p.m.. we all know that the sidewalk is only 9.5 feet wide. it would be too congested for 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]

[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 implementing and realizing the city transit first policy, i think supervisor stated very well -- i think supervisor wiener stated very well, having

a good tax in service. we should have a good tourist destination based on the geography and density of our city. we should have excellent, world- class tax and service anyway, but the fact that we are endeavoring to be a transit first city where people do not feel the need to or desire to use or own their own cars, we need to have the transit, and cycling and walking rethink can cover a significant number of trips in san francisco, but there will always be a place for an automobile, times where the other modes of transportation will not meet the needs, and taxing services is one of the main ways we can fill that gap, so while there are many both perhaps inside and outside the mta that might prefer that taxing services were not brought into the mta a few years back, i

think it makes all of the sense in the world that it is there because it is absolutely part of realizing transit first, and it completes this as a full- service transportation agency, so as supervisor wiener said, we are an approved budget we are working on improving the tax and service and improving this in san francisco. it is extremely complex. there are often diverging viewpoints, and you may hear some of them today in terms of what will make the tax and service work better, and one of the things i found during my short time at the mta is not only are there very strong but often diverging opinions on what will improve the tax and service or what needs to change in the taxi industry, often the voice of the taxicab user is absent in that conversation, and you will hear in the presentation a few

ways how we are trying to address that. so i guess what i would say, finally, is that the request for the score with reports was made quite some time ago, so i want to apologize we have not got years sooner, and we look forward to starting a regularly -- a regular quarterly reporting. it is not -- there is the complexity of the industry and the limits of our staff and resources to be addressing it that we have not been able to come sooner, and the first thing you will find it is about baselines, because there was the quantitative reporting, and an order for us to do quantitative reporting, we need to establish a baseline of data from which we can compare and report out on, so that is the first thing that you are going to hear about, and then we are going to walk through a sampling of the highlights of the various

things that our tax and services provision is working on, focused on those that are directly related to taxi service. there is a whole host of other things that this unit is doing to deal with other aspects of tax and service and regulating and providing for tax the service, but we are really just focusing on those with the most direct service in packs that we are working on, and i will say that despite the divisiveness within the industry and the overall consensus throughout the city that tax and service needs to be improved, it is, from what i have heard in talking to many inside and outside the industry that under the leadership of chris hiachi, we are starting to make progress for the first time in decades.

the progress is not as fast as any of us would like, given the limits on resources and the complexity of the issues. i think we are moving in as good a direction and as quickly as we possibly can, so we recognize the issue. we feel it will grow with the work that we do at the mta, and we feel we are at the verge of turning the corner and having a good story to tell in terms of taxi service here in san francisco, so with that, i am going to turn this over to our director, and i look forward to any public comments and questions you may have. supervisor wiener: thank you. i just want to know that we of public comment cards.