prostate problem and they saved my live. four months ago, i had a light heart attack. again they saved my life. about a decade ago, cpmc started an african-american health disparity committee which i was on in the formulation of that committee along with dr. brock, the c.e.o. and the reason for that was he wanted to know why many african-americans, especially men did not attend hospital or seemed to be afraid to go to hospital. and we came up with poor bed manners and this sort of thing and each of those incidents there are bed matters, the doctors and nurses, the complete staff, bed manners

were superb. so i ask you to support it if you can. president fong: thank you. >> hello, thank you, supervisor fong and the rest of the chair. i'm james mabrey owner of the everyday janitorial service. i speak as a san francisco resident and a san francisco small business owner and a trade partner to both cpmc projects. both projects are in need of upgrading, seismic upgrades and just new facilities, period. i think the residents of san francisco deserve it.

the projects would help revitalize our cities -- city's economy. it would boost hiring jobs for san francisco natives and all sorts of progress for the city in a failing economy right now, you know. i vote yes and encourage the chair to do us well to vote yes and get this project going so we can have some safe hospital facilities in the city and county of san francisco. thank you. president fong: thank you. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is robert lopez. i work for mission hiring hall community relations. we have been in the mission

since 1971. we're a direct placement agency. we started out with construction referrals and that's the connection with us getting people to work through construction. we have two programs there, city build academy which you may have heard of and the construction admin training program. the city build program is a particular program that is unique in that it helps people to have multiple barriers to employment get work in areas where they might not be able to get work. construction is one of the few trades that barriers like criminal history, drug abuse, or homelessness might be something that they can overcome and get a new start and find sustainable employment. many of the people that are homeless and that come to look for work with us look just like you and i. they're just, a lot of people are just two steps away from homelessness. they just don't look like the typical vagabonds in the

street. they're looking for a new start in life. in particular they would benefit most from the construction jobs that would lead from the rebuilding of cpmc which i urge you to vote yes on this. i know there has been a lot of opposition for different issues and stuff and i know that's a tough call that you guys have to make, but i'm confident that you guys will make the right call so you do the best to have both things come out with a positive outcome. we also have another program called the construction admin training program. you heard from anna and another woman here who is sitting there in the blue in the beautiful dress right here. those two are graduates from that particular program, the construction admin training program. both of them did not have jobs when they came in there. and through that program, they're now permanently employed with the general contractor. now they have a new start on their life. anna came looking for work in

u.p.s. she didn't get a job there. i steered her to the construction admin training program. now she has a job with good benefits and a new life. so i urge you to consider to vote yes and to get these projects going seismically safe hospitals, good health care and all of the good things that can come from that. have a good afternoon. president fong: thank you. >> good afternoon, president fong, commissioner moore, commissioner sugaya, commissioner antonini, commissioner miguel, and commissioner borden. i'm ted sang, the director of the asian foundation. many in our community these days are busy at work preparing for next month in may which is asian pacific heritage month. i was thinking about all of the great health institutions that take care of the health of the asian american community in san francisco, from kaiser who has

a third of our patients which is the only hospital in the country dedicated to serving the chinese community and northeast medical services, the largest federally qualified health center in san francisco. as i was thinking, nobody, no institution in san francisco does more for the health of the asian american community than cpmc. it really starts from birth. so many asian babies are born in cpmc. if you look at the roles of the babies that are born in cpmc and you look at the sur names, you don't just see asian nails. you see the sur names of all of the people in san francisco because that is part of the service that they offer. but beyond just being born in cpmc, cpmc takes care of the health of asian american families as we grow. many of you are aware of hepatitis b disease. hepatitis b is the greatest health disparity for asians in america. hepatitis b is also the greatest cause of liver cancer in the world.

for both of these reasons, san francisco has the highest rate of liver cancer in the country. we are doing something about ending that liver cancer in san francisco with the campaign and cpmc has played a leadership role in that. because of the great work that we have done in ending hepatitis b disease, in part we have helped to create a national action plan to end hepatitis in america which was issued last year. in that plan, they called for the firstever national hepatitis testing day on saturday, may 19, 2012, to be run by the u.s. centers for disease control. and on may 19, 2012, the head of our hepatitis from the centers of disease control will be in san francisco to recognize the work that we are doing in san francisco to end hepatitis disease and to support the work that we are doing. we will be offering on that day free hepatitis screening, not just help tightis b, but hepatitis c screening. hepatitis c does not just

affect asian americans, the new guidelines that are about to come out from the c.d.c. indicate every baby boomer in san francisco should be screened for hepatitis c. we will be providing hepatitis b and c screening on that day courtesy of cpmc. cpmc has been supporting the health of san franciscans and san francisco should support to rebuild the cpmc. i urge you all to vote yes today. thank you very much. president fong: thank you. >> good afternoon commissioners and president fong. my name is nick rozzo. i am a patient and a volunteer at california pacific medical center. i received a liver transplant nine years ago, may 13. if it wasn't for the doctors at cpmc and the miracle of science, i wouldn't be here talking to you today. i have been waiting all day to talk to you. i'm exhausted. i haven't eaten.

and due to that, my two kids have their dad and my wife has a husband. who is going to take care of my kids? they go out of control. they're crazy. so i'm begging you to vote yes on building cpmc. cpmc is not just a hospital for san franciscans. it's a hospital for the east bay, for the seven counties, for northern california, for san luiz ibispo. if reaches arizona, las vegas, we get patients from all these states and sometimes there have been patients from the philippines, from mexico, and other countries. i get to beat them because i get to talk to them about survival and give them hope because they see me and they see a healthy human being. they say, hey, i can be like nick. that's the rewards i get out from walking the halls at cpmc

and talking to patients. i will encourage you guys to come and join me one of these days with the purpose of the c.c.o. to come and talk to the patients with me so you can see how grateful they are and thankful they are for cpmc. i know there are a lot of issues at stake. they can be resolved. we're all heading that way. we're not getting younger. we're getting old. we all need those hospitals here in this city. this is a city that is leading the way in many, many ways, in many things around for the world. so just do it, don't think about it because the more you think about it, the more you think about it, the more meetings you'll have like this, the more time we're going to spend here, the more money that is spent by both sides. to save that money and spend it where it needs to be spent. thank you. president fong: thank you.

>> oh, and for the record, they'll still having babies at st. luke's. >> hi, president fong, members of the commission. i'm betty employed at st. luke's for 12 years now and on behalf of my co-workers, we ask you to please prove the building of st. luke's because of the jobs that the hospital will give us to support our families and the benefit this hospital will give to the community. we also urge you to vote yes for the safety of the patients and the employees due to the fear of the earthquake calamity anytime. we thank cpmc for taking over st. luke's campus because cpmc give us good benefits and for agreeing to give us our jobs in the new hospitals. thank you. >> good afternoon and thank you, commissioners, for allowing everyone to speak here

today. my name is rick oherro. i'm the owner of a contracting business, we're a local union business, local contractor here in san francisco for the last 57 years. of all of the contractors in the land, cpmc and sutter chose us to joint venture six years ago to form a partnership to bring this facility to life. i have never seen an owner so patient with the process in my life. so many of the projects that we start never get to the start line and to the finish line. i know there are many waity issues on your plate here, life safety, seismic, economic, physical, and mental health of the community. these are issues as waity as the ones i deal with every day trying to put people to work. personally, i volunteer to teach a life skill class at the city build academy on evans. i love to do it. provide skill and hope for the faces that i see there, but it also pains me because at the

end, they all come up and ask me for jobs that i don't have for them. additionally, for 20 years, i have been a board member of the pacific vision foundation. it pains me to hear the dreamonizing of cpmc when it comes to charity care. we support the lions clinic at cpmc and because of the access to access their doctors and facilities for to cost, we are preventing blindness to the most needy people in this community. lastly, i ask the question, why are construction workers so often referred to as temporary or transient as if they can just go to some other place to work every day. we live every day to find work on sites such as this. we are especially trained to be good neighbors because these are the neighborhoods that we live in or do live in. we are part of this community. sites like this are our factory floor because the gates on this project have been chained so long, i ask you on behalf of

all the workers and many more people that will benefit in the area to please unlock the gates and allow us to go to work. thank you. president fong: thank you. if there are any other speakers who would like to speak on this item, if you would line up on this side. >> good ann, president fong and the commissioners. my name is yolanda jones. i'm the owner of a small business yolanda construction administration and traffic control. i'm a bayview hunters point resident and business owner. i, too, am a mother of six three born at st. luke's and three born at cpmc. i can say nothing greater than than they were a great hospital then and i hope they continue to be one in the future. i ask that this afternoon to see the hospitals grow in the

community be approved because bayview hunters point has the most unemployed workers and the majority of them belong to local 261 which i'm signatory to. this would bring wealth back into a community that has been slighted so long and there is so much work to be done on this project that i think a lot of people could come off the welfare roles, the unemployment roles and could become productive. that's one community that really deserves it. i'm definitely a forerunner for my community and san francisco as a san francisco resident, graduated here and my daughter gets her master's next month. i believe in san francisco and i believe in the commissioners. please vote for the right thing. thank you. >> good afternoon.

my name is joe fang. i would ask you for a little patience and forgiveness if i sound a little incoherent. i barely stepped off the plane coming from hong kong. so it's 3:30 in the morning right now. i have been coming to these meetings for a couple of years now and i have also been traveling to hong kong, china, and other parts of the world for many years. i don't know when this project was first started, it must have been at least four or five years ago, but in these four or five years, you know, i have watched entire cities in china spring up out of nothing. i'm just amazed that a business like this, that a project like this that is going to bring nothing but good to the city of san francisco, we sorely need this project, a project like this. not too many businesses would have the patience to endure to

go through the hardship and the perseverance of getting this approval process. now, the city and this country is going downhill, is going to hell because of processes like this. businesses just don't have the patience for the resources to go through this kind of process. you know the city is going broke. we need the money. we need the tax money and i listen to all of these people oppose this project because of their special interests. well, businesses don't -- can't survive on catering to every single special business. you have to look at the overall good of the entire project, ok. you as city leaders have to overlook -- yeah, the minor details, you have to work out after the project has started. but for god's sake, let's try

to cut out all of this bull, cut out all of the red tape and do what is good for the city. thank you. >> he is a hard act to follow. good evening, commissioners. my name is florence, a native san franciscoan and a long time homeowner, i was married in this building. i feel like it's my church. i'm a library clerk and an arrest he can vist at cpmc and in support of the rebuild plan. last year one of our house guests visiting from arizona had a near fatal heart attack on the street. he was taken to the davies campus and to the cardiac intensive care unit. he was saved and he and his family remain grateful for the care they received at the hospital and in san francisco. when this story was playing out, i had occasions to visit him.

i was disturbed by the notion that the patient, the medical staff, the family, and all of the high-tech medical equipment was crammed into one incredibly small room. it didn't seem to be in anybody's best interest. many a night patrick's wife slept in a hard care or on a gurney appropriated on her behalf by the kindly nurses, there were many, nurses, not gurney's. she wanted to be available to her frightened an confused husband as he woke in the night. family members are a vital part of the care time. modern hospital provide comfortable spaces for them. we can't do that in our outdated buildings. we certainly could in new facilities. patients at the st. luke's and other campuses are hospitalized in vulnerable buildings when they themselves are at their most vulnerable. i would like to advocate for a city and its unemployed workers as well as for our patients, portions of the van ess corridor are moribund.

the buildings would provide jobs and would serve to revitalize this area. for the sake of our patients, our workers and our city, please approve this plan, thank you. president fong: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is barbara savitz. i would like to leave you with this thought. commissioners, you are dealing with a corporation whose c.e.o. alone made $4 million last year, yet he can't agree to a community benefits package which would enable the new hospital to be built with more consideration for renters that would have to move, traffic that would be terribly congested and jobs that would have no guarantee forrest dents or union workers. if it weren't for the california nurse association and community groups who fought and were successful in keeping st. luke's open, there would be even fewer jobs in the rebuild. sutter, how can these 6200 jobs

be guaranteed? sutter cannot or will not offer their nurses the backbone of the hospital the ones recognized as the most ethical professions in the country the right to work in the new hospital. to date, nurses do not have transfer rights. pat fry, have a heart. maybe one that you advertise and care about those who are caring for your patients. thank you. >> good evening, commissioners, eric brooks, i'm here representing the san francisco green party and also the local grassroots organization in our city. first, i would like to point out that this process would not have taken 10 years had sutter health sat down with the entire community and negotiated in good faith to reach consensus on all of the things that we're raising as problems with this

thing. i would like to also start out by speaking to all the trade union members that were in here, the building trades. no one is talking about building less than 635 beds and hopefully we're talking about building more. what we're talking about is where and how to build those beds, not whether or not you all are going to get jobs. you're going to get those jobs. we need to build this system right. the broad issue here, the issue that covers this whole thing is that this is not just the rebuilding a hospital and building a new one. this is rebuilding an entire network of hospitals and changing the way they operate across the entire city that is going to affect the health and welfare of hundreds of thousands of people who need to use those hospital services for the rest of this century. we need to do that right.

and anyone, anyone from mars could look at this project plan and see that we're taking one hospital in a poor neighborhood from a couple hundred beds down to 80 and then building a huge one in a more wealthy neighborhood where there are going to be major traffic problems and just recognize from that that it's a bad idea. above and beyond that, sutter is going to make some of its other satellite facilities smaller. it's going to be competing with facilities around it making those smaller. this is clearly a bad way to do a plan for the entire city to make sure that everyone is taken care of and their health care is properly taken care of. so we don't want fewer jobs. we want the jobs to be implemented in a different way to build a project that is going to equally serve the entire city and is not going to get snarled up in the case of a

major earthquake. it's really kind of funny to listen to people talk about earthquake safety when their intention is to create earthquake safety into new ubtse by creating a problem that creates even more earthquake danger by putting a giant hospital in the middle of a bad transit area instead of putting a big one at st. luke's and a smaller one than currently proposed for the van ess area. the health care master plan is going to be coming out within a year or so. there is no reason whatsoever that we shouldn't wait for that plan and make sutter do this right. president fong: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> good evening, commissioners, my name is aaron cone. i'm here to speak on behalf of the owners of the property at 1000 van ess. we are neighborhood to the proposed cpmc facility at

cathedral hill. i'm here to encourage the commission to certify the e.i.r. my client has followed the hospital process with great interest. they made a strategic decision to invest in the neighborhood because of both its dynamic nature and the positive impact of having a major health care facility nearby. i have watched the loss of local businesses in the van ess corridor and the tenderloin over the last several years. it is our firm belief that the hospital's first significant investment from developers, construction of the facilities planned under the e.i.r. will bring 1,500 new construction jobs. these workers and the visitors and employees of the medical complex will bring significant new services into our neighborhood. diverse businesses will be incentivized to relocate near the new cpmc complex to serve hospital patients, visitors, and staff and the community at large. the dollars spent in local businesses will help encourage additional entrepreneurial

opportunities forrest dents. we are encouraged about the benefits of having a 24-hour facility and it's accompanying around the clock security. this will provide safety without added strain on law enforcement. the final e.i.r. you are considering directly reflects the work of the blue ribbon community when included representatives of the city, community, and religious groups, unions, doctors, nurses, and cpmc. the e.i.r. incorporates every single recommendation of the committee. in closing, cpmc has proven itself to be a good neighbor who considered the concerns of the surrounding community. thank you for your attention. thank you. >> hello, my name is ryan bear, i'm a community organizer with cpmc. i'm working to grow food with residents in the tenderloin. i'm also a sixth generation san franciscan and i also hold a degree in urban planning from san francisco state university. first of all, we're talking about health care.

we're not talking about business. i hear a lot of people talking about business. we're all for health care, but we're not for the business of health care. i know as a fellow planner, all of you all are looking at the questions of for whom and for what this building is for. it's not just simply health care, but for who and for what. also, i'm sure you're aware of the level of importance for participatory planning as there are so many community leaders speaking up against this as opposed to peaceful and fancy suits, i believe that should be raising red flags for y'all. the current master plan for cpmc does not promote the health of our neighborhoods. we're here to ensure that we do not approve this development which has the generation of profits over the health of our community. this is a community of families and individuals that are in desperate need of affordable housing, food, and health care. this is not a hospital set on serving the local population. we do not want a hospital that

will not commit to hire locally and does not provide charitable health care. you must recognize the overall well-being of our city. you must be aware that the displacement in san francisco as a result of urban renewal in the western edition, the geary boulevard expansion, dot come boom and busts and loss in the city. the cpmc hospital will be added to this list if you refuse to listen to us as a community. we are urging you not to the follow the legacy of justin herman and other planners who put the well become of financial interests over the development of healthy community. this development does not hold true to zoning codes. the master plan of san francisco as well as the van ess corridor area plan. as planners, you must see the fact that the hospital will demolish current housing stock and will drive up the costs of living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. you must not accept this

current proposal as it stands until it reflects the need and demands of the people. i have heard a lot of use of the word community and i ask you to think about what does that mean? who is involved in the community, define community. does this involve everyone or a certain group of individuals. thank you. >> good evening, president fong and commissioners. i actually am from the community. i was born and raised in san francisco. i went to st. phillips and archbishop reardon high school. i currently own a home here and the idea of having a seismically safe modern hospital in my neighborhood is one that i support. i have one truly vivid memory from when i was 3 years old, a day i'll never forget in my entire life and that's the 1989 earthquake. i know exactly where i was and what i was doing. i urge you guys to do what's right to ensure the safety of this city andpp