and the state, buy from dealers -- i source from all over the bay and the state. i am diligent that i purchase my items from good, reputable dealers. i have an active member of the corridor business association. i also barely pay my bills each month. this industry is a very difficult one, especially given the rising rents and costs of doing business in a very expensive city. paying $1,500 would be months worth of profit. there's no way i could ever document each and every sale with an identifying description of these customer. my customers would see this as an invasion of their privacy and i would lose business because of it. a reputable small business that contributes to the economic vitality of san francisco. please treat people and people like me accordingly. i strongly support the repeal

of this anti-business and unnecessary police code. supervisor wiener: thank you. next speaker. >> it good afternoon, supervisors. i'm the owners of leftovers home consignment shop on van ness. we've been in business three years. i do understand the importance of making sure the people in this business are selling items that are surrendered by the actual owners of their property. i think it's realistic and understandable to have us fill out information you would require to make sure there are no sleazy people in this business. i think in regards to my shop, we only sell home furniture. no one is going to steal a couch and try to halt it. we don't accept anyone who comes in off the street and wants cash instantly.

everything is run through high- tech computer system. every tag has a price tag with a scanner code. all of our inventory is monitored by myself or the store manager who has been with us for three years. the items we sell are not things that anyone would want to steal. we also did not carry any electronics, cell phones, gold watches. we have a nominal amount of jewelry but it is clearly the owners who are moving who are trying to sell their items. it's not somebody who is shaky. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. and the co-owner of coal valley antiques. we have had our business for a

half years. this permit came to my attention just a couple of years ago. my main point is we did everything we needed to do to open our business correctly what the right permits and to city hall and took every step we needed to open the business. we were never informed of a permit until i received a certified letter just a couple of years ago. i did not receive anything in this wave. i just received a certified letter that was fairly intimidating enough, telling me if i did not pay within 10 days and comply, i could be cited. i'm a small business owner and mother of two young children. a single mother of two young

children. , moved here 20 years ago and one of the things i fell in love with -- i moved here 20 years ago and one of the things i fell in love with was the geek shops. we're trying to contribute in that way. i also share the concerns for the ability to fence stolen goods, but there must be other ways to go about this rather than through these exorbitant fees in permits. the filing fee two years ago was $963 and then they want a couple of hundred dollars to have me fingerprinted. these are the types of fees that are going to put us under. we can barely stay in business right now. we are trying to weather the storm of this economy. [tone] there must be other ways to circumnavigate the the question of stolen goods through the

integrity of the store owners and other ways to go about it. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i own an arts and antique emporium on market street. i've been in business for 32 years in various locations. i was never made aware of this the but i have complied, so, for me it is a moot point. i've paid the fees a year-and-a- half ago when i received the threatening letters. i immediately complied and got fingerprinted and photographed. my issue is trying to comply with the actual ordnance. it is impossible. i sell hundreds of things per month. i sell mostly to dealers and decorators. i still -- i sell to a steady line of regular clients and get people from all over the world. as everybody said already, it's

a very difficult to do business as it is right now. the economy is not great and we do what we can to be as flexible as we can and stay in business. most people can't afford the fee. i can afford the fee, sort of, but the problem is complying with this law. it's virtually impossible. it's an imposition on my clients. i would hate to ask my customers to give me more information than is actually necessary that i would put on a receipt. it's almost treating them like criminals. i don't buy anything off the street. my sources are other antique stores, a flea markets, estate sales, auctions. other people buy things from the restores, bye-bye from reputable deals -- reputable dealers. we are not pawnbrokers, we are an antique stores. pawnbrokers need something like this and for antique stores, it

simply will not work. it is impossible. supervisor wiener: thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. i don't to stores in the castro. i have been in business since 2006 after a progression of a little shop on market. since i complied with all of the requirements for licenses and permits, i was never aware of this license. a couple of years ago was my first attention. they showed up at my store and some of our i was really surprised and the way they treated us for the requirement and other people, plants in the store, i believe the license can be bought able to have but it's very expensive the first time i was required to pay.

it was about $900 and then it went to $1,300 with all of the fees and all of these added up to 1900 dollars. i paid for one of my locations. the second one is still pending. i don't know what's coming to happen but i feel it's a very expensive license. my consignors our regular consignors. we have more than 500 right now and most of them are regular that come every six months and drop off merchandise. we have all of the information on them. i feel like this type of license is not for second-hand clothing stores. i also don't agree with the treatment we got about getting a license. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you

very much. is there any other public comment? supervisor farrell: seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor wiener: i would like to thank everyone for coming out today. it's extremely hard to get small business owners to come out for public comment because they have it -- because they have to run their business and sometimes they're the only person there and it's a real pain to come to city hall and sit for couple of hours waiting for your two minutes. i've never been very successful at getting small business owners to come out. we were successful today because these sections are not pro-small business. these over broglie a lump in many, many good, honest small- business owners and treat them as if they were running the worst kind of pawnshop basically. it's not just about fees.

the fee is significant and onerous. it's also about the fingerprinting and having to go to the hall of justice and be photographed at as the one gentleman mentioned, having to keep a log. whether you are reporting every seven days or 30 days, you are still having to keep meticulous records of every single transaction, including a description of the person. it's unreasonable, it is not pro-small business and undermines our ability to keep a vibrant commercial corridor with these unique businesses. the police department has expressed some concerns, but i think many of them are covered by sections, including firearms permit, the junk dealer permit and the pawnshop permit. it is not as if some of the businesses that may be more likely to have problems are not covered.

they are already covered and this will allow us to support these critical eyebrow at small businesses instead of treating them as if they were criminals. colleagues, i request your support. supervisor chiu: i would like to think supervisor wiener for

bringing this forward. we do have a lot of regulations on the book that i think create needless confusion and process for folks who are just trying to get by and it's important to simplify and eliminate requirements where we need to. of that being said, we have certainly rick -- we've heard issues that have been raised by the san francisco police department. i would like to paint supervisor wiener's office and the police department and i would like to suggest we give it a little more time and asked the sponsor of the measure if we put this over until the first week of september when we get back, and either leave it in committee or move it forward with our recommendation, i would like this legislation to get to a

place i can support but it seems that there is a need for one last conversation on this. supervisor farrell: thank you for the small business owners to have come out. take a lot of people -- it takes a lot for people to take time out of the day. i pretty much echo the comments -- i want to support this from the small business perspective and there needs to be at least one more conversation here. but i would like to talk to their project sponsor. legislative sponsor. supervisor wiener: i just want to say and i think it has come out during this hearing that i have a certain frustration

level with the police department a around this issue, after being told by the chief we were good to go, there has been a series of different rationales for what is wrong with the legislation or what needs to be left in tact. the only specific thing i understood coming in today was the possibility of keeping the permitted place for businesses that accepted cash over the counter. you walked in with a leather jacket and they give me 50 bucks for best -- keeping the permit in place for that, but eliminating fees and a fingerprinting and daily record- keeping requirement and the other unreasonable aspects of this legislation. but the department has stated, after first stating i did not raise this note in my original letter, which is inaccurate, stating the only changes should

be reducing the fee or making the reporting less frequent than one day. i have a certain frustration level and we've gotten inconsistent levels from the police department'. with that said, i would recommend we put this out of committee not as a committee report which would go tomorrow, but rather on the regular course which means it would come to the board of supervisors at our next meeting after tomorrow, which is september 4. in the interim, i will convene another meeting with the police department and ask that the chief be there personally with his staff so that we stop getting inconsistent messages from the department and we will do our very best to work this out. that would be my request. i would make that motion.

supervisor chiu: i am happy to support that. supervisor farrell: we have a motion to send this out to the full board so it would be scheduled on september 4 regularly scheduled board meeting. this is for item number one. >> item #one will be referred without recommendation to the board of supervisors meeting. supervisor farrell: just item number one. so moved. supervisor wiener: as for item number two, up we have not heard any objections and these are antiquated things that should be repealed. i recommend we move that to the full board on september 4. supervisor farrell: we have a

motion to move item no. 2 ford with recommendation to the fault board. we can do that without objection. are there any other items? >> it that completes the agenda. supervisor farrell: thank you. the meeting is adjourned.

>> good afternoon. welcome to the small business commission. monday, july 23, 2012 meeting. the time is now 2:07 p.m. and the meeting is being called to order. first item is roll call. i'd like to remind everybody to please turn off your cell phones or put them we appreciate all the work that sf governor tv and city hall and management do for us. roll call. commissioner adams? >> here. commis

commissioner dooley? >> here? >> admissioner ortiz-cartagena? >> here. >> commissioner white? >> here. commissioner reilly? >> hereby. we have all commissioners here. general comment. this allows members of the public to comment generally. president adams: do we have anyone from the public wishing to make a comment on anything that is nod on today's agenda? seeing none, public comment is closed. next item? >> commissioner, we're at number three, approval of the june 25, 2012 meeting minutes. explanatory documents -- draft june 25, 2012 meeting minutes. president adams: do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

>> i move. >> second. president adams: all in favor? >> aye. president adams: next item, please? >> commissioners, that motion passes 5-0. commissioners, you're on the regular calendar. items four and five will be continued until the conclusion of item number eight, in which case they'll be called together. would you like to call item number six? president adams: please. >> presentation by george smith of child support services. president adams: welcome. >> and this is a discussion. president adams: great. can you hear me? good afternoon. my -- -- my name is george smith. at this point community outreach is coordinator for the department of public services.

with me today is are two other coordinators. and they're going to help me if i run into trouble. and thank you for joining us today. i want to thank regina and tracy for working with us and inviting us to come and present today. weaver very excited on the possibility of pairing with the office of small business commission staff, which is san francisco primary child support services. our goal is to really improve our partnership with small businesses throughout san francisco. i wanted to give a little overview of our department and i want to invite both peter and katherine to help me. and so, let's start. so we mentioned the san francisco department of child support services. we establish paternity and

enforce monetary support orders. once those things are established, we off case management services and also offer alternative solutions to parents having difficulty paying child support. we have employment services. now with the department of child support services. we can help with establishing debt reduction opportunities for our clients and other solutions stretching from inconciliatory parents finding work here in san francisco. we provide outreach services. any customers or businesses of san francisco that would like to know a lot more about child support services. just give us a call. we'll go out and do presentations.

we're also in the county jail every week. one of the great services that we do in the jails is parts who are incarcerated in jail and can't pay child support, we often will zero out any payments that they owe until they're released from jail to help them not accumulate so much debt with child support. our rereferral process -- there are three ways you can open up a child support case. any parent can go into any of our offs in the state and open up a child support case absolutely free. they can go online and open up that case free, or if any child ends up in foster care in any type of public assistance, usually the count or government will open off case for child support that reimburses any financial support the child is receiving through the

government. our case load overview gives you some statistics about child support here in san francisco. last year we collected here in san francisco a little over $25 million. 83% went directly to families, the rest going to reimburse -- a here in the county -- yeah. >> we have just over 14,000 cases on our san francisco county case load and just for the month of june 2012, we received payments on about 5,000 cases just from income withholding, which are garnishment orders to -- served to employees for their employers to withhold that money. we really wanted to reach out to the small business community and work on engaging and educating

them about the child support program because we realize that many small business owners or sole priorityors are also customers of child support and our office has had some experience with that community with them not understanding how it works. and we've had examples of the business-child support co-mingling their assets and when child support fees come up, it damages their business. now they can't make payroll or things like that. so we really want to prevent future things like that from happening. working with the small business community and customer, educating them about child support, answering the questions they have that are specific to that small business community. we realize that for many residents within san francisco, the small business is maybe the only employer option they have

because a small business may be more willing to give those reentering the community second chances. for those who have been unemployed for a long period of time due to whatever reasons that may have contributed to that unemployment. and we acknowledge and understand that for the outsider, be it small business owner, small business employee, or really anyone outside of the child support program navigating this system can be very confusing. under the lot that we ask of our employers when we are enforcing against employees and it can be difficult for them to understand all the rules, the laws, and regulations behind staying compliant with us. income withholding order. how do they enforce medical support orders. what do they tell their staff, what are the limitations and the amount they can afford and things like that. we wanted to they can this opportunity to partner with

small business and educate that community so that we can be a better neighbor to our small business employers out there. so next step with this collaboration we've been working with regina through the office of small business. so the next steps are going to be for us to meet with the business organizations so that we can begin educating the small business community about child support and from there we really hope to start participating in small business week, which we understand is held the third week in may and that there are opportunities to do workshops and presentations. to start there and from there we want to host a small business employer's forum that we will put on through our agency but invite members of small business to come in so we can more address the concerns that the small business owner has

regarding child support. you want to talk about august? >> we had originally scheduled our first forum august 28 but after working with regina and seeing how complex it is to outreach to a number of small business organizations, we decided to put that off until we can do better outreach with the small businesses and neighborhood organizations in the city and so we're maybe going to look at -- >> sometime next year. >> yeah, sometime next year. >> after small business week and after weaver worked more with the small business community. president adams: so only one micrned on unfortunately. so when you're both speaking at the same time, maybe share the same mike. i can alternate to an extent but -- >> that's ok. >> so you did hear that last

piece? so we're very excited about being here, about the opportunity of working with you. as you know, we sometimes serve the same customers. like freida said, sometimes our small business owners are our customers also. we like to make sure that we provide better assets for folks to come in and learn about child support, understand child support and really benefit from our director. karen roy, customer service is one of her top priorities. good customer service for our customers is one of our top priorities and that's one of the reasons we're here today and we really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. >> do we have any questions first? >> president adams: commissioner white? commissioner white: what are some of the issues that you guys