>> welcome to the regular meeting of the government bought it and oversight committee. how want to thank the clerk of the board and the members of sfgtv. >> please be sure to silence cellular-phone and devices. atoms act upon it will appear on

the february 20 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. hearing to examine the proposed community choice ever -- aggregation with shell as well as the appropriations startup costs. >> and members of the public, we will be postponing this hearing. we will have a number of reports coming out. we thought we will have them before today, but we don't. can i interject a motion to postpone and continue to the call of the chair? first, can we take public comment? >> good afternoon, my name is douglas yeap. in regard to item number one, i

am kind of surprised it is being heard in this committee. that is just my opinion. the second thing that i would like to say about this committee hearing is that i am kind of surprised that based on the last gao committee group, there was only one item scheduled for today. in regards to gao, i feel like this is an important committee in the past, it seems like it has been under-utilized by city hall. i feel like this would be a change to continue the president of the last gao committee. i would like to mention one thing that this committee should keep in mind as it proceeds on this year. first, obstruction of justice. second, dereliction of duty. third, abuse of power under the

color of authority. i say that just for the record. i also feel that hopefully, it is not going to have another letter to the examiner-editor and titled "ethics commission needs an overhaul." i feel like this committee has been under-utilized. i thought each of these meetings would be attended by very many people that had issues with different parts of the city bureaucracy. since there are so few attendees, maybe some of the people feel that this is more or less a lapdog committee rather than a watchdog committee. hopefully that is not going to be happening this year and it will be an aggressive investigation, especially based on different things that were

mentioned in the civil grand jury reports. to conclude my statement, god has a strange way of dealing with situations. especially montezuma's revenge. supervisor farrell: other any members of the public that wish to speak? public comment is closed. we will be continuing this item. so moved. we will continue this to the call of the chair. are there any other items? thanks very much, meeting adjourned.

[gavel] supervisor mar: the meeting will come to order. this is the land-use and economic development committee meeting for this february 6, 2012. with me is supervisor cohen and

supervisor wiener. ms. miller, please read the instructions. clerk miller: items will appear as on the agenda unless otherwise unnoticed. please turn off all cell phones. supervisor mar: ann i want to thank sfgtv. please read item number one. clerk miller: item number one, public infrastructure improvements, mission bay south. supervisor mar: thank you. and we have barbara from the department of public works. >> thank you. this is for public infrastructure improvements of mission bay.

those blocks include portions of four streets, mission rock street, china basin street, mission bay boulevard north, and mission bay boulevard south. as you can see, there are streets that have now been redone. fourth street years ago did not go all of the way through. it went on a diagonal. fawhat you have is mission bay n a new grid pattern. fourth street now formally over there. what we are asking the board to do is to accept public infrastructure that includes sidewalks, other things. the department of public works has determined that the project

has been completed and was done in accordance with the city standard and is ready for its intended use. the director of the planning department has determined, and his staff has determined, that it is in conformity with the general plan, and the agency has determined that it is in compliance with the mission bay south plan. if you have any questions, i am here. supervisor mar: seeing there are no questions, let's open it up to public comment. seeing that there is no public comment, colleagues, can we move this without objection? thank you. [gavel] ms. miller, could you please read items number two and three together? i believe that mr. chiu is on his way. there he is. clerk miller: item number two,

the planning code for the chinatown transit station, and item number three, the zoning map amendment. supervisor mar: thank you. president chiu? president chiu: thank you. i would like to ask to have a continuance. i would like to ask that this item be continued until next week and that we have it listed next week as a committee report so it can come out to the full board on tuesday. we do have a tight time frame for that, but i want to make sure that we got our eyes -- we dot our i's and cross our t's. if you would like to make any presentations at this time, it is up to you? >> thank you, supervisor mar,

president chiu. i think if we are going to be coming back, we might as well just wait until next week. we will be working with staff to make sure we have any unanswered questions answered that we are able to present and move things forward next week. if that is ok, we will do that. supervisor mar: if i can just add for some other residents from chinatown that have raised issues, i hope that we threw mou's -- through mou's we can address the people being displaced. >> that is the intent, but and we will perhaps be able to confirm more clearly for those who have those concerns, but that is our intent. we are working with the mayor's office on housing to make sure that that happens. supervisor mar: great.

set to continue for one week. president chiu: to do public comment? supervisor mar: yes. is there any public comment? seeing none, president chiu, to continue this. president chiu: and to have as a committee report. supervisor mar: as a committee report to go the following tuesday. [gavel] thank you. and that was for items two and three to be continued. ms. miller, could you please call item number for? clerk miller: a hearing on improving the taxi service. supervisor mar: thank you, and i think this one is sponsored by supervisor wiener. supervisor wiener: thank you,

mr. chair. but think our goal is to have a city where not everyone wants to have their own automobile. we have prioritized giving people other viable options for getting around the city. of course, muni is a key part of that, and many of us were very, very hard to make sure that muni is as good as it can be. but regardless of how excellent we make muni, regardless of how much bicycling and walking we have, there will always be situations where people need to get somewhere quickly or need to go somewhere where muni does not go as regularly as they need. in other words, we need a compliment to the muni system. taxicabs, in addition to car sharing, or a critical component for having a true transit first

city. people need to know that they can get a taxi cab when they need it and that the cap is going to get them where they need to in an efficient and safe manner. we have many, many great taxicabs and a cab drivers in the city, but we need it to be better. taxicab service is not adequate to meet demand, and, in fact, i believe there is a hidden demand of people that if they believed they could get a taxi cab when they needed it would probably get rid of their car tomorrow. people actually do not believe that now, and too many people have had too many terrible experiences when they simply cannot get a taxi cab when they need it, and they do not think of doing it anymore. last year, i submitted a resolution that the board passed unanimously that indicated that

the board has a unanimous belief that the taxicab service is inadequate. i believe that when the taxi cabs were merged into the mta, at least for a while, taxicab's overshadowed muni, and muni is the 800 pound gorilla in the agency, but recently, i believe the staff at the mta have refocused and are working very, very hard to try to improve service in the city, and in my personal view, improving service means two things. primarily, 1, increasing supply of taxicabs. we do not have enough in my view in the city to adequately serve our residents, our visitors, and our businesses, and number two, improving our dispatch system, either by a centralized dispatch or a coordinated dispatch to make sure that taxicab's can officially be sent where they need to go, including to the

parts of the sitting that are not saturated, whether it is parts on the west side or the southeastern part of the city where it is extremely hard, even harder to get a taxi cab than in some of the more central geographic areas. so as part of the resolution last year, we requested quarterly updates from the mta on where we are with the taxicab system, what progress we have seen, what the plans are to increase service, and this is the first of those quarterly hearings, so i want to welcome the mta. i look forward to the presentation, and i know you have been focused on this a lot, full time, for a while, and i want to thank you for your work in helping to improve our system, so mta, and, colleagues,

i am sorry. were there any introductory comments? no proof of thank you. -- no? thank you. >> good afternoon. i just want to introduce the item here. i want to thank the supervisor for is leadership for bringing forth the resolution in the first place. i know it is one that is felt by all of the members of the board and really anybody that was elected by people of san francisco, because i think as a unanimous vote by the board indicated, while there may be a lot of different ideas of what needs to happen in the taxi industry, i think one area of not just consensus but unanimity is that it needs to be a lot better, and from our position, the agency that is charged with the agency that is charged with implementing and realizing the