to conduct this work. we think there are big potential cost savings for this arrangement. we have a few planned projects on the horizon for this if the board does recommend the project that would clean out conditions in mission bay. they've also required a complete replacement and public access along the full length of pier 19 in the northeast waterfront. we think this will be an excellent opportunity for the crews to get out there and save money. we estimated the job and cost $3.5 million on a contract basis and we're looking at less than $1 million to conduct the work with port crews. in terms of material and supply costs. that concludes my presentation. port staff is available to

answer any questions the committee may have. thank you for your consideration. bad supervisor avalos: -- supervisor avalos: thank you for your presentation. supervisor mar: we're going to limit speakers to 2 minutes. is there anyone who like to speak on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor avalos: i urge your support for this ordinance. it would clearly give flexibility for the port to carry out the work of repairing the appears and it has a great benefit for current workers as well as an apprenticeship program to learn the craft of pure repair. supervisor mar: can we move this

forward without recommendation what they -- without objection and a positive recommendation? supervisor mar: could you please call item three. >> ordinance amending the san francisco administrative code by establishing an urban agriculture program. supervisor mar: supervisor chiu is not here but i am wondering if we can proceed with the presentation. i don't have any notes of that is the department of the environment -- we have still barnes? >> thank you. i'm from the office of the city administrator. the ordinance before you would have the mayor and city administrator engage in a process to harmonize the various departments and agencies that oversee agriculture in san francisco. we have the department of public

works and real-estate and other departments independent of us, including the public utilities commission, rec and park and any number of organizations interested in this particular area. a report was issued that laid out the challenges and opportunities in streamlining these efforts. the goal is to make it easier for urban gardeners in san francisco to find plots, and extend this program, create consistency, clarity, and simplicity in the city. the legislation would have us put together a strategic plan by december 31 that would recommend a nonprofit organization or city department that would serve as a single point of contact. we have had a number of meetings with various departments and stakeholders to talk about these efforts. we look ford to convening this conversation to working with -- we look forward to convene this conversation and i know there

are some stake holders from the urban agriculture alliance that will present in greater details about the specificity of what they're seeking to achieve. i will turn it over to them. supervisor mar: thank you. we are expecting president david chiu in a few moments, but why don't we start with public comment? i would like to thank the san francisco are an agricultural alliance and the community-based farms and gardens for their efforts on this. the first speakers i have are -- [reading names] i will call the rest after they are able to present.

>> thank you. i'm the food systems and urban agriculture program manager for spur, a nonprofit think tank and advocacy organization in the city. we support this legislation, including the amendments put ford in the june 5 version. we support the -- put forward in the june 5 version. it will better support farmers and gardeners throughout san francisco and allow the city to better capture the benefits of urban agriculture. well people growing food in the city benefit themselves when they get the food, the city benefits from urban agriculture in a number of ways. that includes providing people with awareness and a connection to the broader food system, green space and recreation, savings to public agencies when volunteers manage public land, ecological benefits and the green infrastructure in terms of

waste water and heat island effects. it is a place where many people find to build community in these spaces. our urban agriculture has potential to it address sued access and public health and we are waiting to see but may have some economic development potential in terms of job training and in terms of employment. the urban agriculture program proposed in this legislation and the duties and goals set for the program will address a number of issues and opportunities identified in the report we published in april. first and foremost, we have an ad hoc approach in terms of how it -- [tone] supervisor mar: i would like to ask you to continue. >> it supports a lot of

excellent projects, but the ad hoc approach is not the most effective way. from the city side, there are many agencies involved but no clear goals across all the agencies or accountability for how the funding is used. without that, but the city -- there is some duplication when you have -- it has all been helpful but could be more so if a were coordinated. from the public side, it is not clear which agency to talk to if you want to start a project. it's not clear which permits are necessary or where to find funding, government funding or private funding. there is no clear point of entry or one-stop shop for urban agriculture. > there are at least 550 people

waiting for a plot and we have seen 20 projects start in the past four years. we know there are a lot of people who want to start growing food in the city and we're looking for the city to provide more support. the legislation will begin to address that by creating a program with specific goals and time lines. you will hear from many people today will provide personal examples of why that is important. right now, the city has an opportunity to capture that energy and better capture the energy of urban agriculture. i hope you vote in support of the ordinance. >> i am one of the coordinators of the san francisco urban agriculture of alliance. we are an all volunteer alliance and have a list serve with over 500 individuals. i would like to take a second to

recognize everyone who came. if everyone could please stand. thank you. there has been knows central garden program in san francisco for nearly a decade. city support has been spread across many different agencies, creating inefficiencies and a lack of coordination. this legislation which speaks to the third platform and our goal of increasing institutional support begins to do much to address these issues. the ambitious goals, as rebel targets, and creation of a focus corner position has the potential to give the gardening community to support it deserves and needs. we are strongly in favor of the timeline to ensure confidence of the goals. there are attainable with the effort of the city and community. we would like to emphasize that for this program to be a success and sustainable, he must speak

out and include community input, especially in regards to the external evaluation of where the program will ultimately reside. nearly all of our urban agriculture projects up and realized things to the callous hours, hard work, and skills of dedicated -- countless hours, hard work, and skills of dedicated volunteers. i ask you of this ford and thank you for your time and consideration. supervisor mar: can i just ask from the report, i think there is some demand asked of adequate funding and oversight body and you mentioned input from community groups and the urban agriculture alliance. i think there is an explicit asked mentioning job training and employment opportunities. could you elaborate on those? >> we feel it is a lot of potential and our members have made it clear that it has not

really been a focus prior to this, how much potential there is for job training and private endeavors in urban agriculture. it has been a non profit-driven -- and we feel like there's a lot of potential there and we want to make sure it is adequately research. >> the report looked at seattle -- supervisor mar: the report looked at seattle was significantly more money per site and san francisco. i know you did not do this but if you could talk about the -- what is adequate funding? >> for right now, we would like to focus on that there is someone and non-profit or some city agency that could help coordinate everything. this a first that of just having one person dedicated full time, there is funding to pay the person to coordinate, that would be a huge step for getting

everything more organized. supervisor mar: i'm going to call the rest of the cards. [reading names] >> thank you. i'm here representing pesticide watch and i will keep this brief. i would like to thank everyone for their support on this legislation. as an organization that works directly with community members and in gauges the city's policies around urban agriculture as well as pesticide use, a pesticide watch would find ideal to have a specific person or body to which we can

direct questions and direct better understanding around the use of pesticide as well as urban agriculture as a way to invest in healthier food systems. we are looking for a more coordinated support and this would be an incredible support not only to san francisco residents and organizations, but organizations that work at the regional and state level like pesticide watch. i would like to ask you support the amendments as proposed and has just outlined. thank you for your support. supervisor mar: and we are joined by the president, which like to make some remarks? president chiu: i'm sorry i was

running little late. want to thank the urban agriculture community and think spur for jump starting this conversation. we passed legislation to finally of folks in san francisco to grow and sell what they want, but we need a is centralized program that brings cohesion to the city government and i would like to think the department's that worked to move this fall word and i would like to go back now to public comment, but let people know we did take into account all lot of feedback since we introduced the legislation five or six months ago, and i do hope we will be able to move this forward because there are an awful lot of things we want to grow and develop in the city and i looked toward to helping it do that. >> thank you for introducing

this. i'm from the urban agriculture alliance. i want to address the question about funding because we have heard from city agencies and nonprofits. so many are passionate about getting this work done but we need funding to make it happen. we are all excited about expanding the role of the city in supporting urban agriculture but we need to think in terms of what that should look like in terms of supporting community organizations doing that work. centralizing is an important step toward supporting the grass-roots level and some of that is having a central coordinating role in city government or nonprofit that could link people with bill people they need to be in contact with to activate public land or get resources that are available like the community opportunity fund. right now, it is disjointed and

hard for a community group to do that. ongoing, the important pieces are seeking funding for this position and looking for some model of community over size of a different constituency groups can be involved in directing the ongoing use of the money for a supporting urban agriculture. thank you for introducing this legislation and i hope you support it and i look ford to working with you on making a better. >> i am with the center for urban education about sustainable agriculture. we are best known for running the farmers' market and the mission is to promote a sustainable food system. thank you for introducing this legislation and thank you to

the city of san francisco for taking a food system perspective on policy. we appreciate what has been done and we feel supporting urban agriculture is an important part of the food system as a whole and we support this legislation and support all of the amendments as brought forward by the urban agriculture alliance. specifically, i want to bring up a couple of points. we have urban and agriculture in our name and we get a lot of calls for people wanting to have gardens or people from other parts of the world looking to us as a model and i feel it would be really important to have a coordinated body and funding for that. i hear a lot of frustration on the part of our residents for not having a place to garden.

although there is a beautiful, contact -- compact city, there is not a lot of space and not a lot of land. someone in coordinating the land that is available, we get delegations from all over the world looking at san francisco as a model. thank you. president chiu: if you have been called, please line up on the right hand side so that we can move along. >> i have a copy of the letter that i wrote to you guys. i'm an owner of a landscape contracting company and we grow food here in san francisco in people's backyards. we are also a member organization of the you a and ask that you support the

ordinance and amendments we have suggested. i also have some language here about exploring how urban agriculture can provide employment opportunities. as a business owner, i know there are employment opportunities out there and exploring is good but i think we should step further and in hands and create these opportunities. if we could get the overhead going. i don't know if someone knows how to operate this, but i don't think i do. what i am proposing is changing some wording at that last bullet point.

thank you very much. before we get to that, i want to mention i am and favor of the oversight body. that would help oversee this program. that is not our position at this point but it is something i feel strongly about and it would be a good way to get oversight from different businesses. i can not read what i have if we cannot show it on the overhead. he essentially, as it stated before -- [tone] v. new program should explore how urban agriculture should provide it -- if we could change it to enhance job programs

including low-income and use persons and create employment opportunities and incentives to hire san francisco residents for their food growing programs. feel free to talk about that and it would be great if we could get other folks in the city the opportunity to learn these things because right now there are not a lot of comprehensive programs in the city. the closest place is santa cruz with comprehensive programs. would be great if we could have a program where employers like myself could hire from. >> i am a community organizer and i focus on doing food security issues. we operate the tenderloin

people's garden. just last year, we gave 3,000 pounds of fresh produce away. i want to give my support to this ordinance and i think san francisco should be leading the way in the global -- the urban agriculture movement globally. there is no reason we should not be leading the way on this. we need to look at not just the environmental aspects, but the social components. i would like to see some of the language in this ordinance focus on low-income communities, especially around access to food and job training. i know that is a systematic issue we are facing, but i think we can start looking at it through this legislation. there are a lot of folks here that don't have a lot of access to fresh food and this type of

urban farming holds potential to increasing access for low-income people across the city. i have a letter of support i would like to hand off. >> good afternoon. i'm from kaiser permanente a. i have a little laryngitis today. i'm the community and government relations manager for the government center and i'm pleased to be here on behalf of kaiser permanente to show our support for this ordinance and its amendments. we have had our own community garden initiative for just over four years now. we support community gardening programs in 10 of the 11 districts and we're working on

the 11th, which is supervisor chiu's district. part of our overall mission is to help the communities we exist in and part of that is creating programs around healthy eating, active living, wallace, prevention, and structural public health. community gardens are a wonderful example where communities can engage and people have access to fresh produce and it supports an alliance with our goals and the cities, we believe. we are thrilled to be here and we look forward to being supporters of the ordnance and continuing the community garden the initiative.

>> i am a resident of san francisco and member of the community garden. i've been a member for four or five years. i want to speak to the community building aspect of the garden. it is a wonderful to have fresh produce for your meals, but there is an equally beneficial aspect, which is the value of people working together, learning from each other. one of the things about community gardens that are special is that it is across generational. we have children, grandparents like myself, all age groups can learn and participate and to participate in our community garden plots. it is a great process of

community building and we meet once a month to work on projects around the garden. i want to support this proposal and stress it has many beneficial aspects. thank you very much. president chiu: are there any other members of the public to wish to speak on this topic? please line up on the right hand aisle. >> it good afternoon, the supervisors. i am an urban farmer and resources toward native and part of the hayes valley farm community. i did submit a brief report to all of you via e-mail. i won't go into details because it has been covered by a lot of people. thank you for introducing the legislation. i support it and i am glad to see it included the most current

draft of the legislation. i think it is a good start and i think we could dedicate a lot more. the benefits of urban agriculture to quickly some up, i support the legislation and welcome a cohesive program. recreation, education, blade reduction and the transformation of urban space. i know people have a wide range of opinions and experiences and i hope many of these community members comport to share their views and we can help to shape truly effective legislation that provides for a fully funded, fully staffed urban agriculture program for the city of san francisco. i would also point out any program created will most

certainly benefit every district of the city. with job creation and job training, i would like to emphasize there are many people in this city who grow hungry and the growing of the food is not to be overlooked as a great benefit. thank you. >> i am a physician working for a community clinic. i'm not reduce -- representing the clinic, but i am representing the fact that i work with politicians that one of their primary problems is improper nutrition, namely obesity. the lack of knowing about food, not having land to grow food, however when i bring up community gardens and so forth, they always seem interested. i'm asking for your support on

this wonderful legislation and i agree with the amendments for all of the communities in san francisco, but especially the mission district. thank you. >> my name is j. rosenberg. i have worked and volunteered with many of you throughout the city. i am one of the co-founders of hayes valley farms, i teach agriculture and farming culture, incorporating the landscape with human habitat and finding ways for all to work together. in the past two and a half years, i've had the opportunity to meet many people and so many of these people have responded to the