park. we have food concessions in these parks and, in fact, there is a new food concession that is being built. do those require a vote of the people and if not, how is it different than this, particularly that this station will provide direct access to a park for people who are coming off of muni? >> i haven't analyzed all of those other factual situations that you have raised and i analyzed this one as it relates to this particular project. so i'm not going to try in next 3 minutes to analyze all of the different kinds of projects that you raised. but what i will say is that your reference to access suggests that you are taking the position, which i assume the mta is also relying on, that this charter provision is

no different that the previous charter provision that related to is this same topic and that snot the case. the provision is different. the previous provision was interpreted by variety courts of appeal in giving the city latitude in order to use portions of parks for non-recreational structures that somehow facilitated the use of the recreational activities at the park. that is obsolete in a couple of critical ways. one way is that the previous provision did not require a vote of the electorate. it was a flat prohibition on using park property for non-recreational purposes. this is simpaly procedural requirement that you go to the electors to get permission to build a non-gaap recreational structure. >> not just to build, but to maintain or to use and i'm sorry, i'm a little confused that before you made this

argument wouldn't have considered what the ramifications are in terms of other uses and things that are maintained in parks that are not themselves directly recreational. because of course, any legal argument you need to know what the ramifications are to make that argument as opposed to saying that we're going make it here, but yeah, maybe you can no longer use roads or have a muni stop or have a food concession or put any more bike lanes in the park because that is not technically recreational and so you have to put that to a vote of the people. thank you. >> the obvious ramification at a legal level if those other facilities that you are referring to are, in fact, illegal under the charter, then you would have a choice of either putting them to the vote of electorate, or amending the charter. so there are procedures to deal with those if it turns out that they are illegal. >> so we'll have to go back to the vote and ask if it's legal to have jfk drive go through golden gate park? >> like i said, i haven't

looked at jfk drive. the last time i was there on a sunday there were a lot of people roller blading on jfk drive and presumably that is a recreational structure. >> i don't think people will use the elevators for recreation, i hope not. anyway another reason that the previous charter provision interpretation given by the courts of appeals does not apply here is that it's basic rule of law when a legislative body, whether this body or the electorate, makes a law, they are presumed to be aware of the previous law that relates to the same topic and if that they change that law, that they are doing so for a purpose, that has a change in the legal effect. here the law was changed. and it would be to assume that the electorate had no intention

whatsoever to make that change and to assume that the interpretation of the previous section still applies. so it would be violating both that commonsense and that very time-honored rule of law. my letter that i'm delivering also deals with some ceqa issues. because of the small size of this park, even very small changes can be significant. here the changes are significant and require a subsequent or supplemental environmental impact report under ceqa before the board approves the proposal that is before you today. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker. if there is anybody else who would like to speak, please line up because we're going to close public comment pled guilty decosta. >> chair, i put in my card. there are two phases to this project. there is phase 1 and phase 2. phase 1 is the 3rd street light rail, which begins at 4th and

king. and ends in the middle of nowhere visitation valley. now if you do the estimate of phase 1, it costs

>> we have have to go back and get secondly approvals or follow-ups. several months ago,

savemuni.com was made and myself as a professional architect and i think citizens of the city would air on the side of the and at one time

there was language in both the general plan and charter that was somewhat less stringent. as a result there was a succession of harsher and stricter language in the plan over the decades until 1996 when it was much more stronger language was placed into the charter which said that construction on union square required two-thirds of the vote of the board of supervisors, which the mta is proceeding with here today in this resolution. but also, 4.1 13 subsection of the charter says any construction on a park requires the vote of the electors. thank you. >> thank you, mr. wong. i did have a card from sf

neighborhoods coalition. >> good afternoon, supervisors, i am on the chair for the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods land use and housing committee, but i would like to speak on this issue, because it's so important. and the coalition does support save muni in regard to central subway. i do want to support the attorney general representing save muni, howard wong. their statements and i think they should not be taken so lightly. and i hope your city attorney, i'm not sure if he is here or not, could give an opinion? but i do want to make some comments about the central subway. i spoke about this many, many months ago at the board. and it seems like the comments

from the board of supervisors was that oh, we're getting this almost free. we're getting all of this money from the federal government. we're hardly putting up any money. which may be true. however, you have to look at some of the other unintended consequences. for example, if you complete this project, there is going to be expenses incurred to maintain it. and it's going to take away from muni operations. i think that is clear. and muni funding is uncertain and to compound this issue, with another project such as the central subway, which is going to serve a minimal amount of people for this vast expense is really sort of like our bridge to nowhere. it's unbelievable that supervisors don't take into consideration the expense that will be incured to maintain the

central subway and the issue about direct connectivity with bart and muni light rail, that is a critical issue. and it's unbelievable that the board cannot realize this. it's very unfortunate. and again, i want to state again that i support the attorney for save muni, and howard wong. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker. >> linda chapman from knob hill. i don't purport to resolve supervisor wiener's concern, but at that time around 1996 this was tremendous controversy about structures being added to the parks as was mentioned garages, senior centers and so on. and so when this was passed, it wasn't with the intent that we need to rip out the things there already or we can't maintain the roads, but rather they wanted to be very careful that anything added in future

would, in fact, be for recreation. so you might perhaps keep that in mind. union square is really a case in point. now i live for about 18 years, i lived on the south slope of nob hill two blocks from union square. union square had been a green park and was changed to a garage before my time which really had an impact and they redid it so it was a hard-edged urban space you can see with almost no green space at all. it was a disappointment to me and in the area that i live there are lots of old people and others and the nearest green space is up at the top of the hill and you have to scale three very steep blocks and you don't even though there is a very beautiful park. the nearest green would be to go to yerba buena gardens and that was really too far for 90 years old who lived in my

building who could go to union square. so you have an urban living room that has value for entertaining and going to the movies and things of that sort, but we need to be careful not to add more structures and take away what recreational quality it has by having subway stations and people rushing in on subway stations. transportation-wise, again, you are not going to climb over the top of nob hill to get to california or north beach and takes you out to the presidio union street and so forth. and we would not use this system. we're not -- we would go to the tunnel, like we always did. we would get on the 30 or 45 there and we're not going to go down in the opposite direction, way down underground and ride one stop and then get off and take the 30 or 45. so it's

just a really impractical project. i have to say that the stockton corridor was horrible and i used it all the time and so was the 5. there are ways to fix it without the subway thing and without further impinging on union square open space as it is. we have no open space for people on that part of nob hill and downtown. 90% of the people in the census tract on nob hill have no vehicles. this is not going to help our transit. >> miss jackson? >> thank you. espinola jackson. since the t line was brought up, i had to say something. in the 80s, 1980s the citizens of san francisco passed proposition b for better transportation to bayview hunters point.

we the citizens of bayview hunters point did not support a t line, but we got one. it was shoved down our throats and it has never gotten finish, where it said it was going to go. it's a sad situation, when the citizens of san francisco vote on something thinking that they are going to get something. we don't get what we expect to get. i hope you listen to the attorney, because you know what? all of us is not that savvy. we might be attorneys, but we don't know what the laws are of san francisco and what the voters have voted for. and all the time, a lot of the times things get pushed down the throats of constituents who voted for you and supported and not only that, because the people that served as supervisors in the past was lawyers and they had due court and we the citizens of san francisco voted to have your

salaries raised to $100,000 something and i believe at time the supervisor was only getting $30,000 and they did a good job. but since your salary was raised, and we pay the salaries, we are disrespected. you don't listen to what we have to say and what is better for san franciscans. you know, since i was here, since 1943, i have seen the changes. and i remember the line of because i used to live in chinatown. i used to have to catch the one going up powell street because of the hill i lived on. i lived at 949 clay street and i walked down the hill to stockton to catch the bus. you know, things should be made convenient like it is for you. where the salaries that you get make it convenient for the citizens of san francisco. thank you very much. >> thank you, next speaker. if there is anyone else who would like to speak, please come forward. wore going to close public

comment in a movement. mr. paulson. >> oh, would you like to ride in the beautiful subway? would you like to ride in the beautiful subway? we can ride along this city, you and i, for we can fly. we can fly. up, up and away in the beautiful, the beautiful central subway and then we'll make reading item no. 3.

we have dominica henderson from supervisor olague's office. >> good afternoon, supervisors. supervisor olague wanted to make sure she thanked both supervisor cohen and mar cosponsoring this item. i am happy to go through those amendments individually if you would prefer, or give you an overview summary if that is what you prefer. there was one non-substantive amendment that was proposed today that has been hopefully provided. >> so i think just summarizing them and then we do have the language in front of us, but if you could just summarize the amendments and then the non-substantive one as well. >> okay, so a brief summary of the amendments.

the legislation is working to provide the right to return for public housing residents who are undergoing a redevelopment activity at their site. so the amendments that were introduced two weeks ago, in addition to that, the ordinance also is establishing as the rent board as an impartial third party of claims that may be heard because of redevelopment at the site. there were some amendments that authorized the rent board to instead of the relocation appeals board, to be the body that would hear the re-election appeals that might come up, and those appeals are really related to, if households feels that their relocation -- their moving allowance was not accurate or there is some appeal that they want to make to the housing authority, the rent board would be established

as the impartial body to hear that claim and make a recommendation to the city authority. in addition to that, the other amendments that were added were to make changes to the definitions of "households," instead of "tenants," in order to reflect the intention of the authority and really all the partis that one household -- that all the tenants of one household are considered as one individual group and so that that right to return would be extended to all of the members of the household through that one unit. and so that is consistent with federal policy right now, considering the households -- considering the residents of the household versus individual tenants. and in addition to that we struck some language that was not consistent with current existing policy regarding prior tenants and we made sure in amending the current definition

we struck the language regarding "prior tenants." the last set of amendments -- >> that last one was on page 5, line 12, i can see striking "tenants and prior tenants?" >> and the definition s as well. that is the summary of amendments introduced and we struck in the definition of "new development," we just struck 941 in order to make sure it's consistent across the entire document. it was something that was a slight oversight from the last amendments that we did. >> thank you so much for the summary. thank you and i know that we have our housing authority director mr. henry alvarez here with us as well. if there are no other presentations, let's open this up for public comment and we have