amend as well. i would like to get all the motions on the floor. then, we will have public comment on the motions. for members of the public, everyone is welcome to comment. if these amendments are adopted, it will require a continuance. so there will be an opportunity next week, but not everyone may be able to come back. we have a motion on the floor to continue the items for one week, to the 17th, at 3:00 p.m.. is that correct? supervisor farrell: that is correct. there will be two motions to amend. supervisor wiener: you withdraw the motion? i think we can get them all on the floor, take public comment, and act on them. supervisor farrell: i withdraw the original motion. president chiu: i would like to

make a motion to amend the version i had at our last meeting. i circulated the amendment. it describes the technical amendments are deputy city attorney has suggested to supervisor farrell and myself to make sure the charter amendments are consistent with supervisor wiener's as well as to deal with any vacancies. i need to make an additional amendment, which would be on page two, subsection d, to reference sections 13.102 0.5 and section 13.102, to be consistent with the city charter. my amendment is as i just described, and i ask for your support. supervisor wiener: is there a second? seconded by supervisor avalos.

i think my inclination is to take all of the motions and to open it up to public comment. does that sound? whether additional motions to amend? supervisor farrell: on item 35, i have some similar -- an additional motion in terms of a technical amendment our city attorney has suggested to clean up to make sure it reconciles with supervisor wiener's charter amendment. the written description has been distributed. supervisor wiener: is there a second? by president chiu. those are the motions before us. if there are no other comments, i would like to open it up to public comment on items 32 and 35, as well as the motions to amend. we can act after public comment. anyone who would like to make

public comment, please line up. you will have two minutes. seeing none -- please line up. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is judy. thank you for letting me speak here today. september elections, my god. hard to believe that a board of supervisors from san francisco would propose such a thing. a september election has a very low voter turnout. look at all these other cities. new york may laurel, 2009. turnout, 11.4%. can you imagine? charlotte, north carolina, 2009, 4.3%. boston and baltimore, turnout in

the low 20's. there are many more. you get the idea. september elections have a very low voter turnout. research has shown that the voters, in september elections, are primarily older, like me, more affluent, and predominantly white, like me. it reminds me of when you had to own property in order to vote. luckily, we have the chiu amendment, which is more likely to preserve turnout. having the original ranked- choice of voting in november makes sense. more people vote in november, which means more democracy. if there is no majority, you could have a runoff in december. when a candidate gets a majority in the november election, the cost of the second election is saved. do i have to stop? on a personal note, my father

was involved in the civil rights struggle of the 50's and 60's. i grew up believing all americans are entitled to equal rights, including the right to vote. sometimes, you had to fight really hard to get those rights. this seems really similar. thank you. >> good afternoon. i am the president of californians for electoral reform, a statewide non- partisan commission that works on ranked choice item. if you must, president chiu's proposal is least offensive. it provides a consistent experience to the voter, and is less likely to hurt turnout. items 33 m 35 have a september primary and a november runoff seven or eight weeks later. having sat at the rules

committee hearing, that is not sufficient time to turn around pellets from overseas voters in the military voters. as i read into the record then, this is an article about how counties missed the deadlines to send pellets overseas for the june primary. san francisco failed to meet the deadline. all of these proposals suffer from that particular defect. as far as september elections go, nobody in california votes in september. there will be a low turnout. in the case where a popular incumbent mayor is reelected in september, the november turn up for sheriff and district attorney will be low. the chiu proposal at least will attract voters to in november election. if there is a december runoff, the turnout is likely to

increase for a mayor. what is the rush? the next election is not until 2015. we need to analyze voter turnout before putting anything on the ballot. i urge you to vote against items 33 and 35. if you must put something on the ballot, vote for item 34. thank you. >> no electoral system is perfect. i am a strong advocate for instant runoff voting, and have been ever since i heard about it. i always have been somewhat bothered by the lack of a second look when electing one person, such as the mayor. i think supervisor chiu's

amendment has some merit to it. it also has some down sides. of course it will cost more money, and of course there is a chance of a lower turnout in that election. however, i think it is viable, and i think it answers some of the objections that some of you have to instant runoff voting. it is a great compromise. to me, it might even have more upside than downside, in the long run. it is worth trying. several people have already spoken to the extraordinarily low turnout of september elections. i will not further belabor that point, beyond saying that i believe our democracy, in many ways, is presently hanging by a thread. one only needs to look at the citizens united decision of the supreme court to see that, and that is only one of many ways in

which we know in our hearts that this is true. let us not do anything else that will further lower the number of people who take the opportunity to vote. let us not make san francisco a model of a less democratic city. thank you so much. >> greetings. could i get the overhead, please? thank you very much. that works perfectly. i was not going to talk about this, but i am an ex-new york for. i frequently hear september mentioned. i cannot think of anything more wrong. that was the year we suspended term limits because we like mayor bloomberg so much. after the 2008 financial crisis, we wanted him to stay. of course the primary was low. you are ill advised to consider

that primary without the details. i am strongly against ranked choice of voting. i think the power of the mayor's office is too strong, and we need a direct link. i do not think there is any way to communicate what a sick puppy this last election was. tom amiano, when he lost, got a lot more votes than ed lee. many losers got more votes. it was not just one or two elections. consistently, the results are much higher than we saw in this ranked choice election. you are not good to fix it with new voting machines. in terms of confusion, the ballot is not confusing. i went to starbucks on the way down here. that was more confusing than the election. but this is a voter information pamphlets.

it is going to be a majority. it said it twice. could not be more false. of the can of you elected, only eight had a majority. there is no disclaimer. if walmart or best buy it did this, there would be penalties and fines. how many election experts looked at this and got it wrong? then, try to tell me there is no confusion. there is significant confusion. i will have more next week. thank you very much. president chiu: thank you. next speaker. >> thank you, supervisors. my name is david carey. i was actually impressed that the chamber of commerce, the san francisco chamber of commerce this last week, offered an additional candidate they have not shown in the past, about

their position in rank choice of voting. in the past, they have not taken a stand. but they put out their report card, what they call their paychecks and pink slips scorecard, because i guess the chamber of commerce pays the board of supervisors and decides who to hire and who to fire. they acknowledged the biggest issue in san francisco is jobs and the economy. one of the top 10 factors, apparently, is ranked choice voting. i had not realized ranked joyce voting was a jobs killer in san francisco, but apparently, that is what the chamber of commerce thinks. i had not realized that having more elections was a way to have more efficient government. but that is what they are backing. you can take them at face value.

you can believe that they are really interested in the magic number of 50%. because electing somebody with 50% of 16% turnout is a much better way of electing officials in san francisco than using ranked joyce voting. -- choice voting. i am kind of lost their. if someone can explain that to me, let me know. i think there is something else behind their position. everything we have seen that they support has been lower -- president chiu: next speaker. >> ♪ the ones the city gives you

give it your all go asked alice i think she will know when the men at the voting poll tell you where to go and you have just had some kind of literature and you really don't know and it is all confused remember just one thing remember, give it everything and you will really all the good things bring ♪ ♪ i hope your ranked voting in elections really, really goes just great i want to tell you one thing i give you all a four-star rate

i can hardly wait i can hardly wait for september morn. we voted until the night became a brand new day i hope everything really goes your way september voting sure can make you feel that way ♪ president chiu: thank you. next speaker. >> that is a tough act to follow. hello, supervisors, mr. president, madam clerk. instead of reviewing score voting and why it is so great, i have noticed a bit of a pattern. we are talking about different elements in an election. there was a choice to have a run off or not, and a threshold. these are not independent elements, but work together.

i do feel that this debate really focuses on the runoff. it is only one aspect. it is as if we are trying to build the best race car. we have our choice of transmission and our choice of wheels. we are kind of talking about what wheels to use. that is a decision that must be made, but i feel we are overlooking the idea that we should get a better engine. that, of course, would be score voting. that is independent from your choice to have a runoff or not. when the rubber hits the road, that is the real test. i understand that politics is more about war, blood, and power than policy, and i come from a numbers perception. i am not from any unrealistic assumption that this would get done. but if anybody here has the act of political courage to put this forward, the landing will be soft in the future.

anything between facebook, we do use scored voting in some sense. right now that generation is turning 18 and in the future, there will be in these seats and it will not be such a big gap to cross. hopefully, with that, you will learn that there is -- it is not so scary, scored voting. president chiu: thank you, next speaker. >> mr. president, i have followed --[unintelligible] for many years. looking at the model of

parliamentary procedure, if a person put down his or her name from a party to one in [unintelligible] that individual should not take down a chair come out. we can get up and present themselves as a constituent. but the constituent no -- let the constituent know what you'll do for them. i have not seen any of this in the mayor's election. i am hoping that one day that

this -- the electoral system will change. however decided to put down his or her name to run for special office that they would come out to and that the constituency -- come out and let the constituency know what they will do for them on their behalf. supervisor chiu: thank you. next speaker. >> a pleasure to be in front of you again. we have been going at this issue for many months and things have taken a lot of twists and turns. now you have three proposals before you. any electoral system has its pros and cons but when you look at these things on balance, some

of them stand out as being worse than others. i think when you look at -- if you look at the difference between supervisor olague's proposal and supervisor chiu's -- there is equal in that sense. the difference is if it is in september or november election and whether you'll have ranked choice voting are not. one of the things i would like to think about is ranked ballots have added some important features to san francisco politics. without trying to balance, you have a plurality system and have many candidates running. you can have split votes and can have spoiler candidate and if you look at the recent talk to prairie on june 5, you see many examples where there were -- one district in southern california, a majority latino district and the top two candidates ended up being where

republicans. they split the democratic vote. that is also happening in san francisco's election. what with the asian boater have done with a one single shot boat per lardy -- plurality. it would have ended up splitting the asian vote. these are the sorts of things that can go on and so i encourage you to think about this early about whether we want to go back to plurally elections and introduced september elections to san francisco. i do not see how this would have much merit for san francisco. >> the first time i did not vote is one reagan beat jimmy carter. i have voted 31 years since then.

regardless as you might recall -- i got seven votes. a september election would be good because san francisco and new york is supposed to be known for having strong city mayors. this is -- we could really elected the board of supervisors in -- and other candidates but also with the mayor, we should also put the sheriff's department and the district attorney. and then let everyone here run on another election. what san francisco -- we want three types of people in government. we want the people who ran and people who come here like these great advocates here. there need to be three voices in san francisco government obviously. you -- i have seen them build

some of the houses in san francisco. i want to live in that apartment. i hope that is a dream come true. we need to have three different types of people in this government. the mayor cannot do it all. he is not a strong mayor like we had when brown was here. we need a strong board of supervisors, we need a strong independent board of people and who knows the history. this is a good idea to have a september and november election right now as i think on my feet. thank you. president chiu: are there other members who would like to speak at this time? seeing no further discussion, why do we go to the amendments that we have in front of us? colleagues, on item 34. i have made an amendment to item 34 that was seconded. can we take that without

objection? without objection, that amendment is made. with regards to item 35, supervisor farrell has made an amendment and it has been seconded. that amendment is made. and at this time, why do we continue these items including the hearing to sisson committing item city to as well as the three various proposals, 3335, continue it for one week until july 17. is there a motion? is there a second? supervisor campos. without objection, these items will be continued to the 17th of july. at this time, we have four special orders in front of us. why do we start with the two items we can quickly dispose of. if you could call items 48 through 50 regarding the certificates of appeal for 55 laguna. >> item 48 to 50 complies the

special order for public hearing of. -- persons interested in the decision on a certificate of appropriateness for city landmarks 257 richardson hall, to 58 woods hall and the annex known as 55 laguna street. 49 and 50 are the motions associated with that public hearing. president chiu: both parties have agreed to continue these items to july 31. could i have a motion? seconded by supervisor wiener. is there any public comment on this motion to continue or on this item? seeing none, colleagues, can we take a motion to continue without objection? without objection, that shall be the case. could we call items 44 through 47 which is the final here are appeal of the transit center district plan. >> these are the items associated with the public hearing of persons interested in the planning commission's decision certifying that a

final environmental impact report for the transit center district plan and transit tower has a certification of a final environmental impact report. items 45 through 47 are the motions associated with that item. president chiu: as you know the appeal for this final eir was withdrawn by the appellant last week. we do need to take public comment on these items. let me ask if there are items -- members of the public who wish to comment on the final eir of the transit center district plan. seeing none, let me ask the difference supervisor. supervisor kim, would you like to make a motion that we support the decision of planning in this case? supervisor kim: thank you. i would like to make a motion to certify the eir and i want to say that this item in terms of the land use composite will be coming to the land use committee on july 16 and to the full board

on the 17th and i look forward to airbus discussion on this long-awaited plan around a transit center district plan revolving around funding of the transbay terminal which will be the future terminus hopefully of caltrain and high-speed rail. all along with the four redevelopment plan that will allow us to build at minimum 35% of 40 housing on the site and there are a number of innovations and impact fees that will allow us to do this type of smart growth development and i will be looking forward to that discussion in the next few weeks. president chiu: we are continuing. could i have a role call on

that? >> supervisor wiener, aye. supervisor campos, aye. supervisor chiu, aye. supervisor chui, aye. supervisor elsbernd, aye. supervisor kim, aye. supervisor mar, aye. supervisor olague, aye. president chiu: could you call items 40 through 43? >> the 4:00 p.m. special item is comprised of items 40 through 43 for public hearing of persons interested in the planning commission's decision certifying a final environmental impact report for the proposed renovation of the beach chalet athletic fields, export facility

at 1500 john f. kennedy drive along the western edge of golden gate park. item 41 is the motion affirming the planning commission certification of the final environmental report and item 42 is reversing and 43 is a motion directing the preparation of findings. president chiu: we have the appeal of the final environmental impact report for the proposed beach chalet project. for this hearing we will hear and consider the adequacy, accuracy, sufficiency, and completeness of the final er. -- eir. we will hear from the appellants and then take public comment from individuals of the public who wish to speak on behalf of the appellants. each speaker will have up to two minutes to present. we will hear from the planning department who have 10 minutes to describe the grounds for their certification of this environmental impact report. we will hear