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tv   [untitled]    April 10, 2012 5:30pm-6:00pm PDT

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president chiu: we are back in open session. could i have a motion not to disclose the information we discussed. seconded by supervisor mar. the motion passes. could you please read the in memoriams? actually, there is one more communication. madam clerk.
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>> we are in receipt of a letter dated april 10 communicating the mayor's veto of an ordinance that sets city policy regarding britain's inflation in federal counter-terrorism activities. he may override the veto and approved the ordinance within 30 days. that concludes my communications. today's meeting will be adjourned in memory of the following individuals. on behalf of supervisor wiener and president chiu for the late mr. su chi. on behalf of supervisor kim for ms. todd. and on behalf of supervisor elsbernd for the late mr. stonton. president chiu: is there any more business in front of this body? >> that concludes our business for today. president chiu: lies and
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gentlemen, we are a journey. -- ladies and gentlemen, we are adjourned.
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>> when stephen de staebler died, he was working on one of the biggest shows of his career, matter and spirit. it is a retrospective look at the many faces and faces of the life of an innovative artist from the california clay movement. stephen de staebler's developed
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in an area dominated by abstract expression. even his peers saw his form. >> he was able to find a middle ground in which he balanced the ideas of human figuration and representation with abstraction and found it even more meaningful to negotiate that duality. >> another challenge was to create art from a meeting that was typically viewed as kraft material. his transforming moment was an accident in the studio. an oversized vertical sculpture began to collapse under its own weight and spread onto the floor. he sought a new tradition before him, landscape sculpture. >> you feel this extended human form underneath the surface of the earth struggling to emerge. eventually, it does. it articulates his idea that the earth is like flesh, and the
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archaeology and geology in the earth are like the bones, the structure of the earth. this tied in with his idea of mother earth, with the sense that we are all tied to nature and the earth. >> a half dozen bay area museums and private collectors loan the massive sculptures to the museum for its matter and spirit retrospective. but the most unusual contributions came from stephen himself. a wall of autobiographical masks and hence from the early decades of his private study. >> he had one of the most beautiful studios i have ever been in. when you walk in, your first impression is of these monumental figures that you see in the exhibition, but if you went into the back corner of his studio, there was a series of shells with these diminutive figures. he told me, these are the heart of my studio. these little, and held intimate
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study is that he referred to as his sketchbook. a painter might make drawings. stephen de staebler made miniature sculptures. >> during the 1970's, he was inspired by the monuments of egypt. he assembled a large rocks of clay into figures that resembled the ancient kings and queens. he credited a weathered appearance by rubbing glazes' into the clay while still wet. the misfires from his killed were brought in his backyard in his berkeley home. he called it his boneyard. in the last year of his life, he dug up the artifacts from his own history, and the bones were rearranged, in the were slimmer figures with wings. >> even if you knew nothing about his life or career, you sensed there was an artist dealing with this fundamental issue of life and death, the cake, netting back together, and you feel there is an attempt to
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deal with mortality and immortality. there is a seeking of spiritual meaning in an existential stage. >> during his 50-year career, stephen de staebler worked to form and out of the clay of the ground and give it a breath of life. matter and spirit gathers the many expressions of his meditations. and gives the viewer and insight into the artist's life. learn more about the retrospective on line at >> thank you very much for that kind of deduction. good morning, everyone. i want to thank john, wade, steve, and the entire chamber
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for the invitation to address you. i know i am the last speaker, and after that panel i am eager to have to go back to work. sarah, thank you. cady, and george, very appreciative of the dialogue. as you can tell, when you hear about all of that, i could spend hours going through all of the tech companies what they are trying to do. ultimately, it is about job creation, and i get excited about that. it does keep me getting up very early, murder this of how i get there. if i can create one job every day for somebody here in san francisco, that will satisfy me greatly. guess what? there are hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake. i will continue to make this my mantra because i think it is the right thing to do for a great city. i want to also acknowledge the members of the board of supervisors here today. they were announced earlier.
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we all work as a team and it has never been about the mayor, him or herself, and i have learned that working in concert with the board that we have clear tones of communication, making sure that we speak more and more in the language that is important for this city. language and policies and ideas that create investor confidence in this city. that is what i have been talking about more and more. we have got to have a city that is investment-confident, that one -- that one does not have doubt. if it is your family, small business, someone joining another one's business, we have got to have that level of confidence to see things through for you, so your investment is one that is positively welcome, taking care of, and prosperous. that is how we get to the theme
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of today's breakfast of prosperity and sharing of that prosperity. i want to take a moment to thank my friend john. he has been at the helm of the chamber for the past few years. he has been an important aspect of the work that i have done over the years. as you know, i started at the human rights commission and then i went to purchasing, which was the most fun i have had. who could not have fun buying a billion dollars in supplies every year? then the former mayor brown gave me the heart to work in public works, engage in conversations with everyone about what was wrong with our streets and making them right. it was in that toughest job that i had that i have a lifelong friends, people who care enough
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about the city that picking up somebody else's trash is nothing when you can work together and dream about how better the city can become. i want to recognize john because he is one of those few people who i can properly engage in trash talk and still talk about the city in a positive way. thank you, john, for your wonderful service. [applause] when i came to all of you a year ago, san francisco's on the planet rate was 9.5%. we just heard a fantastic presentation by j.p. morgan and their analyst as to how we come about in making that change. at the time, we faced a $380 million budget deficit, and we were struggling on how to meet the increasing cost of our pension and health-care obligations. remember that discussion about our pension? we have come a long way.
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it is not even mentioned anymore but it is still prevalent, and so are our health-care obligations. one year later, our city, the supervisors, mayor, elected officials have all come together with the help of great city department leaders that are also here today doing everything we can to make sure that we tackle the pension issues and make sure that our budget is balanced. more importantly, we put people back to work. that is the most important thing all of us have joined together in doing. in the last 12 months, guess what we have done? we created jobs for an additional 17,300 san franciscans, bringing our unemployment rate down from 9.5% to 7.6%. that is in just one year. thank you for your help on the [applause] at. -- for your help on that.
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[applause] two weeks ago, we got another piece of positive information, news on the economy. our revenues became $129 million in greater, than projected in the first six months of the fiscal year. that is wonderful data for san francisco because, guess what? for some years now, it has been deficit, deficit, deficit, no increase, no revenue, and all of you know how wonderfully negative that discussion has always been. now we have some positive light. i stand before you today, just a year in office, in my first year as mayor, to say that the
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economic recovery is under way, it is a real, and economic policies and strategies we have pursued are working, and they are working well. our city could not do this without the partnerships of many of you who are here today. san francisco is back on track and but we must stay the course. what i mean is, even though our revenues have surged from the economic growth that our tech companies have provided, a traditional companies that have been here for so many years. by the way, let me do this. i have been known as the attack may year -- tech mayor. how one thing that i have come here with, puget you have always been excited for the city. we come to you.
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you helped us on a tremendous number of thing last year. i want to thank all the members of the chamber as well. whether it is a wells fargo, a pg&e, recology, the numerous sponsors that continue to come here, you have been part of the life blood as we welcome in the clean technology and biotech. you want to make sure that we are growing a family steeped in tradition of people that love this city, that love every neighborhood, and who have experienced all the great positive dialogue, but have also been concern about negative dialogue, sharing in every aspect of the city has. i know many of you have joined with me some weeks ago when we celebrated the 50 years of tony bennett and his wonderful song. we have much more to celebrate in the coming years.
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i hope you all join the chamber in making sure that we share this prosperity. having said that, knowing that our economy is improving, i want to make sure you know i will be at the home with the board, making sure we are not tempted to return to spending habits and short-term choices that got us into trouble in the first place. we have two-year budgets, a renewed sense of obligation and responsibility, talking about our infrastructure, things that allow our tech companies to be successful. we have to solve some serious transportation issues in the city, and that is why at risk in and i spend hours saturday morning at a technology hackathon. not trying to create a new application but try to solve some traditional problems with our taxis, making sure that someone can get a taxi, rather
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than waiting in being frustrated, another aspect of our transportation issue that we would try to get solutions to. more than ever, we have to double down on reform, on innovation, an investment. that is why i will continue to announce we are the innovation center for the whole world, right here in san francisco. soon enough, there will be cited to reflect that in the city. we had to break with some traditional things from announcing that in the most broadway, letting everyone know that this is the center for a lot of things to happen. reebok to keep that innovation strong, keep the dialogue, as the panel has been talking about, keep salesforce growing, twitter growing here, keeping us all engaged as technology helps us to solve many of our problems, and finding solutions that we have not thought about.
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once and for all, we must treat government and our responsibility as mayors, as families do, find savings where we can, reduce unnecessary spending, and importantly, in best. invest in our people and our infrastructure. as said earlier, i will continue to talk about jobs. i do not care if i'm called the most boring guy that got one thing. i will repeat. i come here every day to the office asking whether or not i created another job for somebody else. when you learn about the statistics that sf city is sharing with us, if it is jobs for seven siskins, it is worth to get up early for, sacrificing late-night meetings, working on the weekend -- except my golf. [laughter] we are attracting tec, biotech,
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clean tech. we are supporting local manufacturing. we are going to be making more things. fashion is coming back. technology with passion will be an exciting areas that we can hopefully unleashed soon. i will also tell you this. there are areas that we do not pay attention to that are not only stable, increasing, and wonderful when you hear this, but did you know -- and i got this from the recent reports from our hospital council recently -- did you know that our health care industry in san francisco generates economic impact of over $15 billion a year? our own health care industry. 99,000 jobs. that is a huge contribution to our economy. i do not want them to be silent any more. our health care needs are
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important, and we will be getting that cpmc job done very shortly, wade. [applause] with our elected officials and board, we need to continue to reform the peril tax. we have got to incentivize businesses to create those jobs. -- payroll tax. the conversation in the board has been very good because we have not forgotten those that are not skilled as well as others. we have got to get that employment training center up, we have to invite those who are living in the tenderloin, amid market, south of market, the traditional groups that have struggled, they have identified issues in the past, the digital divide. they were not caught up to the lunch alt -- level of education and technology they needed to be. we have got to help our returning veterans get those skill sets. people who are in the middle of
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their careers get those skills sets. that is why employment training is so important. we need a stronger training partnership. we also need private and more public investment in our schools. i will be talking a lot about that with the new president of our school board norman yi, carlos, organizations at the school board. i will be talking about how our schools can participate in this employment training and make sure there are generations of kids who do not lose hope in this city, do not look elsewhere when the best jobs are created right here. all i have to do is do their part. when they do that and complete their job education, that will be there for them. i want to say one thing about our infrastructure, something that i want you to remember as you leave today.