mayor's office is labor negotiations. as i think you all know, pretty much every labor union in the city, i think, except for police and fire, is open for negotiation. certainly, the mayor's office has an expectation and target of reduced salary and fringe benefits that they would get out of those negotiations, concessions from the union. when that will end up being is anyone's guess, at this point. commissioner bonilla: best case scenario, if we are generating these types of revenues, we may have an opportunity to utilize revenues in other areas needed within the department. that we'd be the best case scenario. -- would be the best case scenario. commissioner buell: mr.

ginsburg. >>, to continue to send my thanks to cady, who does such a wonderful job looking at the commission's finances, given the climate. there is a department head meeting going on right now about the city's budget. because you're in this commission meeting presented our budget, they know we are not here. the message the mayor is conveying his although the city it is certainly happy the six- month report indicated positive news, structural challenges certainly remain for the city. it is the mayor's office boss expectation that we continue to manage the budget, which is why it is before you today. for the second year in a row, we will have no layoffs and no program reductions. i think that is a credit to the tough decisions that you as a

commission have been making to offset some of the general fund cuts we have had to experience with earn revenues. so on behalf of not just staff, but those who use our services, think you for your leadership in helping us maintain services. while we are at a moment of certainly less bad news and we have had in the past, it is important to note a big piece of our budget challenge this year was better than expected news out of candlestick. it is important for us to remember, as we look ahead, the department, commission, and city will have to grapple with a very serious hole in this department's budget, if and when the niners stop playing at candlestick. it is something that we have to keep in mind under a two-year

budget cycle. potentially, we have to begin the discussion next year. there will be up and downs and we will continue to keep updated, but we have some good news, we were making the right decision to create programmatic sustainability in our department, but we need for public investment in our parks, and we need to continue to be as efficient as we can and think about ways to support the department through earn revenue strategies. commissioner buell: commissioner harrison. commissioner harrison: by way of an explanation for my concern, i think we should be cautious and controlled on any hiring of new staff, at the same time, having our staff several furlough days, non-paid work time. these are things we have to keep in mind when doing any future

hiring of staff. commissioner buell: commissioner bonilla. commissioner bonilla: for all of us who manage budgets, and we are always looking at cost savings, looking and generating new in come to operate our programs, think it should always be said and done. even if we have a balanced budget before us, and we are not going to be experiencing any cuts in salaries, so on, we should always continue to look at efficiencies. everything that we do, i think,

we should always look at, -- any program we operate, whether it is being operated efficiently or not. efficiencies will always go a long way to put us in a situation where we are not constantly depending on generating revenue. i just want to keep at the forefront, that we always need to continue to do work on efficiencies, in terms of operating our programs. >> we do have public comment. matt o'grady. >> good morning, commissioners.

executive director of the park's alliance. with all due respect to phil and katie and the fine would have done in presenting the budget to you, especially with a creative approach they have taken to minimize the pain and service reductions that would be associated, san francisco parks alliances opposed to making any cuts to the general fund allocation to the rec and parks department in the first place. here is why. you all know that over the last six years, allocation to the rec and parks department from the city general fund has been cut by 26%. it now makes up less than 2% of the total general fund for the city. over the same six years, that has grown by 22%. the result of that has -- we are digging ourselves into a whole. the analysis recently published

in the report identified the recreation and parks department is now running a product offering deficit of about $35 million a year in order to sustain the care that we need an. new data we have to present to you is, in a recently completed a report with the parks alliance, we learned 91% of likely voters in san francisco strongly believe the parks are very important to their quality of life in san francisco. we also learned 80% of voters want to see the city put more resources into our parks systems, not less. further cuts to the recreation and parks department budget are running against the will of the voters.

for six years and beyond, we have been digging ourselves into a $30 million-plus whole. the first thing you do when you find yourself in a whole is to stop digging. we believe the city should cease its cuts to the general fund allocation to the recreation and parks department. thank you. >> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment? >> good afternoon, commissioners. dwindling members of the public. i hope you appreciate you are preaching to an empty audience here. i have been coming to recreation and park commission meetings for over 20 years. prior to your political occupation of this city, they

were always packed, always a good place to be. right now, listening to katie petrucione, it is like listening to bernie madoff making a plea to shareholders. it is a disgusting. the way she talks with her squeaky little voice, talking about all the stuff-- commissioner buell: if you cannot be applied in your presentation is not appreciated. >> horse stalls generating $50 a month and you are telling you are doing everything to save the parks? you are just like the captain of that ship. the ship is grounded. it is going under and you are having lunch. wake up. get into reality. you cannot continue this method of politics of ignoring san

francisco's culture, recreational activities, going on with your political act like nothing has happened. do not buy anything in san francisco, do not visit san francisco. do not set foot in san francisco, because it has a career of the government. it is a great place to bring your wife for her birthday if she wants to get shot in the face. it is a great place to get your family murdered if you want to drive around the city, but you cannot touch a horse unless you go to the zoo. and you cannot even touch them. how long do you think you can go on with this type of ruining our recreation and parks to permit and pulling the people? bernie madoff got caught. it is only a matter of time. thank you very much. >> is there anyone else who like

closed. commissioner buell: this matter is now in the hands of the commission. can i entertain a motion? moved and seconded. all those in favor? hearing none, it is unanimous. >> for the record, katie, we love your voice. >> i will work on dropping my register. >> we are now on item 11, and general public comment. is there anyone who would like to comment that did not comment earlier? being none, public comment is closed. item 12. commissioner's matters. commissioner buell: commissioners do not matter. >> any public comment? being none, public comment is closed. item 13 is new business agenda study. any public comment? commissioners? 14 is communications.

is there any public comment? being none, public comment is closed. 15 is adjournment. commissioner buell: commissioner lee, commissioner lee: i wanted to adjourn this meeting in memory of may louis, a longtime patron, a supporter of the community. you can read her obituary in "the chronicle." over 50 years of support. she was very helpful with the portsmouth gracia, donating to -- garage, donating to athletics around the city, especially in chinatown, the rebuilding of the chinatown

recreation center, which is under way as we speak, -- unfortunately she will not be here to see the opening. i just wanted to adjourn in her memory. we are very grateful for the years of service that she has provided this community. commissioner buell: let the record so reflect. second to that motion? moved and seconded. unanimous.

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[sighs] got me on that one... >> this is one of the museum's longest art interest groups. it was founded by art lovers who wanted the museum to reflect new directions in contemporary art. it has been focused on artists in this region with an eye toward emerging artists. ♪ it is often at the early stage of their career, often the first major presentation of their work in a museum. it is very competitive. only a few artists per year receive the award. it is to showcase their work to

have a gallery and publication dedicated to their work. ♪ i have been working with them on the last two years on the award and the exhibitions. the book looks at the full scope of the awards they have sponsored. ♪ it has been important to understand the different shifts within the award program and how that is nearing what else is going on in the bay area. -- how that is mirror beiing wht else is going on in the bay area. ♪

there are artists from different generations sometimes approaching the same theme or subject matter in different ways. they're artists looking at the history of landscape and later artists that are unsettling the history and looking at the history of conquests of nature. ♪ artists speak of what it means to have their work scene. often you are in the studio and do not have a sense of who is really seeing your work. seeing your own work at the institution have gone to for many years and has an international audience is getting the word out to a much larger community. ♪

>> there has been an acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city

but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill. it survived although the structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest

people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill. it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money.

>> it was going to be a wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features. >> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a

sudden, he was excited about the coit tower. it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something

like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what did you know about it? we were with him almost every day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals. this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little

deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives. things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show

the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy about the coit. i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower

had been pretty much neglected from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the

hustle and bustle of the city and finding this sort of oasis, if you will, at the top of the hill. when i walk through this park, i look at these brick walls and this lawn, i look at the railings around the murals. i look at the restoration and i think, yeah, i had something to do with that. learning the lessons, thank you, landmarks meet landmarks. the current situation at pioneer park and coit tower is really based in public and private partnership. it was the citizens who came together to buy the land to keep it from being developed. it was lily hitchcock coit to give money to the city to beautify the city she loved of the park project worked to develop this south side and still that's the basis of our future project to address the

north side.

>> the meeting of the small business commission. the time is now 5:07 p.m. and the meeting is being called to order. first item, roll call. commissioner president adams. >> here. >> commissioner clyde. >> here. >> commissioner dwight. >> here. >> commissioner dooley. >> here.