month and my bus pass is going to go from $21 to $70, a very drastic raise. i just want to remind you that the youth commission has been supporting free muni for use -- youth and the board of supervisors also recently supported this. this free muni program would only cost $8 million, which is less than 1% of muni's overall budget. i think that is a very reasonable price. as long as we get a pilot program and see how it works, it is well worth it and would affect the lives of many youth, like myself who are at this transitional age and cannot

really afford to ride the bus. it will really affect our lives and i hope that this community keeps free muni for youth in mind during this meeting. >> hello, board of supervisors. i'm here to send you a message about the support i have towards youth transportation in san francisco. i believe it would cost the mta 's entire budget -- 1% of all of it -- just to get free transportation to every youth in san francisco. as a muni rider every day, i know that it would help those who ride muni. and since the economy is down right now and every low-income family struggles to pay for

school, transportation, things like that, it would do a lot of help for new, upcoming youth in the community. thank you. >> good afternoon, the government audits and oversight committee. i am is 17 years old, and i am a muni rider -- i am 17 years old. i go to private high school, and i take muni every day to get to school and to go anywhere in the city, weekly, monday through friday. i get up early in the morning to take muni from my neighborhood, the western addition, 2 ocean avenue, where i go to school. honestly, the prices for muni,

all youth cannot afford it. where employment is not as readily available, it is harder to pay for transportation, and students need transportation to get to school because we are required to go to school to get our education and better our lives. muni plays a factor in that. personally, i remember, there was one day where i walked all the way from the western addition to ocean avenue because i did not have money to get on muni. this is a really important issue that you guys have the power to change to impact the lives of youth in our city. definitely, i think we should get on this release soon.

also another note -- we should expand the reach of this to not only youth under 17, but youth who are 18 and still in high school and possibly even a college students who take muni to get to their education institution. so i really support the free muni for use -- youth, and thank you. >> hello, board of supervisors government audit and oversight committee. i know you guys are talking about work orders right now, but i just want to remind you guys that i really strongly support free muni for all young people. as a student myself, i really experience the importance of affordable transportation. it helps me to be on time at

school, focus on studies. therefore, please support free muni for all youth. >> i'm a district 9 youth commissioner and a father. i'm a strong advocate for free muni for youth. when i was young, my family struggled when my father lost his job. at times, -- we all understand we are in economic times -- difficult economic times. i would like to commend you on your work. if we could figure out where there is excess money being spent and figure out how to help youth. >supervisor campos: thank you to

the youth commission. you can see that it is difficult for young people to be here during the day. they are in school. technology has allowed them to do that. >> i have to talk with other families every day about how hard it is to get access to muni. i think this conversation is very important. we are talking about a lot of money. our families now are being punished because they do not have enough money. we do not have a lot of clarity on how the money is being spent. i think we need to pay a lot of attention on this, and i feel a lot of frustration because we do not have the answers to this issue, and we are confronting a

lot of unclarity about that. this is the community's money, and on the other side, the community is having a lot of punishment because they do not have enough money in order to get access to transportation. people in the community should have this kind of information. we're going to have the answer to this question, we have to have the answers as soon as we can. we need to have this money in order to provide more service for our communities and give back to them. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. [applause] >> i would like to say if you want the kids to go to school and everything, i think that you

should give free passes to them so they can get their education. that is very important. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker. >> [speaking spanish] >> good morning. i'm here to ask that you make muni free for youth. something that i learned today -- i'm really surprised by some of the financial waste that muni spends. i want to encourage you to go over your budget and see where you are spending your funding.

i think that is something we can do and that is something you can do. i think, going over the budget, you will be able to find space to move funds to make this program possible. and i think that this is something that is very important, not just for children, but also a lot of the single mothers that are here because san francisco is a very expensive city. thank you very much. supervisor campos: thank you. muchas gracias. i'm going to read a couple more names. [reading names]

>> [speaking spanish]

[applause] >> good afternoon. i'm really angry because i have the opportunity to look over the statistics and to seek where the funding -- see where the funding in spending is going right now. i saw that a lot of money was being spent to pay police officers to scare the riders in the city. i feel like it was made to teach us a lesson, and i encourage you to use that same level of vigilance to go over the measure and use that vigilance so they can stop scaring us in our

community. they were treating us like criminals. i feel like criminals are here, the people who are not managing the budget well. i'm grateful for the opportunity to be at this hearing because i was able to open my eyes. i want to encourage you all to look over this budget. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. muchas gracias. next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors. supervisor campos: if you could speak into the microphone so we can hear you. there you go. >> i was part of the campaign -- we were part of the campaign working on getting free fast passes for youth. for us, public transportation is about the environment, equality, and [inaudible]

we support the leadership of muni to ensure that resources are being used appropriately and we ask that the leadership of muni be mindful of unintended consequences that service cuts might have or will have. the first being the loss of employment due to people not being able to get to work in a timely fashion. if that happens due to service cuts, it has the follow-on effect of increasing welfare costs to the city and medicare costs to the city. people often use the emergency room -- low-income people often use the emergency room as their primary health care source. if you lose your job, you do not have health care. i ask you to be mindful of that. there are other unintended

consequences. i ask that the board of supervisors be mindful of this and do what you can to make san francisco and nice place for all its inhabitants. >> good morning, supervisors. thank you for holding this committee hearing today. i am the community organizer for the jamestown community center. our youth group has been working on the campaign for free muni for youth. i am a muni rider myself. i think it is important to look over the work orders. i think it would be invaluable for our community to insure that the work order process is being managed in a way to make sure that muni is built accurately

and appropriately. there continue to be efficiencies created by these work orders, and it leads to muni having to cut funding because they do not have the money necessary to continue those services. basically, not being able to figure out how these work orders are being managed and how the overspending by muni on this work orders are leading to us having to have these difficult conversations year after year about how muni is going to make up for funding for the cut in services and an increase in fares and we begin to start talking about things like free muni for youth, which is necessary for a variety of reasons. it is super important to figure

this out so we can work towards becoming a transit first city and really create the new muni riders of the future. that is why we are here, and i hope we can figure this out together. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker please. >> hello. good morning. supervisor campos: if you could speak into the microphone please. thank you. >> the first time i heard about this, i want to help the children get to school. if there is some way they can do it, put more attention on how they manage everything they have for the drivers and more attention to how they pay the work order.

that way they can find out they do not pay extra money. that way we can have more money for families, as children, or elders -- families, children, or elders. but children need a lot of help, right? if they are in school, they are not outside on the streets. this money can be used for that. they can find a way how they can manage it better. that would be good for everybody. thank you for your interest. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors.

i am an organizer with people organizing for women's employment rights. we believe this is about minimizing our impact on the environment and the key to access for equal opportunity in the city. because the hearing is during a time when students cannot come, we wanted to show a short testimony from a student at balboa high school. last friday, we had a city scavenger hunt with over 90 students, who are ninth graders of the ethnic studies class is, and they use muni to get across the city -- ninth graders of the ethnic studies classes. they have these conversations about their experiences. we are well aware that the city is balancing the budget on our backs, as bus riders, and that

when service cuts and their hikes happen, it mostly happens to those who depend on it the most -- in service cuts and -- when service cuts and fare hikes happen. we feel like muni put the money could be used toward proactive initiatives that show that we've value prioritizing our people in san francisco. >> [inaudible] supervisor campos: we have a video that they want to show. there we go. >> i'm a sophomore here at balboa high school.

[inaudible] i'm here to help support the youth to get our voices heard and have our community become as one. i believe it is really a concern for people of color because a lot of people of color do not have as many privileges as other and people of color are mostly the ones that need education and the need the transportation to get from one place to another. a car is not really affordable to us. i would tell the supervisors that transportation for us is mostly important because that is how we are able to go to places. we cannot afford a car.

transportation would really help if it was free for a lot of us to be able to get our education without complaining of being late or having problems getting to school. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you for that. it is good to hear from the balboa high school community. next speaker please. >> good morning. [inaudible] it is a really important issue. i have been working havepower -- -- i have been working with p.o.w.e.r., so giving everyone the opportunity to get to the

resources the city has to offer. all the things that young people want to be engaged in. it is about helping the environment by encouraging ridership as well and investing in our young people. until now, the city has been balancing its budget on the backs of bus riders and drivers, and that is not fair, and it has to stop, like a lot of people have been saying. we need to manage the budget better so we can have funding for programs like this. more than ever, we need to make the buses more affordable for families who are struggling to get by and for those who depend on it to get around san francisco. people impacted by fare hikes and service cuts are working- class folks in san francisco, so i encourage you to look at that and for us to work together to make this happen. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors.

i support the free youth fast pass campaign. i went on the scavenger hunt, and part of our scavenger hunt was to ask people if they support this. finding out even more that it is something that people in this city value, but it was really hard for me today to see all the different amounts of money that are being over budgeted with the mta when their main concern when we spoke to them as a full board was -- where is the money going to come from? i want to encourage you guys to look at better ways to spend the money and to really go through the overspending that is happening. i noticed an increase of $2.8 million or $2.6 million or something like that spent on policing, and that was a major issue with the youth we spoke with. we ask them how often they get

take it, and their response was that they either get off before they see the officer's or give them a fake name, which is not something you should be encouraged to do -- they either get off before they see the officers or give them a fake name. so to talk about ways you guys could fix these issues and maybe instead of doing so much overtime, you guys could do part-time drivers or something, but figure out a way to not punished the workers but work with them to fix these budget issues. i really appreciate the questions that a supervisor campos -- questions that supervisor campos was asking. i thought that they were helpful, and i want to ask them, too. >> we want to thank both of you all for your leadership. i think supervisor chiu said it excellent. we need to look at the forest and not just the trees. the leadership that you have displayed, supervisor campos, in

bringing this forward is great. i think what we are seeing is that public transportation is actually an opportunity we have to do something really beautiful for the environment and for economic opportunity and for equality. we have on the one hand and opportunity to create green jobs by actually taking transportation money, spending it on transit. we increase service. we can lower fares, and that is what this is about. we can take the new leadership at mta toward taking our transit first policy and having it serve the people that need it the most. this whole conversation is something that we are really invested in. every speaker up here has said that they are here for free muni for young people. if we take our transportation

money and spend it on transit, we can make that happen and we urgently need to make it happen this year. we have already been cutting our school buses. kids do not have a way to get to school. they are asking to get on the bus even when they do not have a fair and based the fear of a police officer getting -- giving them a ticket -- face the fear of a police officer giving them a ticket. we do not have time to wait and we have a huge opportunity to do something for our people. thank you so much. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> [speaking spanish]

>> good afternoon. i have two daughters who use the bus every day. if they cannot catch the bus and if they do not have money for the bus, they have to walk half an hour to get home. not just a little one, but the older one. i'm asking if you can please support free fast passes for all youth in the ciry. -- city. >> [speaking spanish]

>> i have two daughters. one is 6 years old. one is 15. they need to get to school and use the bus every day in order to study. it is hard for me to wake up my daughter, my 6-year-old in time. it is a lot of work, and sometimes, we are running late and we have to run. i just wanted to say if you could support this campaign. [applause] supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> i'm here with the organization of p.o.w.e.r., part of the campaign to get free muni passes for all. now more than ever, we need to make buses more affordable for families who are struggling to get by and also, i'm a resident of bayview.

i live out toward -- i live a little ways from town. i also have an 8-year-old boy who relies on transportation to get to school every dayso both every day. so we ask for your support. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is steve williams, and i am with power. i appreciate the issue that family flight was continued to a future time, but i think it is important to underscore the connection between family flight over time and work orders. in a lot of ways it can be thought of as