e-mail, whatever i was doing in the moment. all of a sudden, i hear some commotion and see the mayor

coming in to shake hands with me. he was doing parts of his campaign stump. it is already a tradition, in a few months that he served as interim mayor, among the department heads, you cannot be incognito in this town, because the mayor will find you. maybe in a cafe or someplace else that you hang out. this mayor likes to be everywhere, likes to know everyone. that is what the city really needs, somebody who knows the city, knows what the city is all about, what the city wants. has got the kind of discipline, the kind of 7 to 9 scheduled to make it happen. he has already set an example, and we are all looking forward to a hold term of this with him.

ladies and gentlemen, it gives me a great pleasure and it is my distinct honor to introduce mayor edwin lee, mayor of san francisco. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. thank you, josé, for that wonderful rendition of our last meeting. i want to welcome all of you here to san francisco, i want to welcome all of you self-help movement folks, local transportation experts, individual that have dedicated your lives. i want to thank you for occupying san francisco this morning. i know i'll get questions there this afternoon. i wanted to be here this morning to welcome your conference, to know that you have a mayor here at greatly appreciates your self-help movement. we have had hours -- prop k --

and we have had many discussions about those. especially with dpw, how to balance that money to make sure that we are getting everything out of it that we can. we are doing everything we can with the sales tax. i hope you have a chance to visit some of the project that are under way because of prop k. we have wonderful projects, one that i am very proud of in helping our infrastructure will come, not only the increased population we are increasing, -- experiencing, but also the need to run the state. i noticed here in your conference you have a focus on the future. i first thought, in my relaxed way, after the election was over, -- that is close to one of my favorite movies "fight for the future." it is kind of like that. when it comes to transportation infrastructure, the priorities

we have, in our government, and our residents feel about it, it is almost like you feel like there are aliens from another planet trying to stop us from creating a future for our society and community. i know we have some great projects in the state, but i want to thank you for coming to san francisco. with your ideas, the collaboration you have, priorities about making sure that we have sustainable, good neighborhoods that are built with and through the transportation infrastructure that we are talking about, we are going to have our state really tried to depend on you to recover. i know without making infrastructure investment a priority, our state will not have the ability to recover economically and for the people who want to have good lives and improve the conditions in the state.

i want to mention three of our projects. there ones we're very much invested in. the first is our procedural parkway. the second is the trans-based terminal. -- the trans-bay terminal. the third, the third -- [laughter] [applause] of course it is our essentials subway. [laughter] that is going to be with the help of the department of energy. let me tell you that. [laughter] i wanted to talk about our parkway. we are about to finish next year if the first phase of the project. we will be connecting golden gate bridge with the new safe roadway that connects everybody to many points south.

it is wonderful. i have been there at least twice with secretary lahood, jose, and many representatives of our congressional and senatorial bodies. they are seismically retrofitted. it will be even more beautiful. you will see a lot of scenery and around that. we're excited about completing phase one and look forward to starting phase two. for the trans-bay terminal, one of the most important projects we're building downtown, we have had the program since the bay bridge was built. the trans bay terminal houses different transportation modes. we already have under construction the rebuilding of that terminal as a transportation hub.

there will also be a brand new neighborhood of offices where people live and work. there will be a beautiful series of buildings where designing in the most sustainable and environmentally friendly way to make sure we keep our status of as being the greatest city in north america. we anticipate there will be 27,000 permanent jobs created as a result of that terminal. we are building the north terminal hub for high-speed rail. we're going ahead and building it. we're building it in anticipation that the high-speed rail system will be built in the state because it is the smartest thing for us to do. that is what i am planning the future for. we are the only high-speed rail project already under way in the

whole country. we anticipate we can work out an agreement with all of our friends to make sure it accommodates their needs and addresses their fears to minister it is sustainable. we strongly suggest that we are very much a part of and want to electrify caltrans rather than just build something new that will disturb everybody else's neighborhood. we know that our future is linking the north and south. 1/3 of our airline flights through san francisco airport is the los angeles to san francisco commit. because of the capacity of our airports, we no longer have any capacity to expand, we need to move up on to rail.

san francisco can be successful by inviting more infant -- international travel that we are known for. it is vital for our future. it is a great neighborhood being designed and built. you are going to see this being one of the most sustainable projects you will ever see. it is the center of 11 different transportation districts. a project that had been identified as one of the controversial once during the campaign over the last three months is the subway. it has been supported by our city, every federal official, and the state transportation agencies for two decades. it is the second phase of the first phase that was completed. we're getting linked up with new stations for people going to union square or chinatown, no.-

south. all of our new homes and additional residents that will move into the city, over 10,500 new homes are being built in the southern part of the city. that is going to be our new area of living. we have cleared it out. we have done it right. we have used redevelopment tools to make sure our future has adequate capacity. the central subway is vital for our future. it will be transporting 73,000 passengers a day to add to our over 700,000 transit riders in the city. that is our future. i am glad to share it with you.

i know you are talking about and focusing on the future of all of the counties. the san francisco transportation authority and the mayor do support of the work you are doing. i want to praise you for coming here and sharing your ideas. the best ideas are about to come. one of the most serious things we can do is that we have got to move our cities forward. we have got to move our neighborhoods forward. we have to contribute to moving our state forward. we cannot sit back and watch our infrastructure decay. we have to make sure the right investments are made and that we make those investments. not investing in transportation means we would not have a company like twitter, zynga, a sales force. all those companies are coming

here in part because they know we have invested properly in our transportation infrastructure. that is how their work force gets around. that is how they get around the city. welcome to san francisco. thank you. i hope you have great ideas and cooperation. thank you. [applause] >> i have 2 job titles. i'm manager of the tour program as well as i am the historyian of city hall. this building is multifaceted to

say the very least it's a municipal building that operates the city and county of san francisco. this building was a dream that became a reality of a man by the name of james junior elected mayor of san francisco in 1912. he didn't have a city hall because it was destroyed in the earth wake of 1906. construction began in april of 1913. in december 1915, the building was complete. it opened it's doors in january 1916. >> it's a wonderful experience to come to a building built like this. the building is built as a palace. not for a king or queen.

it's built for all people. this building is beautiful art. those are architecture at the time when city hall was built, san francisco had an enormous french population. therefore building a palace in the art tradition is not unusual. >> jimmie was an incredible individual he knew that san francisco had to regain it's place in the world. he decided to have the tallest dome built in the united states. it's now stands 307 feet 6 inches from the ground 40 feet taller than the united states capital. >> you could spend days going

around the building and finding something new. the embellishment, the carvings, it represents commerce, navigation, all of the things that san francisco is famous for. >> the wood you see in the board of supervisor's chambers is oak and all hand carved on site. interesting thing about the oak is there isn't anymore in the entire world. the floors in china was cleard and never replanted. if you look up at the seceiling you would believe that's hand kof

carved out of wood and it is a cast plaster sealing and the only spanish design in an arts building. there are no records about how many people worked on this building. the workman who worked on this building did not all speak the same language. and what happened was the person working next to the other person respected a skill a skill that was so wonderful that we have this masterpiece to show the world today.

>> welcome to city hall. more importantly, welcome to our season of giving.

i am pleased that i am joined by very important members of our great city family. i wanted to take this opportunity as we're coming closer to our first of many holidays, i wanted to send a message to all of our city and the rest of the bay area that there is easily going to be a lot of bad news in our lives. it may be economics or jobs. in san francisco, we think differently. we believe in ourselves, we believe in our faiths. we take up the challenge that in times of bad news and economic hurt that we do things differently in our city. we bring our residents and visitors together closer.

to declare this season of giving is important for us to send a different message as we're sensitive to messages that may not be about hope. i want to thank our religious leaders. i want to thank our wonderful social service providers, the intra-faith council, st. anthony's, and so many others, a salvation army, the united way of the bay area. all of them are coming together including the food bank. we will be working hard together. i started this week with our department heads. in the next few months,