pedestrians to walk through the area, therefore, we elected mayor lee to use the parking space to display the merchandise in the parking area so that pedestrians would be able to walk through the sidewalk area. we are happy to report to you all that mayor lee accepted the stockton street merchants request. i have been saying for mandates to all my friends for many times that the people of san francisco are so lucky to be let ed lee as our mayor because he is not a politician but a public servant. he has served the people of san francisco for 22 years in five different city departments under four mayors. he understands the chinese community problems and is ready

to offer his assistance. this pilot program is one of the examples. we are proud and honored to be one of the supporters of this program and to sponsor this pilot program has per midi and agent for stockton street merchants. again, thank you very much there, and all your supporters. thank you. >> thanks so much, everyone. first of all, this is the year of the dragon. i am sorry that i almost forgot. but can you imagine what is going to happen during the year of 2012? we have a historic mayor.

first chinese-american. the best mayor in the whole world in my opinion, but now, he got elected by the people of the city as the first asian elected mayor. should we all give our wonderful mayor a 22-year experience in city government a big round of applause? [applause] as i said many times during the several events that i was involved, you can see the history continue to be made by our great mayor in the next four years, eight years, and beyond, believe me. our mayor has already shown his leadership ability to all of you. you know, what he has done -- i do not have to repeat what he has done. you have your own judgment, and

he is a visionary mayor. he has done everything for us. not only chinese americans, but the city and every part that is involved. we're so grateful that the mayor, together with our president of the board of supervisors approved this program. we started talking about it maybe three weeks ago. can you imagine within the short time, three weeks, the department of public works, under the leadership of director -- in oneand last night, we had a meeting from 6:00 to 8:00, and we completed a detailed plan of how we would do the celebration

of the fair. this is something we have to give credit to all the department of public works under his leadership. [applause] and, of course, his assistant, the bureau chief, that he should get credit as well. in the way, thank you so much for your great effort. also, do not overlook the senior help supervisor, lisa o'malley. she has been spending a lot of time with us. i wonder she is here today. but thank you so much. also, the mta and the other departments involved, the police departments, the captain. therefore, i will say this year will be a good year and thereafter as well, under our

mayor ed lee. thank you. thank you. happy new year. [applause] >> ok, so i have been working with the department of public works for over 11 years. when i took this job, i work with mayor ed lee. someone who has mentored me, guided me, given the advice, and, frankly, been able to get to where i am is the next person i am going to introduce. they are partner in this, and have done a lot of work with dpw. i have had the opportunity to travel to other countries to see how public works and how cities are being kept clean and green. welcome. [applause] >> well, i am not very good at clapping hands. i am very good at kicking behind, and to get things done. you know, the thing about

mohammed and our mayor and our leadership in our city right now is that they are willing to listen. i have always advocated that the community comes together when that there is a good idea. when there is a bad idea, i am the first one -- i do not care who you are, i will object to it. this idea of displaying the sidewalk, as the mere mention, really started 11 years ago when he was in dpw. at that point, the city, you know, a member of the city attorney and everybody, said it was too cumbersome, too difficult, the liability was to prohibited. and i was so happy when this mayor cut through all that bullshit and came up with this idea, you know, accepted this idea and expended it and work with different departments.

it will be minimal cost. i said, again and again, when we -- one that is something we try and it encourages additional cost, the community should step forward to assume their responsibility. so they have they insurance policies, so it should not cost that much. and i call out, you know, tommy yand, david wong, and the other associations, and i said, let's all step forward to share the cost of that insurance policy. it would only cost a few hundred dollars for eight or nine days, so it will be a real meaningful community effort. and i hope this will continue to last. the mayor taking the cue from previous mayor willie brown. he is a very forgiving person

[laughter] under me, i will kick your butt before, you know, i get to work with you. but, mayor lee, giving us a new leadership, and we should all follow. thank you. [applause] >> a couple people i would like to thank. one of our main partners, recology, who is here. there will be picking up garbage on time in making sure that the area is restored back to normal everyday. the pilot itself runs from 9:00 in the morning to 7:00 in the evening. and so, during that time -- >> no. >> ok, at 10:00 until 6:00 this and the merchants will be out there. between 9:00 and 10:00 is the preparation time. and between 6:00 and 7:00 this the cleanup time. we will be putting out some

barricades along the parking strips. so those will all be within the sidewalk. nobody will be allowed on the street unless you are crossing the street at an intersection. ok, and the police have that information, and the sfmta also have that information because we have promised to allow the buses to run on time, and there will be nobody stopping or impeding the travel of the vehicle's speed up other people i would like to thank, our deputy director for engineering. he has been very helpful. the city administrator, naomi kelly, someone i have been working with for many years, and we're working closer now. and all the community groups from chinatown, i want to thank you all. it has been a great working relationship, and another is a lot more work that we will do together. and we will be here cleaning up graffiti, making sure everything is clean. we will be watching the tunnels and the next few days, and we

will be doing more work. i want to thank everyone for coming out today, and happy year of the dragon. thank you. [applause]

>> good afternoon, everyone. thanks for being here. this is our first disaster council meeting for 2012, and it's been quite a previous year, but again, i want to start out by thanking everybody for working as closely as together as we are. i do feel it's just a higher level of collaboration by our community, our residents, our agencies, our responders and i know that towards the end of

last year, we had a number of fires. we had a fairly big one just a few days before christmas in our western district area. i want to thank all of the residents that were out there because there were individual heroes that acted very quickly to get others out, and then, in those precious minutes, our fire department showed up with not only one but five different divisions which was absolutely necessary, five-alarm. their response was excellent and not only did a good job but immediately there was also the fire commissioners, including the chief. we were there. i want to thank ross mirkarimi, then supervisor, he was out there with me looking out for the residents. several other board members, as well. and we immediately saw not only the residents there but the non-profits that had been there

helping out. our faith-based community was there, as well, because immediately, the needs were felt and i think in the context, that there were no fatalities, no real serious injuries, it was just another reflection of the way we're handling serious disasters, yet response is so thorough, so good. and then to follow up with those needs, not only did the community help out and i think the city started showing immediately our sense of support for the residents there that had lost everything that they had just before the holidays, and good response from our helpful communities to help out, whether they were churches or individuals that would help. d.e.m. also, they made, i think, a very critical call to cal nema to get our city declared

particularly at that fire, a disaster, and got the attention of the s.b.a. and the state programs to help out and ind that there are at least six individuals who are going through the process of getting specially handled loans out of that program. there was good follow-up because people, although not serious injuries, their lives are being put in place with that additional help so i thank the staff for doing that and all the other agencies but i think it's the reflection of the kind of response we want to see in case there is that and while we're doing that, we do everything we can to prevent but when it comes to the winter times, it was something we were all paying attention to and i know sheriff mirkarimi shared this with me, as well, because we had a chance to talk then. we were thinking there were too many fires going on in that district and we were wondering why, trying to make sure we

looked at every opportunity, whether our police department and others, to research the backgrounds for all these things to make sure that if they were accidental, we can do something even about accidental better, by better education with all of our residents about how these fires start and where they start and how to prevent them, while we look for any other indications beyond just accidental. again, i think we're doing everything we can to do that. i also want to acknowledge the work that's going on behind the scenes but now becoming more visible, and that's our america's cup. as we approach that very active event, that inviting event with thousands of people that will be here, a number of agencies are already working together doing the necessary training and i know a number of you are involved in that because there

will be so many people and so many activities that are going on throughout the city in anticipation of that and so many agencies that need to have a lot more ability to work with each other and maybe have not had the opportunity to do that. and, then, to, of course, prevent anything from happening that would be negative to the event and really reach our goals for it. so the exercises that are being led by d.e.m. in anticipation of that, the agencies that will touch upon things that include things that will happen in the air, crime control, e.m.s. fire, park events we anticipate, the people movement that are needed, the general security and the use of the water, both for security as well as recreation, all will be in play so appropriate agencies are being tapped to work through the leadership of d.e.m. to coordinate exercises that will test and need to be

tested any assumptions that we are making with our individual plans so we never work in silos. and i want that to be, again, the mantra for all of us. these large events, we have to get out of our silos and make sure we're cooperating and that's been the theme of this and that's why we go through the exercises so i appreciate this and want to thank people for doing that because when we're doing that up front, we're making every effort to mitigate anything that can happen beyond our individual borders which i know all of you will take care of on an individual department basis, it's really where it doesn't come across as individual departments and effects several of us, i don't want any gray areas to prevent us from doing an excellent job as we go on the world stage with this event. thank you very much for that. i want to single out the -- also the leadership that d.e.m. is doing when it comes to a bay web. that's been in the papers. it's before our board of supervisors and thank you for

holding those hearings, members of the board, that we are pushing forward this bay web because we do have very, very clear needs to have better communication, better spread of data. the chief mentioned that during the playoff games at candlestick, as well, some examples where things could have worked better if we had a bay web approach to our other agencies to promote higher levels of data exchange. we need to get there and i want to signal to the board that our staff, working with d.e.m., will make sure we answer every question about the financing aspects to it that might be of concern and make sure we get through that quickly so we can get on to building a system in collaboration with all the other agencies that are involved in the bay area, all their responders, all their emergency agencies. we need this because we are going to be hosting more events in this great city that command

a level of bay area collaboration and with that, we need, then, data and communications that work across our cities. that's important to us and we are also honoring the serious federal funding that had been made because they believe this is also their goal in supporting us, as well. and finally, again, i want to acknowledge all the members of the disaster council, including the new members from the community and from various agencies we work with, along with all the departments, and the board of supervisors, as well, in paying attention to how we manage disasters and how we prepare for them. things do still make me nervous in my years as public works director and i've already asked d.p.w. as well as the city engineer to begin studying

what's happening on the tower and telegraph hill because those slides always leave me some level of uncertainty as there's so much housing up there and visitors that go up there and the tower itself so we're going to get a study going to what the short term, middle term and long term challenges are on those rock slides and what they're indicating to us. i need the best engineer minds to give us that information so we can go on to higher levels of effort there. i also want to make sure we are all continuing to pay good attention to disaster recovery. that's been my personal interest but i'll tell you, all the things that we're already doing on disaster recovery, i've indicated to many other cities as i go through the conference of mayors and talk to them about what they're doing, they acknowledge that disaster preparedness has a lot to do with recovery planning that goes on now because that leads to a

stronger tie with our communities about what mitigation is really all about and where we need to spend our infrastructure money. i want to thank everybody for participating in that. you'll hear reports. every time there's a disaster in the world, if we can get somebody over there that representing our city, not only as part of a humanitarian effort that we've done like for turkey that you'll hear about today, but if we can bring back that very live experience that people have every single time we come back with a reinforcement that our recovery planning and our disaster preparedness is not only apropos, it is absolutely necessary, and again, i also signal a thanks our fleet week because that is really turning the corner for us. it's no longer the very important celebration of our military, the humanitarian and ongoing training we have with our military in the country about our own disaster preparedness is extremely

important, getting everyone involved in that. with that, i just wanted to make that initial report and thank everybody for participating this disaster council meeting. thank you to the board members, again, for being here. >> thank you, mr. mayor. i happily can say the mayor gave most of my director's report so that's wonderful. thank you so much. i have a nice little presentation for you, mr. mayor, that is a fun way to start this out, i hope. we had a beautiful coat made for you so that when you respond to our disasters we can tell who you are right away. [laughter] >> it is the mayor. anyway. i hope it's all reflective, it's heat resistant, all of that stuff. i hope you enjoy it. [applause]

>> we didn't want to be outdone because i know the fire chief gave you a hat after your election. >> i'm hoping not to wear this too often. >> i hope you don't have to, as well. just a couple of quick things that i did want to touch on, is a little uwasi update. i think most of you know that there has been cuts at the federal level on uwsai funding. this last year, we lucked out in that san francisco and the core cities remained whole, which is wonderful. so we will continue to have our $34 million of funding regionally for this current year. next year, it's questionable. what we're hearing from washington is that perhaps all of the tier 2 cities or regions will be cut out this year. if that's the case, we still may be ok next year but i think we

need to be thinking long term about how we sustain the efforts that we have begun and make sure that we can continue to become more and more prepared and ready for the big one when it does happen because funding at the federal level is definitely declining. san francisco, at this point, is in good shape and in fact the approval authority last week voted to keep the core city allocations of oakland, san jose, and san francisco, $1 million each before any other funding is expended so that's a very positive thing. just real briefly, we were very happy that the state e.m.s. authority ruled just a few weeks ago that san francisco can maintain its exclusive operating area for ambulance response for 911 and emergency calls. this has been up in the air since 2008 so that's a big

victory for us, very happy with all the work that mr. dudgeon has done working with the state and with chief hayes-white and her command staff. we really -- that's a big victory for us. just following what the mayor said about advance recovery and the resilience work that san francisco has been doing. we have really been acknowledged throughout the entire country as being at the forefront of that work and that gets back to what mayor lee, in his former position as city administrator, led up the resiliency effort and did that pre-recovery planning. on february 16, fema is coming out to roll out their national recovery plan and so they are doing it in san francisco, here in city hall. the mayor is going to be giving the opening remarks that day and in fact i had the opportunity to go to harvard in december and go through the national preparedness leadership

institute, which was this fabulous program, and all of the instructors from around the country are saying that san francisco is the lead, that we are the model that should be followed in other places. so fema will be looking to us for direction and i think that it's a way for us to highlight all the great work we've been doing and continue to do. just on a very last note, we will be doing all the 1906 earthquake remembrances that we do every year, so i hope you will join us at lata's fountain at 5:42 a.m., or whatever time it is, some god awful early morning but it's a lot of fun and we will be doing community events during april. april's a big month for us so look forward to getting messages from us and i hope you can join us. thank you. next on the agenda, i believe, is rob, recent e.o.c.

activations? >> certainly. i'm going to touch on the last three or so that we've had because they're in relatively recent memory and work backwards a little bit. first starting with, we did activate a small team for the rock slide earlier and we did that to basically make sure everything gets pulled together in one spot and make sure that everybody's working together. it seems like maybe it doesn't raise up to the level of e.o.c. but this is a key message we've been trying to push, it doesn't have to be a big event in order to have the benefits of the cross departmental, cross-agency coordination. in this case, this is specifically one of those events that really benefits from getting people in the room because oftentimes what happens is if something -- if there's an event, it gets put in the dispatch system, we get pages and updates and what the fire and police part is done, they go back to their stations and go back in service and it drops off

everybody's radar so one of my charges to my team has been to keep tracking these events beyond the end of the first respond because it is first respond. it doesn't mean the event is done. we've really seen that in dealing with displaced people and a lot of these fires in the past year and it also folds over into this where we're able to maintain tracking it for several days after it until we get a sense that we've got to the recovery phase and it's down to one or two departments working together to solve the problem. that's what we did here. it also gives us visibility and i think this is really important. it gives us visibility for identifying those events that might be eligible for some form of reimbursement down the line because if we get together early and capture the data early and get the damage assessments early, we're able to make that determination and work with cal ema to determine whether or not it's going to hit their thrish hold so we