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tv   [untitled]    October 30, 2012 3:00am-3:30am PDT

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(inaudible) going through the dimensions. san francisco's variety of systems for granting approval for temporary events which led to the office working on the temporary events policies with varied departments. the america's cup, it's people's transportation plan and as we talked about an outgrowth of that was the improvements on jefferson street and of course planning department parklets and i should not say this, but cycle tracks in jefferson. go, state park. so it's an impressive body of work. and we really appreciate you putting that public time in. i know it's a lot of work to keep doing this every month and to try to get people to come to the meeting. i think we made some really good headway through this process. so, council, you are going to have to pick a new chairperson for this committee. >> that will be a challenge,
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definitely. >> thank you very much for that, john paul. one of the best things about this role is the opportunity to work with john paul and carla before you, susan, there's really some talented, dedicated people who are not just dedicated but really good at what you guys do. you are good teachers and so i thank you all for the opportunity to have done that. >> and, howard, if you would stay for a minute, the council would like to present you a small token of our appreciation.
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. >> thank you very much. >> howard, on behalf of the council, carla, everyone involved, i with like to present you with this token of our appreciation for all your hard work and your dedication and we hope to see your face around because we do need your opinion and we know you will speak your mind. thank you. >> thank you. that's beautiful. thank you very much. (applause).
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>> thank you all. >> thank you so much, howard. moving on to item no. 9, a report from the disability disaster preparedness committee. joanna >> good afternoon. actually my report will be extremely brief. as you know, the dupc now meets every other week -- every other month so we didn't meet last month. however, a
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small group, a small subcommittee, has been working on putting together a grant application for a fema innovation challenge award which is about $35,000 to do a small innovative project. after long deliberation we decided to work on a disaster preparedness initiative for sro owners -- for sro tenants. these, as you know, are some of the most challenging populations who have traditionally been ostracized or kept away from the typical disaster preparedness can urricula. our project is proposing to develop an innovate i've can you remember rim klupl using collectives and community organizers to get folks, around 300 residents, to
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develop a structure for developing culturally appropriate disaster can urriculum. we believe very strongly this is a project worthy of funding and possible to create some important work and important precedent and we'll keep you updated. i also would like to remind everybody that our next disability disaster preparedness meeting that's open to the public is on november 2nd, so the first friday of november, and it will be in room 421 of city hall from 1.30 to 3.30 pm mraes feel free to call us for access or more information about the meeting. >> thank you, joanna, any public comment? seeing none, we will move on
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to our -- may i go on? next item, no. 10, the november election, access to information, polling places and voting machines. presentation by gil fox from the san francisco department of elections. hi, welcome. >> thank you, good afternoon, everyone, i am here and my colleague will be right upstairs, natalia kasin amount, our deputy director, and we are here today to talk about disability training for election staff, accessibility in voter education and accessibility at polling places. i have prepared a written report which i will -- ken will hand out large print paper copies at the end of your meeting and i will get to him for his sdrib distribution on
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monday electronically. i also have some other materials here for the public. at the department of elections we strive to help every eligible san franciscoan be a voter on november 6 and that includes people with disabilities. to do that, we started out several months ago -- well, this has been an on-going process as you know better than i do. but we started out several months ago meeting with the disability rights california organization who educated our staff on both respect and etiquette for working with people with disabilities. our outreach staff then provides this information in all of our presentations. we
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have done almost 300 public presentations this election season and all of that information, accessibility information, is in our presentation. our trainers who are also trained by the disability rights california organization, they trained 3,000 poll workers on voter rights and respect. so it's kind of dropping a pebble into a like. we get a little information and then it spreads out to a lot of people. our poll worker hiring is inclusive. when the letter goes out recruiting poll workers, people with disabilities are included in the availability letter and we provide wheelchair seating and large print materials and printed copies of spoken information and space for a guide or service animal and other requests for poll worker
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with disabilities. then all poll workers are, their mission includes accessibility goals to protect voter rights and serve voters with respect. it's a major part of the voter -- poll worker training and also in their poll worker manual. they are taught how to set up accessible stations and keeping the polling places safe and setting up the edge accessible voting machine, and there is a video that they view in class and that is available to the public on how it use the edge machine on you tube.com/sfelections. and they get hands on training how to set up these machines as well. in your written materials will be experiments from their training manual so you will be
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able to read exactly what they read and learn. accessibility in voter outreach and education, which is more my wheelhouse, we have materials that we provide to the public, large print election flyers, i have some samples here today, and we provide those in english, chinese, spanish and russian. we have options presented in all the presentations that we do. we have an accessible web site with screen reader capability and we have a large print voter information pamphlet. we advertise that we have this in our outreach, we take requests and we make it available in english, chinese and spanish in large print and in audio format in english,
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cantonese, mandarin and spanish. we did get a number of requests and this year we produced a total of 120 audio formats of our voter information pamphlet and 130 large print in various languages. we have some in the office at room 48 of city hall if anyone would like one and did not request one earlier. they can contact us and we can get one to anyone who needs one. we also have some at the lighthouse for the blind. and also in your printed material are excerpts from the voter information pamphlet which provides general -- that's in every copy of the voter information pamphlet that provides information about
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accessibility in voting for everyone. one of the other things that we've done in outreach this year, and this is fairly new for us, is we've developed a community network of organizations. in total we have between -- around 350 organizations that we outreach to that then outreach to the community, all of the community that we serve, but specifically we have 47 organizations that have self-identified as serving community of people with disabilities so we work with those organizations that again work with the community. so i think that's a really positive step in building coalitions between elections and the people we want to serve. and, finally, accessibility at the polling places is also
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we're making great strides there. we looked up at some statistics and going back to march 2004 election we had 550 polling places in san francisco, 211 of them were not accessible. in november 2012 we have 573 polling places in san francisco and only 29 are inaccessible, so we think that is a very positive statistic for all of us. and by accessibility at the polling places it's not just getting there, it's also being able to vote once you're there. when you receive your voter information pamphlet, when every voter receives one, on the back of that pamphlet it is
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listed whether or not your polling place is accessible or not. if it's not, you are instructed to call or email the department of elections and we will make arrangements. every polling place that is accessible has signs at the entrance. this time a doorbell where someone will be able to call for assistance to inside the polls place. of course we hope we will have a welcoming poll worker staff and then there's some practical things like a pen grip and a page magnifier, large print instructions, accessible voting booth and, of course, our accessible voting machine with a touch screen, audio ballot in english, cantonese, mandarin or spanish. this is the same edge machine that's been in use in
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san francisco since the february, 2008 election so people are probably fairly familiar with it. but there are instructions on the edge machine in braille and of course the poll workers have been taught how to use the machine. we also have curb side voting available if people cannot get into the polling space and poll workers understand that two assistants to help people who need to use curb side voting to mark their ballot. for everyone, the last day to register to vote is october 22nd, the last day to request to vote by mail is october 30th. you can vote early at city hall monday through friday and the last two weekends before the election and of course on behalf of the department of elections, we encourage you to be a voter
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november 6th. if you have any questions i'm happy to answer them. thank you. >> through the chair, could i ask a question? >> if no one else has a question, we will allow miss carter-johnson to ask a question. go ahead. >> it's just a very short question. thank you for your presentation. if a voter encounters difficulty on the day of the election is there a number, a hotline number, that you would like to advertise for people to call to get assistance? >> yes, thank you for asking. our voter assistance hotline and it is, it's actually live now and it will be available on election day in english is 554-4375. in chinese, 554-4367. and in spanish,
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554-4366. if you need another language, call the english number, 554-4375, and people will help you. >> and just one more quick question. >> okay. >> i don't know if i heard you mention that people can vote early also here in city hall, which is fully accessible. did you mention that? >> i did mention that, but it is fully accessible here and we are open monday through friday from 8:00 to 5:00 for voting and the last two week ends before the election from 10:00 to 4:00. >> that's lael good. i also would encourage people to vote but it's a little late now. is it too late to call for the vote by mail? >> no, it's not. you can apply to vote by mail until october 30th.
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>> october 30th. so, so that gives us plenty of time. so they can call the 4375 number, right? >> yes, or they can go to sfelections.org and get instructions there. >> all right, thank you. any other questions? public comment? none? ken. >> yes, speaking for staff, i'd like to apologize that you had to wait so long. i thank you and natalia for coming, but the good news, the upside, is that you now and we have a very good and very accessible web link directly to this item that is realtime captioned and sign language interpreted about accessible services provided by the san francisco department of elections. so we go on from here with that and i thank very much for your presentation. >> thank you. one of our goals is working with our civic family, so i'm very happy to be here. thank you.
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>> thank you so much for your information. moving on to our next item, no. 11, sfmta multi modal accessibility advisory committee update. presentation by mdc council member roland wong. >> thank you very much. i will start off, san francisco has one of the longest standing committees to advise san francisco metropolitan transportation agency. the sfmta maac multi modal accessibility advisory committee, a 21-member strong voice of seniors and people with disabilities. a few
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projects we have accomplished is the big project like st. francis circle, like when they have, we've done the rails and made the pathways, way finding ramps, everything much more accessible. like minor enhancements like a (inaudible) station by installing automatic push button for better access to the station. we're working in progress weigh in concerns with bikes and pedestrian safety. another thing that we are trying to work on is better access to bart and access busses. many busses are
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blocked by vehicles that interfere, a path in order to enter or exit a bus like the 1846 avenue and 31 balboa bus line. there are many muni lines that need improvements, just to name a few. the public and members of the mayor's disability staff and council members are welcome it ascend sfmta maac meetings at the sfmta headquarters every third thursday of the month from 1:00 to 3:00 pm located at 1 south van ness avenue, 7th floor, union square conference room. the next maac meeting is
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scheduled for thursday, november 15th. the phone number is sfmta accessible service is 415-701-4485. for further information you can go to www.sfmta/maac thank you very much. >> thank you, roland. any public comment? council members, any comments? no, okay, we'll move on to item no. 13, correspondence. do we have any correspondence? >> the only letter we got this month was from howard chadner
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that he read you earlier today. thank you, howard. >> okay, moving on to no. 14, council member comments and announcements. the only announcement i would have would be our next meeting. where is that in my notes? oh, thank you. thank you, denise. our next meeting for the mdc will be friday, november 16th here at city hall from 1:00 to 4:00, room 400, as usual. all right? anything else we need to announce? public comment? seeing none, we could adjourn early. or do we have someone on the bridge line?
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>> okay, here you go. >> so sorry that i am not there, but i have been there the whole time. all the speakers were wonderful and i just want to thank john paul scott. i am going to be sad to see -- that name i love. this is idele i wanted to public comment about prop 63, the mental health service act, and tell people facts about it while your public, information about it, i don't know all the information but if you google prop 63, mental health service act, that's funding that's available here in san francisco with the right assistance. but
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ask about it, get information, get involved. that's something that's here for our city. thank you guys, awesome meeting today. >> thank you so much. okay, i move to adjourn the meeting. all in favor say aye. okay, we adjourn the meeting. thank you very much. (meeting adjourned).
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>> so again good morning everyone. i am ed risk. i am the transportation director in the great city of san francisco and it's my great pleasure and delight to welcome you today to a great celebration. what we're celebrating here is the partnership that many of you that are with us today that have gotten to this point. we are celebrating the fact that we have gotten to this point and the investments that will central sup way will bring to san francisco and what it means for this city and this region. i can't tell you what an honor and privilege it is to serves
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as the transportation director in this great city. we ordered san francisco weather to deep the dust down and we are in a construction site and it's a great time for transportation across the nation largely because of some of the folks you will hear who are to my left and your right. it is also a great time to be in san francisco because we have leadership here in the city that are encouraging innovation, that recognize the importance of investment and infrastructure, and there is no better manifestation of that than this project and that prt is man manifested in a way that i can see no more strongly in our great mayor who have been been a public works director, a city administrator, and helped build the city's plan he really gets this stuff. he is really engaged in this stuff. i don't think a week has come gone by
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that he hasn't asked me when this day is coming and it's a pleasure to introduce our mayor ed lee. >> thank you for your wonderful leadership. over 20-25 years ago when we were struggling with the earthquake, when people in chinatown said "gosh we're really going to suffer, and if we're going to be participating in our great economy in san francisco we have to find a way for better transportation routes to transfer people up north and down south of the city, and when we call ourselves a city as a transit first city there is no better example than that than what is reflected in the plans for the central subway. this project is a vital enhancement
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of our public transportation system. it's going to significantly improve the movement of tens of thousands of franciscans and if you were here this past weekend when people were predicting it would be jam san francisco instead of san francisco you knew that folks were educated because of the great leadership at our mta, our county transportation, all of our transit systems and were at the highest level of educating the visitors and others to use public transportation. it will work for all of us and as we build the housing units we identified in hunter's point and treasure island and welcome more people to our great city and we are growing as a result. we are going to have the greatest subway system that can connect to our bart, to our caltrans, to