other victims and heroes who died on september 11. betty ann ong ann foundation would like to thank everyone for their generosity in supporting our fund-raising effort to fully equip the center. and now i would like to take these last few minutes to thank some very special people. i would like to thank and acknowledgement chiu, elaine, and all the past directors and their ancillary for their tremendous dedication in serving the community of san francisco and to the new director. as our foundation has gone through our grass-roots fund- raising journey these past six months, we found that people are so giving if they believe in your cause. and in their support of betty's legacy and her heroism, people from everywhere have supported the people -- the betty ann ong

foundation to raise funds for the center. we think. ong families -- we thank the ong family association and the other chinese benevolent associations. we think our relatives and friends. we think reverend norman and the ccdc. we grew up in the group. the sacramento community, local and national businesses, my family at walgreen's, the san francisco-chinatown rotary club, and our partners, the san francisco parts alliance. we have received donations from individuals for large amounts and small amounts. and our foundation banks all of you in appreciation as equals. for those not able to donate money, our foundation thanks you just as much for your heart to's warm wishes and dots.

also, i think all the flight crew members who are here today from near and far -- i thank all the flight crew members who were here today. [applause] i salute you. to honor and demoralize your fellow co-worker betty and to help celebrate this reopening, thank you for making our air flight safe, and you are truly first responders. and ask all of you, when you fly, please do not give the group a headache. [laughter] last but not least, i thank all of the members of the betty ann ong recreation council for their dedication in helping to plan this wonderful reopening event. in closing, my family and i thank all of you, all of you, for being here today and celebrating this reopening event. enjoy this day with the music provided, and may god bless you.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you, harry. the san francisco park alliance, formerly san francisco parks trust and neighborhood parks council, is a philanthropic and advocacy organization that supports our department. joining with the ong family foundation, the alliance's has been distorting the gear up fund for equipment in newly renovated centers like this one. the theme here is we are a community. we cannot do it alone. and we're all partners. i want to bring up our partner representing the san francisco parks alliance. >> thank you. the park's alliances deeply honored to have been able to give and assist the family of betty ann ong in raising the funds that have paid for all of the equipment that is inside the speed of only building. the ping-pong tables, the basketballs, tables, chairs.

all of the equipment was paid for through the private philanthropy that we have been able to raise. your tax dollars at work -- how many times do we hear that, and it is a little bit on the cynical side? take a look at this building. your tax dollars, my tax dollars, phil's taxes, the mayor's taxes, our taxes paid for this building. we all should die in. every taxpayer in san francisco chipped in a little bit today for the beautiful new building -- we all should die in. what do you think and this use of our tax dollars -- we all chipped in appeared what you think about our tax dollars at work? [applause] we paid for this building through the 2008 parks bond. if you like this, just wait until what is coming in november. we have another parked bond measure, the green and safe neighborhood parks bond of 2012 that will be on your ballot this november. it is going to pay for more rec

ce% neighborhoods all across the city. new swimming pools, new playgrounds, new trails, touching every neighborhood in san francisco. we're going to put $195 million to work improving our parks system city-wide. it will be the biggest single investment we make in our parks in a generation. vote for the parks bond is november 6. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, matt. and most awesome plug. all right, give yourselves a hand. we're almost done. [applause] a brief acknowledgment before i bring up the man. a brief acknowledgment to my staff who actually a rate inched today's event. connie, elton, and sarah for your incredible work for organizing this event. thank you. [applause] to do the benediction, to wish

us a little bit of love and a little bit of luck, the director of the chinatown community development center, a reverend and some who grew up playing here in chinese rec center, and i have seen him should. reverend norman fong knows what this center means to the committee. reverend fong might also have the most reverent -- or rather devaney reverend a rabbi no. he is here to bless our new facility, but later today, he and his band, just jammin, will be performing here life for all of you. reverend fong. [cheers and applause] >> ok, everybody, everybody -- everybody, pay attention. i am not blessing this place to you, all of us are blessing this place. mayor lee. all of us. ong family. when i say everybody, then you

say three words -- bless this center. let's try that. bless this center. here we go. maybe the spirit of peace and harmony -- everybody -- [all] bless this center. made the spirit of the joy and happiness, everybody -- [all] + this center. made the struggle of learning and teamwork, everybody -- blessed this center. maybe courage and inspiration of betty ann ong -- everybody -- bless this center. maybe love and dedication of all the rec park staff, volunteers, directors, past and present, everybody -- bless this center. made the sound of laughter as

well as the sweat of hard work, everybody -- bless this center. >in the spirit of community that poses all together -- bless this center. before i say amen, and now may god bless this center named the betty ann ong chinese recreation center, let's a all celebrate by, men. >> [all] amen. [applause] 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 -- [cheers and applause]

>> five years ago here in san francisco, and i was toque -- joking with the mayor that it only took us four years to realize the error of our ways and move back here. it did the warriors 41 years. on a day when the city is excited about the basketball team coming back, we are thrilled to have the mayor here to help us open our san francisco office. thank you very much for all you have done. want to hand it over to you. [applause] >> congratulations. i wanted to come by. my staff let me know the background and history of this company, and i'm very excited for it and not only wish you success, but it is our success

as well as the success of the city to have you here. you're so glad to join our friends at pg&e as well as the department of the environment. their staff. we have some past commissioners as well that have served in various capacities. we are excited about clean energy, and we are excited about the reason you started here. actually started back in virginia, but you came back to san francisco, and we are excited to have you here. the model you have about the ability to communicate with people, using the social media platform, and getting kind of a personal relationship with our environment and with energy savings -- that excites us because it has been a challenge for us to talk to people. i know the department of the environment has had that challenge. how do you educate people about helping themselves as well as help the environment? the q you canuote -- you can

quote all kinds of information, but it does not become relevant to their lives, and by old power having tools to allow -- to become personal, for me, it becomes personal. do you like tequila, or do you like champagne? [laughter] i happen to be a tequila guy, but anyway. that is part of the excitement here for the staff. i love your bike racks and the way you are conducting yourselves here and growing, and by the end of the year, talking about 75 or 80 people working here, that relevancy for my neighbors, me, the residents of the city, who actually, when you talk with them, they all want to do better. they live in a city where they want to feel they belong to the whole movement. that is why i moved to san

francisco. there were a lot of movements i wanted to lead and others i wanted to join. when it comes to improvement of the environment, we want to be part of them -- the movement. we want to be part of the best city in the country. how do we get there? we personalize it. we go about every week. this is where we are saying what goes in the green and blue boxes, and we personalize our challenge making sure we know the things we use where it goes so we can get to the 100% recycling, zero ways. we talked about it to our friends in china. do you live in a city that is committed to zero ways? you are not up there yet. when it comes to energy efficiency, when it comes to clean tat, -- to clean tech, we would like to talk to people and make sure it is personal to them. that is why i am excited about

personalizing it, making it relevant, creating a competitiveness to it, but also a friendly, social environment where people can say, "i am part of san francisco. this is what i do to live here." when we reduce energy consumption, that will meet other people and more people can live in our city. it becomes expensive and unaffordable if we do not start thinking about shared values and shared living standards. that is why i am also excited about the movement about our shared economy. you are part of that. we can reduce the footprint of our people, and more people can enjoy the richness of our city. i am year for all those reasons as well as what you mentioned earlier. they are coming back, and we get to celebrate that with you. five years from now, 3000 employees here at full power celebrating an nba championship

right in our water from rita. this will be great, right? first of all, thank you very much for being part of a great company. thank you for so many of you living in our city, and thank you, alex, and the whole staff for having such a great model for clean tech, energy- efficient, and thank you for partnering with the city. we will find those opportunities to partner with you. you have a great model, and we are going to search for ways to do that. already been educated about what i do not have, which is digital thermometers in my house. i have a baby thermometer. that is how i feel warm, but thank you very much, and congratulations for being part of a great, successful -- now i know why president obama came to you back in 2009. this is that great feeling. he had a vision there to share with you. i get to share that vision now,

and hopefully in the next four years, we will do a lot of work together. congratulations. [applause] >> i want to introduce steve, the vp who oversees all of our work at piccinni, oversees the service is brought to you, who are customers of the utility -- all of our work at pg&e. thank you, steve. >> let me just say -- welcome to the neighborhood. thank you guys for choosing to come out here and join us in our home city. we are proud that you are here. we are proud to be part of this city and a partner with you and we look for to achieving those goals you laid out. we talked about making energy personal for our customers. you have to make it personal for it to have an impact on your life, and there's probably no better example of that then the relationship you have an old

power and the work you help do for our customers. i heard this morning the commission from thecpuc -- the cpuc was making a speech, and she was happy to get her report and had one smiley face and was committed to getting to two. that is one great example of making it personal. there is the work we do with social. we have the opportunity to engage people. we have a passion. we give them the information so they can help accomplish their goals. there is another aspect of this, which is really important, which i wanted to thank you all for. i have talked to a lot of our other customers, some of whom are less fortunate in terms of their income and what they have the ability to do. they may be struggling on a monthly basis to pay their bills and to do the things they want to do in their lives. i was speaking to one customer in particular, who was excited

to get their report because it helped start them on a journey to use less energy. they did simple things, they took civil actions, they became more aware, and as a result, they were saving about 20% on their bill. that has a huge impact on their life and what they can do. that is another way we can make it really personal, and that is another thing i get excited about. energy has the opportunity to power our lives and help us achieve our goals. i'm excited about where we can go with the partnership. again, thank you for joining us. thank you for the partnership. i know many of the folks in this office have probably work some late nights to deliver for us and deliver for our customers, and i want to thank you for all that commitment. i also want to say how happy we are to have you as a customer

year in san francisco. i have a feeling you are probably one of our most efficient customers in san francisco. i saw your groupon, the facebook atp -- app to see how you were doing, and you kind of put us to shame. thanks, and welcome. >> thank you. to bank a few more people and provide more context for why we are opening this office here in san francisco, we started this company five years a po intrero hill with the notion -- in potr ero hill with the notion that most customers all over the world think energy is boring and the only time they think about it is when something does not work or when a bill comes that is unexpectedly high. we realize -- we thought, anyway, that if we provided

people with more compelling information, took the phenomenal data that was coming into utilities, that we could begin to drive behavior change and drive changes in everyday lives of ordinary people. earlier this month, we celebrated having saved a tara what our of energy in partnership with utilities and customers. et al. what our of energy means practically nothing to anybody, but it is a lot of electricity, enough to power a city of 200,000 people for a whole year. what is just as exciting -- more exciting than saving the first taro hour of energy is we are going to save another tarawa of energy over the next 12 months. it took us five years to get to the first tarawa hour. it will take less than 12 months to get to the next. to put that in context another way, the entire solar industry in the u.s. produced around 1.7 tarawa hours of electricity last year. this small company in partnership with really phenomenal large companies is

having an impact that is approximately 2/3 of that, and we feel like we are just getting started. i feel confident that our ability to have an impact will grow strongly because of the partnerships that the mayor has highlighted, the partnership with facebook. the partnership with honeywell. to be imagine the thermostat. particularly the partnership we have with utilities like pg&e. i think there is someone here from the city of palo alto utilities, and we have worked with for a long time. utilities like back -- you guys are brave. utilities have had the same business model and the same basic delivery for a very long time. to recognize and appreciate that your customers could become real partners is a really brave thing to do in an industry that has been understandably risk averse before.

we are thrilled to be your partner in that change and to be providing better services and tools to your customers, to give them more control and in doing so, to build a stronger relationship and help them save. the one thing i wanted to thank were our partners. the second group to thank is government. diane is here. she was commissioner on the puc. have beenn 0 fromrdc -- we have people from nrdc. thanks of great regulation -- regulation gets a bad name these days, but when implemented correctly, it can be a phenomenal force for good, and the state of california has led the way. local governments -- this is a

phenomenal city to do business in a, a city which has attracted and under the mayor's leadership accelerated the attraction of other tech companies and built an ecosystem. when you want to start a business, you want to open an office, you need to go to where the talent is, and there is not a city in the world that has more talented people than the city of san francisco. we are thrilled to be here and to have your leadership. i do not know if we will be at 3000 employees, but if the warriors win the championship, we will be there to celebrate and to help in any way we can. we look forward to being a long- term partner of yours and the city's for years to come. of course, the third group to thank here it is it is great to have a beautiful office, but

what's most important it are the people who come in every day. i feel phenomenally blessed to have such wonderful colleagues. we started two of us at a desk five years ago. there are now 250 of us that the company. 50 people worked out of this office. we plan to double that in the next 12 months. the mayor already met our lead recruiter are here. when president obama came to visit our offices in virginia, we were 60 people. we told him we would double the company in 12 months, and he went to donny and said, "i understand you are the job czar." and she was, and we did. it is really special to be part of a community of people who are incredibly talented, who are hard working and who work those late nights and come from different industries to work together on such an important issue, an important issue for our city, an important issue for the state, and an important

issue for the planet. really appreciate you guys all coming to celebrate our opening of this office. i know there is a ribbon for us to cut. i am ready to cut it. [applause]