>> good morning. we are here to celebrate the reagan really we are here because of the timing. tomorrow is the anniversary of the san francisco earthquake. it was the earthquake that made us look for other sources of water that were reliable and robust for the entire area. it was the earthquake and the pressure after that that said you need to upgrade to make sure we will continue to get water for two and a half million people the has led us to this

program. there are a few projects left, but we are in the middle of the really large regional projects. about $2.5 million is being spent right now. the first person to speak about that is merely -- mayor lee. >> thank you to the commissioners who are here, the whole staff. you have done wonders. you are on schedule. i really look of these projects in quite a different way. i am really looking at what they accomplish. i am looking at job creation, and it is a wonderful understanding when you have 3 billion hours said have obtained

so far for all the different crafts. this particular project i have been quite interested in, because it is one the shares with san mateo county. is one they know is important. it is with six reservoirs' that we manage, and it increases with the improvements. it has been improved. the spillway allows for water runoff to come in and capture that as well, and it continues to reign in the cleanest water we have throughout the state. just talking about their systems, i was asking and exchanging information with there'irs. they seem to have similar challenges.

they all point to an interesting situation, and it just read establishes my confirmation that it is so important that we keep our water system in place, not only about preparing for the earthquake, and you know we can ensure the public if there is any major seismic event, and water service can be restored within 24 hours. that is important not just to san francisco residence. it is important to our neighbors. earthquake preparedness is one of the most important things i have been working on for a number your's -- a number of years in my previous capacity. we can ensure the public we are

in a better position because of our water system and the investment we are making, not just in san francisco. the investments were done in partnership with all the other counties common and not only have we manage it well. we have also used every opportunity to do local hiring along the way. local folks have had a good shot at these jobs. we shared this system with the rest of the counties and made sure the standards are continuing one of the most celebrated and innovative engineering feats in the history of our country, so i want to celebrate this milestone.

there are three improvements that have converged to this point, and that is worth celebrating. it is worth reminding everybody, when people continue to suggest perhaps it is time we take down head ceci -- to take down hetch hetchy, i believe they do not know what they are talking about. the first 35 miles is on hydroelectric power produced by our water system. thank you very much. >> as the mayor said, this is a partnership. people think of this as the san francisco water supply, but it is the regional water. we are in partnership with a lot of folks. with us today is the executive

director of the conservation agencies, his vice share, who is also on the city council, and with us is the president of the san mateo county board of supervisors and the long-term leader in the city. >> thank you. i really appreciate being here, and i want to say congratulations to the vice chair. i also served many moons ago, and at that time we wanted to work closely with san francisco, because this was a regional project, and everybody wanted to be sure this was done correctly and on budget, and we can rest assured that is the case. what is important -- they call me the queen of disaster, because after krajina -- katrina

we started disaster preparedness, but most people think about an earthquake common and the concern is are we going to have the necessary water to take care of individuals thomas -- individuals to? the answer is yes. i think we have to remember an emergency is not just an earthquake. an emergency could also be a drought, and we have increase the capacity, so that will bring us where we used to be, and that is where we need to be to make sure at the end of the day we are protected and have enough water to continue having the great quality of life throughout the region. i know the mayor mentioned jobs, and we feel the same way here. it is very important these projects have brought lots of

jobs for workers throughout san francisco and san mateo county, so it has been a win-win situation for our county and the rest of the regions, and i want to thank the mayor for the great partnership they provided, because what i have found, we have worked on many projects, and this is one of many that has created major improvements to our community. we met on the extension to the trans bay terminal. -- the san francisco transit a terminal. the mayor is aggressive in trying to meet the needs of development. we also recognize we are going to have to have capacity of water that is going to allow us to have extended developments in our community, and today is a historic day we are going to

make that happen. you are standing here because you did touch the project, and i thank you for that. congratulations. >> thank you, supervisor. our water system comes from hetch hetchy. we have been trying to make sure that each area is safe and reliable. we now have a new pipeline, and we have strengthened that connection over calaveras false -- fault. three and four is the next project to come up. we are building a new tunnel under the bay, and when you get

to the crystal springs bypass tunnel, we are carrying all the water we needed directly for our customers, if we do not need it for our customers, we store it in this lake, and we can store 22 billions of dollars -- 22 billions of gallons. we are working on crossing every one of those vaults, and we are in much better shape than we were five years ago. that is done with a lot of people involved. and we have our commission. we have a lot of our leadership here with us today. they have an -- dave is in charge of the people who work to

keep this going. they are part of the whole project and part of making it happen. we are trying to make sure your water will have arrived at major distribution points. we are very pleased to welcome you. if you want to talk about how you prepare your own home and to be able to get your own information so you are prepared for these kinds of things. >> good morning, everyone. it is a pleasure to be here. i was not planning on speaking, but i always love the opportunity puree good -- now i always love the opportunity. the earthquake showed their resolve to literally result from

the ashes. we are all working on this together, and we do take the opportunity, particularly as we are about to celebrate what happened on april 18, to remind everyone the importance of being a good member of the community, and you need to be prepared. there are wonderful websites. our department of emergency management has a web site. the fire department offers free and emergency response training, and our message is to educate and keep it on everyone's mind that our priorities should be prepared redness. personally, they are unpreparedness champions, and i thank you for that. it is a priority to be prepared, and the more prepared each of us are individually, the closer we can get to recovery that much sooner.

it is infrastructure that is important, but we cannot forget we should be as prepared as possible for our families and work places to be able to be participative, and we know we are grateful for the men and women who responded, and i am proud of the fire department, but our resources on a given day are adequate, but in the event of a large-scale disaster, we will need your help. the more we prepare, the better off we will be. but this was upgraded in 1896. new withstood the earthquake -- id withstood the earthquake without any damage. it is the prototype for the hoover dam, but we have had some concrete fall off.

next thing we are going to do is go under it for a photo op, and we will invite you to walk under it. this is the first and last time most of you will be able to come here. if you did not have a hard hat, most of you could not come here, and they are going to rebuild the roadway, and once that is there, and you will not be able to go on top of it. today is one of those days you can see what is going on. you will notice there is construction work still going on. that is part of the improvement program, and that is going to allow us to have a more robust way of bringing it up, and then it can go to a filtration glancplant nearby. if you would like to come with me, we can go over here.

>> i think a lot of times we look a community and we say, there is this one and this one, and we all have our own agenda, when our agenda is to create great work. if you're interested in that, you are part of our community. >> it is a pleasure to have you

here tonight. >> we are trying to figure out a way to create a space where theater and presentation of live work is something that you think of, the same way that you think of going to the movies. of course, it has been complex in terms of economics, as it is for everyone. artistically, we have done over 35 projects in four seasons from presenting dance, producing theater, presenting music, having a full scale education program, and having more than 50,000 visitors in the building almost every year. a lot of our emerging artists generate their first projects here, which is great. then we continue to try to support figuring out where those works can go. we have been blessed to have that were produced in new york, go unto festivals, go on to the warsaw theater festival. to me, those are great things,

when you see artists who think there is no or else of someone being interested in me being a woman of color telling her story and getting excited about it. that is our biggest accomplishment. artists becoming better artists. what is great about surely coming back to brava, we have this established, amazing writer who has won a slew of awards and now she gets an opportunity to direct her work. even though she is an amazing, established writer, the truth is, she is also being nurtured as a director, being given space to create. >> and the play is described as ceremony and theater meet. in the indigenous tradition, when you turn 52, it is that the completion of an epic.

the purpose of this ceremony is to celebrate. whenever you have been caring for the first 52 years, it is time to let it go. they have given me carte blanche to do this. it is nice for me in the sense of coming back 25 years later, and seeing my own evolution as an artist and a thinker. the whole effort even to put the indigenous woman's experience center stage is very radical. because of the state of fear, it is a hard road to hold up an institution. it really is a hard road. i am looking at where we're 25 years later in the bay area and

looking at how hard it is for us to struggle, to keep our theaters going. i would like to think that i am not struggling quite as hard personally. what i mean by that is that in tension, that commitment. what i see is that we're here to really produce works of not be produced in other places, and also to really nurture and women of color artists. i think that that is something that has not shifted for me in 25 years, and it is good to see that brava is still committed to that kind of work. you know? ♪ >> happy birthday to you happy birthday to you ♪ >> windy will talk about the reflection of the community, we can only go with what we have on our staff. south asian managing director. african-american artistic

director. latino outreach person. to us, aside from the staff, aside from the artists that we work with him being a reflection of oz, yes, the community is changing, but brava has always tried to be ahead of that, just that sense of a trend. i tried to make about the work that shows the eclecticism of the mission district, as well as serving the mission. that is what i feel brava is about. ♪ when a resident of san francisco is looking for health care, you look in your neighborhood first. what is closest to you? if you come to a neighborhood

health center or a clinic, you then have access it a system of care in the community health network. we are a system of care that was probably based on the family practice model, but it was really clear that there are special populations with special needs. the cole street clinic is a youth clinic in the heart of the haight ashbury and they target youth. tom woodell takes care of many of the central city residents and they have great expertise in providing services for many of the homeless. potrero hill and southeast health centers are health centers in those particular communities that are family health centers, so they provide health care to patients across the age span. . >> many of our clients are working poor. they pay their taxes. they may run into a rough patch

now and then and what we're able to provide is a bridge towards getting them back on their feet. the center averages about 14,000 visits a year in the health clinic alone. one of the areas that we specialize in is family medicine, but the additional focus of that is is to provide care to women and children. women find out they're pregnant, we talk to them about the importance of getting good prenatal care which takes many visits. we initially will see them for their full physical to determine their base line health, and then enroll them in prenatal care which occurs over the next 9 months. group prenatal care is designed to give women the opportunity to bond during their pregnancy with other women that have similar due dates. our doctors here are family doctors. they are able to help these women deliver their babies at the hospital, at general hospital. we also have the wic program,

which is a program that provides food vouchers for our families after they have their children, up to age 5 they are able to receive food vouchers to get milk and cereal for their children. >> it's for the city, not only our clinic, but the city. we have all our children in san francisco should have insurance now because if they are low income enough, they get medical. if they actually have a little more assets, a little more income, they can get happy family. we do have family who come outside of our neighborhood to come on our clinic. one thing i learn from our clients, no matter how old they are, no matter how little english they know, they know how to get to chinatown, meaning they know how to get to our clinic. 85 percent of our staff is

bilingual because we are serving many monolingual chinese patients. they can be child care providers so our clients can go out and work. >> we found more and more women of child bearing age come down with cancer and they have kids and the kids were having a horrible time and parents were having a horrible time. how do parents tell their kids they may not be here? what we do is provide a place and the material and support and then they figure out their own truth, what it means to them. i see the behavior change in front of my eyes. maybe they have never been able to go out of boundaries, their lives have been so rigid to sort of expressing that makes tremendous changes. because we did what we did, it is now sort of a nationwide model. >> i think you would be

surprised if you come to these clinics. many of them i think would be your neighbors if you knew that. often times we just don't discuss that. we treat husband and wife and they bring in their kids or we treat the grandparents and then the next generation. there are people who come in who need treatment for their heart disease or for their diabetes or their high blood pressure or their cholesterol or their hepatitis b. we actually provide group medical visits and group education classes and meeting people who have similar chronic illnesses as you do really helps you understand that you are not alone in dealing with this. and it validates the experiences that you have and so you learn from each other. >> i think it's very important to try to be in tune with the needs of the community and a lot of our patients have -- a

lot of our patients are actually immigrants who have a lot of competing priorities, family issues, child care issues, maybe not being able to find work or finding work and not being insured and health care sometimes isn't the top priority for them. we need to understand that so that we can help them take care of themselves physically and emotionally to deal with all these other things. they also have to be working through with people living longer and living with more chronic conditions i think we're going to see more patients coming through. >> starting next year, every day 10,000 people will hit the age of 60 until 2020. . >> the needs of the patients that we see at kerr senior center often have to do with the consequences of long standing substance abuse and mental illness, linked to their

chronic diseases. heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, stroke, those kinds of chronic illnesses. when you get them in your 30's and 40's and you have them into your aging process, you are not going to have a comfortable old age. you are also seeing in terms of epidemics, an increase in alzheimer's and it is going to increase as the population increases. there are quite a few seniors who have mental health problems but they are also, the majority of seniors, who are hard-working, who had minimum wage jobs their whole lives, who paid social security. think about living on $889 a month in the city of san francisco needing to buy medication, one meal a day, hopefully, and health care.

if we could provide health care early on we might prevent (inaudible) and people would be less likely to end up in the emergency room with a drastic outcome. we could actually provide prevention and health care to people who had no other way of getting health care, those without insurance, it might be more cost effectiti