services to limited english individuals and for ms. pond for us the opportunity to take stock and look at the challenges ahead as we look at limited english proficiency services. 50% of our client base has a language other than english indicated as their primary language. to make sure that we have adequate staffing on an annual basis, we conduct an analysis where we look at our staffing in relation to the individual programs that individuals come in for in terms of facilities, in terms of the function as well as the various positions for which individuals are working in. to make sure that our staff and we have the services appropriate and the signage and all of those basic details are addressed, we have two basic committees looking at various issues around the agency. we have a civil rights access that updates and fills in any

gaps and our bilingual services he can which looks at the programmatic level to make sure the forms and signage in our facilities are all in appropriate languages. in addition to that, we also have dedicated resources to document translation, onsite interpretation, tell phonic services as well as reviewed our bilingual policies and procedures to allow for more of our staff who are not certificated, but to be available for providing those services. in addition to that, we also have provided our staff with multilanguage software to enhance communication between our workers and our client base directly. over the next year or so, the agency hopes to look at developing central depossesstories for resources for our staff so we can provide services to english pro

efficient individual. we are looking at our website so we can increase access to benefits and services online as well as information about the services. we're also looking at looking at our web page to make sure that information is translated, the essential information is translated in a cost efficient manner. if you have any questions, more than welcome. president chiu: i know we have a number of folks that are going to have to leave soon for public comment. i want to say that the human services agency has been a great model for language access. you guys have been quite innovative and creative in how you think about this. the comment i want to just say i hope other departments can take some of the lessons you have learned and how you deal with your diverse populations and propagate that citywide, so thank you. thank you. president chiu: one last, is there someone here from d.p.h.? and i want to express my gratitude to everyone for your patience in listening to the various departments. i do think it's helpful for

different departments to hear about the experiences that are happening, but to my colleagues and to the public, thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is jason, i'm the director for competency programs for the department of had you been health. with regards to the two complaints for general hospital, i provided my information to the presenter and will definitely follow up on that. certain language access tries how we provide services at public health. additionally we have a cultural and linguistic competency policy that applies to all of the department as well as our contractors. at bare minimum, all of the people that come to d.p.h. have interpretor services by telephone. basically, our future goal is to improve the quality of the interpretive services that they receive at san francisco general hospit stand-alone interpreter services unit employed by civil

service employees who can provide in-person interpreter services and generally that for medical reasons is preferred to telephonic services. we find great efficiencies in providing video monitoring interpreter services so it lessens the travel time for the interpreters to go to the examination rooms and it still allows the patient and doctors to see what is the patient is pointing to and what they're talking about, the expression on their faces. we have also increased the number of polly phones to increase the quality of the sound so that it makes the experience for the examination better than having to speak on speaker phones. you notice it can be a little aggravating. and with regards to translation of documents, anytime we have information that is translated, we always field test it to ensure at least a maximum of sixth grade is reasonable. any other questions, i can answer that. president chiu: thank you.

from what i understand d.p.h. has actually made a lot of great strides in thinking about language access, particularly around the use of technology. i do hope that you will be able to, if you can, report on the aftermath of these incidentses that were reported by chinese for affirmative. action. it's my hope and i will say this to miss pond, if there are egregious examples of language access that we figure out a process within the city about how to make sure that these sort of incidences don't happen in the future. i would love to know once you have more information about the specific examples what actually happened, who may have been involved and what we can do in the future to make this be the last time that this happens. mr. chair, again, apologies and thank you for your patience. i know we have a number of the members of the public that wish to speak in public comment. if it's ok, i would like to ask ms. annie chung and i know there is an organization of muslim women who are here that

have to go and see their children shortly. i would like for them to hopefully speak next. ms. chung. >> thank you very much. i have a budget meeting that is starting in the mayor's office in a few minutes. i definitely want to comment my support for the language access ordinance and programs. i'm annie chung. over the last like two, three months, you have seen many of us escorting and bringing a lot of our monolynn quill seniors to town hall budget meetings and to different special needs meeting. on monday, we brought out about 60 of our seniors and realized that they didn't provide translation when they were talking to supervisors elsbernd, supervisors chiu and supervisors olague about the concerns of seniors and aging. the other times, it was easy for us to invite our seniors to

come to the town hall meetings because everyone of them were provided translation. it made our work of engaging our seniors so much more easier and meaningful. because i always feel that on one hand, we want our seniors to be fully engaged with our city services, but whenever we have to act as interpreter and translator ourselves, it takes away that participation. so thanks to the office of civic engagement and affairs were able to do that in a meaningful way. today i'm going to comment on the lack of resources that different city departments may have and wanted to ask that the supervisors do consider maybe centralizing some of these other city departments budget that they spend on language access for director pond's office or that she could oversee the whole language access ordinance being complied. the reason that you don't receive a lot of complaints is

also because there is a lot of community partners like ours that are already doing a little bit of the work of interpreting and translating services for the consumers. so thank you very much while passing this ordinance is a very important aspect of our community and making our seniors feel welcome everywhere they come to city hall. thank you so much. president chiu: thank you, ms. chung. i know folks have been waiting long. if we could just -- if folks could keep your conversations to a minimum here in the room so that we can hear and respect other speakers. why don't we hear from our next speakers. >> hi, thank you for being patient and trying to get everyone together. my name is miriam. i'm from the arab resource and organizing center and language access is definitely an issue that gets people motivated to participate and improve like our city resources network.

i see it as something very empowering when moms want to take time out of their day and come here and tell you their experience and i think having access to different services in the city including the schools is fundamental to civic engagement in the city and something that should be provided by the city and not nonprofits and external things, external bodies and it should be something that city agencies take responsibility for first and foremost. we just want to have a couple people tell their experience around that. president chiu: great, thank you, thank you for being here. next speaker. >> hi, can i speak arabic,? president chiu: we'll allow

time for translation. however you want to do it. >> [speaking foreign language] >> i don't speak english -- president chiu: microphone, please. >> i don't speak english. when i go to my kid's school, they talk to me and i don't understand the problem. >> [speaking foreign language] >> my son has problem at school, especially doing his homework, so i wish that there was a translator or interpreter that can help us communicate

between me and the teachers so i know what my son's problem. i don't know what his problem. >> [speaking foreign language] >> the teachers sometimes get upset because they don't know that i can't read english, so i can't even tell the teacher that i can't read english, so we always have miscommunication. president chiu: thank you very much for your testimony. next speaker. and if folks could speak into the micro phone, it will get picked up on tv. >> [speaking foreign language]

>> good afternoon, my problem is the same like my friend's. like my kids, they go to school and i don't know how to speak english. i can't communicate with their teachers. i know they have problems, but i can't tell what kind of problems. i wish there is an interpreter so we can communicate. >> [speaking foreign language] >> i think this is the biggest problem in my life. president chiu: thank you. next speaker.

>> my problem is the same like the others, especially when my kids bring home papers, like they need to be filled out and i can't read them and i can't fill them out. it's the same thing you know whenever i need to fill out things at my doctor's office or at the hospital. so this is one of the biggest problems we face. thank you. i think that's it. president chiu: is that it? >> one more. president chiu: great. >> [speaking foreign language] >> i have the same problem like the others. my kids are at school and i

know they have problems and i can't even, you know, like communicate with their teachers and know what kind of problems they have. >> hi. [speaking foreign language] >> my problem when i go to a parent meeting, you know, i can't understand anything in the meeting. nobody interprets or translates for me. it's the same thing, you know, if i have a doctor appointment, there is no afterschool care

who speaks the language. when i have a doctor's appointment, i always miss it because there is no one to translator interpret for me. president chiu: next speaker. >> [speaking foreign language] >> thank you for your help and we all have the same problems. our wish is to have translators. president chiu: thank you. >> thank you. president chiu: any other speakers? if i could make one comment for the arab muslim woman who just spoke. first of all, this is the second time that i have seen representatives of your community speaking out, more reernt over the last couple months, we had a big discussion around the joint terrorism task force. i think it's so wonderful and important that your voices are

here. i would like to offer, if i would make sense, potentially working with the arab call taller community center. i'm happy to set up a meeting with the school district and your organization to see if this is an issue we can resolve more directly. if someone can contact my office, i am more than happy to help with that >> hi, i have spoken before you on other public safety hearings. so we are part of the arab resource organizing center and what we're trying to do is put together this language on access campaign and so this is some of our constituents that are really working hard to step forward and actually this is like one of -- this is the first time that these women actually have visited city hall. a lot of times people don't know they can come to city hall and make complaints, that they

can actually go to their administrations an actually voice their concerns and a lot of times, the administrations themselves sort of give them the run around as to where to go file complaints in terms of where to go and seek language access. a lot of times people confuse arabic with others. it's a huge step in our campaign that these women are coming out and they're all san francisco residents and actually in district six and others from other districts. so we really appreciate the time that you guys have taken to hear some of the stories and just want to reiterate that we're -- we would love to sit down and talk with whoever just to see our next steps and i really appreciate the recognition of recognizing that our community is coming forth and slowly but surely they're

becoming a huge part of the civic engagement within this city, thank you. president chiu: great. again, if you would like to help organize a meeting so we can figure out how to address the very specific concerns that were raised, i'll be happy to do that. >> thank you. president chiu: let's hear from the next speaker. >> [speaking foreign language] >> good afternoon three supervisors, i live in district 11. >> speaking foreign language] >> in 2005, my father was at s.f. general hospital and he through like a medical procedure where they put a tube

through a urinary tract, he had a stroke. >> [speaking foreign language] >> so then i -- the first hospital was the chinese hospital and so then i took him to s.f. general hospital and asked for additional help and asked for translation but wasn't able to get any. >> [speaking foreign language] >> i tried to explain to them like what happened to him, how he got a stroke, but after 30 minutes, still nobody came to help me translate. >> [speaking foreign language]

>> so then in 2009, my youngest son, at school he, another student bit a side of his lip and he had to go to the hospital for seven stitches, but, again, when we were at the hospital, we had to wait a long time for translation services. >> [speaking foreign language] >> today i heard about this hearing and really wanted to share my stories with the three supervisors here to let them know that we really do need these translation services. thank you. president chiu: if c.a.a. could work with adrian pond's office to understand a little bit more about these situations, i want to make sure when these stories come up that we make sure that

it is an abject lesson for us and not see it happen again. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors, my name is rachel, i'm the secretary dive director of a neighborhood center. we are a multiservice organization to enhance the economic of better thanal heights and surrounding neighborhoods which includes the mission, the outer mission as well as bayview. true to our mission, we are intentional about the staff that we hire in order to provide the highest quality linguistically and call talley appropriate services in our youth programs, our community programs, our community housing and affordable housing work. on the ground, we know how important it is to have the capacity to provided culturally appropriate service is. for example, the number of people who participate in our programs in our site where we are funded by d.o.s. to serve

400 seniors, as of march, we actually have provided services to 800 seniors. i think this is due largely to the fact that we have two staff members there, a filipino and chinese who speak tagalog and canton east. we are also able to provide services and programs in other languages, spanish, mandarin and additionally we can speak fasty, french, and a filipino dialect in our senior programs alone, we have provided over 1,000 hours of translation services. so as an organization that is very intentional but how we integrate language and cultural contexts into our work, i think it's important that and i applaud any efforts for city agencies to do the same. [speaking foreign language]

>> i think it's important to continue providing programs and services in different languages. it's important for the city of san francisco. thank you. president chiu: thank you. next speaker. >> hi, my name is miley and i'm here speaking on behalf of the chinese health coalition. we are in the san francisco chinatown. i'm here just to let city departments know that we are offering free technical assistance and training around cultural competence and increasing linguistic capacity through a contract with the state. i just want to let people know that that resource is there for them. thank you. president chiu: sing away, brother. >> thank you, thank you. and i just hope you ♪ reach the, reach the language stars ♪ ♪ flight of fantasy

maybe nowhere, wherever you might be from are and maybe from the stars and then you'll have them to translate your language and will have a never ever ending story ♪ ♪ language never ending story ♪ ♪ story ♪ don't be discouraged ♪ the man he ain't so hard to understand ♪ ♪ if you try now i know that they will lend a language translating hand ♪ ♪ because there is good in everyone and a new city day has begun ♪ ♪ i know you can reach the morning sun if you try ♪

and i know things will get better ♪ ♪ others yes they will for chico and the man ♪ yes, they will for chico and the man ♪ and i know if you try now and even if you have only one ♪ ♪ because there is good in everyone and the city day has begun ♪ ♪ and you can reach the morning sun if you try ♪ ♪ yes it will be better for chico and the man ♪ and it's funny he doesn't sometimes even, he tries to understand ♪ supervisor chiu: thank you, walter. next time if you say in arabic,

we will be really impressed. [laughter] with that, it looks like public comment is done. first of all, thank you to my colleagues for your patience in this. i often do not have very long hearings that a schedule, but i think this was a very important hearing. we know we have a $6.8 billion government that is viewed by many folks as not servicing over 1/3 of our city, and it is important that i think we continue to be vigilant with every single this apartment in making sure that every community is served. we have departments that are really making great strides, and we have other departments that are more challenge, and it is my hope that in the coming years, we will be able to give gold stars to the work of every agency in san francisco. we're going to in the upcoming budget process really look at this issue carefully, so for those of you who believe this is important, i hope you will

participate in those hearings. i also want to thank the community advocates, particularly caa, for your leadership and look forward to working with you. with that,, mr. clarke. >> do you have a motion on this item? supervisor chiu: we have a resolution to endorse the compliance reports, and i hope we can do that today. >> we can take that without objection. all right, so move. if there are any other items? >> no, there are no other items. supervisor farrell: all right, thanks. meeting is adjourned.

president newlin: welcome to the meeting of the entertainment commission of the city and county of san francisco. the first item will be a call to order, and roll call. [applause] -- [laughter] commissioner lee: here. vice chair joseph: yere. commissioner hyde: here. president newlin: here. >> we have a quorum. commissioner tan is out of the country. i have not heard from

commissioner perez or commissioner kelcavellini. president newlin: public comment. members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the jurisdiction of the commission. with respect to agenda items, members of the public might address the commission for up to three minutes at the time such item is called. would anybody here like to speak about anything? jocelyn? ok. item two, review and approve the minutes of april 24 and may 8. i am understanding we can only due may 8. i am sorry. we cannot do may 8. we will continue may 8 and have a motion on april 24.