reduced. i support the infrastructure and the hard-working men and women. they all need this project. let's give that approved. i ask you to support and vote for the project. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> i am speaking on behalf of two doctors both part of the committee. my name is -- supervisor mar: is there any objection to that? go ahead. >> i will try to fit this into in two minutes. the doctor would be your but he still has a stack of charts on his desk, and sutter refuses to hire more. we need a mechanism for those

that when the use sane wigs, they will not be left aside when they are hiring positions and not dealing in good faith with the nurses. they are dictating a five-story, 80-bed hospital or nothing, and we need a broader range of choices. obviously, we do need to rebuild it, but the question is how it will be done. maintaining pediatric services will be a better benefit to the community, which today is a non- profit, netting $90 million in nonprofit tax breaks alone in san francisco, what it should do. their original idea was to replace the hospital with a series of outpatient clinics, back when they wanted to close the hospital, and they needed to commit to clinics that are properly funded as determined by local physicians and nurses that are not employed by them, based solely on medical criteria. you heard about another hospital situation in el lee county.

-- in alameda county. they were going to begin looking at the nonprofit community benefit obligations, especially in light of the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars per year in profits, and then on behalf of one doctor and san francisco general in the emergency room, they are on diversion about 30% of the time. it gets really busy out there, and we have a hard time understanding how they can claim that. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> hello, my name is -- . i am and aron. i have been a nurse for 25 years. -- i am an rn. i am sorry that the supervisor had to leave. sutter was promising all of this stuff that never happen. you are very right to be concerned about that.

they say they would keep us open if they broke even. they started the evaluation six months prior to. they did not move services and that they thought would keep us open, and we have been fighting closure for the last three years. they will not release the books to you, you will not know. there is no way you are going to know. $90 at one hospital, 30 and another. why they marked them up, we do not know. do they consider those part of their losses? we think so. i feel like a ghost of christmas past year, and i hope you are listening because you need such an ironclad contract with them, and i do not even know such a thing exists. but the 1% for st. luke's, it will be gone. they will find a way to get around it. just really be careful, because i understand that some of them are medically indigent. they are medicare.

they are medical. we did 26,000 emergency room visits last year, and those people cannot be absorbed in the valley, which is much smaller than the current hospital there. the bets are going to be evaporates in the east bay, so i asked you to please think about that, and remember the people and came up and spoke on behalf of the rebuild, who later, because they trusted what sutter said, where regretting that they stood up and did so. thank you for your time. supervisor mar: thank you. mr. lyon? >> i live in berroa heights, and i worked as in the biomedical engineering area. i want to explain to you why rebuilding st. luke's at only 18 beds is not only a disaster for southeast san francisco, which is underserved, medically

underserved, poor, largely minority, it is also a disaster for san francisco general, and let me explain why. one of my areas that i served in was the emergency room, and as people have said, while i was working there, san francisco hospital was on diversion about 30% month after month, so they could not accept hospital patients coming in. the reason it was on divert was not because the emergency room was still a small. it was because the hospital upstairs, there were not enough beds to get people out of the emergency room. to give you an idea, they were even training emergency room nurses to treat ventilator patients because they could not get them out into the rest of the hospital. it is the size of a hospital that determines how backed up the emergency room is. san francisco general being rebuilt with not that much

additional capacity, and if st. wigs is cut down by two-thirds of the beds, st. luke's will not be able to absorb all of these extra patients from san francisco general, so it really is a disaster for both san francisco and general and forcing twigs. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> good evening, supervisors. i am a for your mechanical engineering student at the university in riverside. i am currently and in turn for the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing department on the cathedral hill p also a san frao native, and i have been your all of my life. aside from the fiscal benefits of a rebuild project like this, from an engineering and design project, three of the major things that we learned in mechanical engineering is

effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability, and on top of that for design, esthetics, and i believe all four of those aspects are being combined in this project, and i believe having a state of the art facility that has been meticulously designed for these things assures that the patients are comfortable and that they cpmc medical team will be able to provide their best service year round, even in the event of an earthquake, which would likely debilitate our current health care facilities. as a resident of san francisco and someone who plans to start a family here within the next decade, i support the rebuild of cpmc, and i ask that your votes reflect the same sentiment. thank you. supervisor mar: i am going to

call a few more names. [calling names] gefen, who i believe already spoke. bernadette, joe, sean, andrea, marlon, and carlos ramirez. next speaker. >> thanks for staying with us and keeping away. i am don fox, an episcopal priest. i have been here serving for 39 years, the last 17 of which i have been with the san francisco night ministry, a middle of the night crisis counseling, referral, and intervention services to anyone in trouble between 10:00 p.m. at 4:00 a.m.. i am speaking on behalf of the positions organizing committee. i call upon you and the board of supervisors to do three things to make sadr more responsible and a better provider of health

care in keeping with its nonprofit, tax-exempt status. i have no criticism of the doctors and nurses and support staff who conscientiously care for patients under the centre system. however, the devious behavior of the administrators, legal people, and financial wizards needs to be monitored very closely. also, you need to be wise as serpents in dealing with them. if sadr is allowed to further cripple st. luke's hospital, i call upon you to require, first of all, sutter to provide the city and county of san francisco with an annual fund for mental health care equivalent to the cost of the 32 psychiatric builds it unlawfully removed from senate colleagues hospital. second, it sutter is allowed to build 555 beds at the cathedral hill location, it should be required to a lot at least 32 beds for psychiatric care. third, the board of supervisors

should join with the east bay politicians who are investigating whether they are really operating as the nonprofit claims to be. they consistently appeared to operate as a nonprofit organization with profit-taking taking precedence over health- care delivery. having spent many years working in nonprofit organizations, i think it is not humanly possible for one such as they claim to be. supervisor mar: thank you, reverend fox. thank you. thank you very much. next speaker. >> hello, my name is leigh white, and i am with a physician's organizing committee, and i am here to speak on behalf of a doctor, so this is his statement. supervisor mar: so, colleagues, it is there any objection to

verse speaking for him? no? >> i used to refer many patients to st. luke's back what i had a full compliment of services. i am also a member of the positions organizing committee. these are medically inadequate. they continue the same policies. the babies are 2.5 times more likely to die there. it loses more children than any other is a good. the mission and excelsior also have significant numbers. the used to deliver 1300 babies per year, and yet, this eliminates inpatient pediatric at st. luke's. not to demonize anyone, but this is an era where a billionaire can buy an island and then sue his neighbors to cut their trees down so that he can have a better view of the race. this says so far proven unwilling to make sure they can

have this commensurate with their $90 million in tax breaks. in 2001, cpmc made agreements to maintain the hospital at the levels it required that -- acquired it at. that is where we had a neonatal intensive care unit, a casting room, many more surgery lofts, etc., and now after a decade of dismantling, we are facing a reduction down to 80 beds, and they are looking to close the hospital after only two years. that has no business being there. they cut mental-health services and laid off front-line employees who are underserved. we need community benefits in order to -- thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> my name is tatiana. regretfully, one doctor is not

able to be here, but i am here to speak on his behalf. supervisor mar: so any objections to have tatiana speak on his behalf? go ahead. >> i was the former chief of plastic surgery and hand surgery for 15 years at st. luke's. such organization has been granted non-profit status and as such benefits would taxes. in return, sedar must provide charitable services in the public benefit appropriate to the needs of the community and in a proportion that is commensurate with the tens of millions of dollars which accrue to sedar due to its tax-exempt status. use of that surplus income related to the nonprofit status should be applied to the direct needs of the community. the determination of those needs should involve a panel of physicians and other patient care advocates to establish the determination of need, as they

have a conflict of interest. they are seeking the most profitable avenues of business and eliminating those which may be too risky or not profitable to manage. i would encourage the mayor and the border supervisors to oversee the funding of patient care services which they are ill able to afford and which nonprofit entities are only capable of supporting. we need a panel of medical care experts who are not employed by sedar to further the master plan. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> i am benjamin elliott, and we represent nurses at the bay area and also of san francisco. i live in inner richmond with my family, right near the cpmc agreement. i am here to talk about an agreement they made in another

county, sonoma county, where they agreed to take over county services. shortly after the ink began to dry, they began eliminating services, such as psychiatric, a pediatric care, a pediatric icu, and the closed another area. in 2004, they had a business it planned to seismically retrofits when there was not enough money in their calculation to make profits off of the patience of sonoma county, and they tried to walk away and close all of of hospitals and transfer them to a catholic hospital in the area. there was a community fight which ultimately led to a political fight which kept them in the county. now, they are building a smaller hospital which will put a burden on the facilities while they increased their profits. they do this in every single community where they operate. as a resident of san francisco

where my wife and child, and we are about to have a new baby -- we are very fortunate to have access to health care, and we believe everyone should have access to health care, so on behalf of all san franciscans, stand up to this bullet corp. and do the right thing. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. i am going to call a few more names. [calling names] eden long or lang. thomas simpson, vinnie aurora, jerome france, and anna saints. >> hello. my name is javier. i am a business with the laborers. this is one of the most important projects.

i do not have to tell you how bad it has been for us, and in the last two or three years. to approve this kind of project, it is a matter of survival, not only for the laborers but for the union. by approving this project, it is going to help our members, community, and also the population. we need a hospital. for us as the laborers, it is a total package. it is not only going to produce work, manpower, it is a center because it provides service for about 60% to 70% of our members.

i am going to leave you with this. and i believe there is something. there is a solution for every problem. i encourage you to find a solution. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you, mr. florence. next speaker. >> good evening, everyone. my name is ignacio, and i work with local 261, san francisco. with more than 3000 members, , -- workers, men and women, who are waiting for this project to be approved, we encourage the whole board to approve this project, and local 251 is in full support of this project. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is joseph. i am a lifelong resident of san francisco. i grew up in the valley. i am here today to show my support for cpmc and the rebuilding project. they happen talking about specific points of the development agreement, but there has also been a lot of mention about the greater good or the big picture. why is not anyone talking about the indirect benefits that these projects are going to bring to these neighborhoods economically? 1500 construction workers over five years is going to mean that a lot of restaurants, cafes, retail, convenience stores are going to be able to hire new workers. it is going to allow new businesses to pop up, and when the product is complete, the demand is not going to go down in those neighborhoods for those services. you are going to have 3000 workers coming in. you are going to have patients

and families. give these neighborhoods a chance to develop. it is something that they need and i think they deserve. the city has waited long enough. it has been going on five years for this project. it is something that is really important and needs to be done, and it does not need to be held up any more. thank you, and good night. supervisor mar: i want to remind people that we are focusing on the health-care impacts. coming up, it will be housing, transportation, and other parts of the health-care system, so i would like to call a few more names, quickly. robyn, carolyn, amy, roseanna, maxine hickman, anna, kathleen carroll, john reynolds, barbara bishop, and next speaker.

>> thank you, members of the board of supervisors. my name is -- and i support the rebuild plan. after being out of the work force for a very long time, i am now employed with a contracting company. around this time last year, i was diagnosed with cancer and went through surgery, but this did not discourage me. while undergoing treatment, i went back to school at the college to get my certificate in administration. under the auspices of the hiring. i did this in my desire to help myself find a job and not be a burden to my family and the city. now, i have my health back, and i have a full-time job. this is my second time to appear before the san francisco board of supervisors. on behalf of those who like me

will struggle to overcome every illness, go back to school if need be, and to every sacrifice to get into the work force so that they can put food on the table for their families. i am a resident of san francisco, and i firmly believe that you have the best interests of the residents in your heart. the contrasting company gave me a job and my life back. please do the same. please vote yes for rebuilding cpmc without delay. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> thank you, board of supervisors. my name is marilyn, and i support rebuilding cpmc. i am at st. luke's. prior to this, i was somewhere else for four years. i speak as a nurse and a nurse manager. as a staff nurse, i support the

rebuild because the new hospital will provide a safer and better healing environment for our patients. this new hospital will not only provide safety and privacy, but we will also have state of the art equipment, which will allow us to provide the best pair -- best care possible that our patients deserve. as a nurse manager, i support the rebuilt because i would like my staff to have a safer, better, and more pleasant work environment. our nurses work very hard to care for our patients, and they deserve to have the comforts of a hospital. thank you very much. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> i am speaking on behalf of a nurse at the hospital. supervisor mar: i see no objections. go ahead. >> my name is jane said the ball. i am a nurse at the pulmonary

subacute units at a hospital which is slated for closure this week. the pulmonary unit, and these are some of the most vulnerable patients in our community. as a cost-saving measure, sector has decided to close the unit as a cost-saving measure. the nurses and others are outraged. once again proving that the sedar health systems are content with prioritizing profit margins above people. additionally, it has been repeated that the nurses at the unit may have questionable levels of skill despite the decades provided in service to the community. these are clearly discriminatory practices, as the nursing executives have plainly stated that they are not a priority when it comes to business needs. it is the sedar type of culturally competent health care our future? we say no. we strongly urge the board to

prevent any further destruction of our community by holding this employee year accountable at every turn. and this is signed by 10 nurses. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> good evening, supervisors. my name is reverend carolyn. i want to thank you for the time and opportunity. it has been my pleasure to have led the african american breast health program for uninsured women at the opposite medical center for the last seven years. during that time, this program for uninsured women from vulnerable populations all over our community has successfully screened over 1500 women, and during that time, we have found over 18 women with breast cancer. three years ago when the economy

changed, we began to get calls from all over the city from women who were not african american who have lost their jobs, had no insurance, and then needed free mammogram screening. california medical stepped up and started the sister to sister program, which partners with african-american programs to offer the same no cost services to women who are not african american. to give you an example of the robust screening and outreach for uninsured women in our city, i will use our year 2010, when we successfully screened over 400 uninsured women in the city and had four in treatment at that year at the same time. i would like to say to you that being on the other side of the bench, a retired from the california pacific medical center in november. in early 2012, i was diagnosed

with breast cancer. the difference for me at that time was that i felt myself and uninsured women, and so it really came home to me. what do you do? i knew the staff, and i would like to say that -- supervisor mar: thank you. thank you. i appreciate it. thank you. next speaker. >> good evening, honorable supervisors. i am -- a practicing physician ensure of madison of cpmc. i have had the pleasure -- i am a practicing physician and the chair of madison -- medicine at cpmc. i have been working to help ensure we expand our reach to provide services to all of the communities that need us. we have protest money that our

facilities are unsafe, and not equipped to provide medical care, and all of those things are true. as a practicing physician, it is clear to me that the respect for what our patients deserve is very challenged in our environment. however, as others have, i would like to speak to the medical basis for this. our staff and physicians are charged with raising the bar with assuring all patients receive the highest quality care with one standard. in fact, in the era of health- care reform, bringing best practices and variation reduction will be an essential feature of how we all sustain a viable health care system. i believe this plan rationally provides for exactly that goal. i think there has been great diligence in allocating medical services in a way that expand our reach, not contracts, and i would very much ask for your

support for our rebuild. thank you for your time. supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker. >> the meeting, board of supervisors. thank you for this time. my name is craig. i support this program. as an expectant father any day now, this is what will deliver the first child at cpmc, i have every confidence in their care. as a small-business owner creating jobs and pay business taxes, i support this, and lastly, as a chief operating officer, i support the rebuilt. you have heard from a number of physicians, including my colleague, dr. townsend, talking about the patient's perspective. i would add to that the staff perspective, and enter the word "respect." respect for the patients and respect for the workers. that is one of