authorization is appropriate. and i'm happy to answer any questions that you have. thank you. >> thank you, it looks like chris schulman is here from the office of small business and it doesn't look like regina dickinson, but chris schulman is here. >> chris schulman from the office of small business. we held a hearing and recommended 6-0 to approve. the ordinance provides flexibility for a business to provide personal service on the third floor. the commission has taken this opportunity to help increase awareness of disability access requirements on businesses on the second story and above. thank you, supervisors, and we recommend approval. >> let's open this up for public comments, two minutes

each. is there anyone who would like to speak on this item? >> ronald rabine, i wish some of the tenants had stayed here. i think this is another step of putting commercial uses ahead of the right of quiet enjoyment. the gentleman said there's protections against turning third floors into businesses but i don't know what those protections are. it seems to me there's no chamber of quality of life, there's no chamber of quiet enjoyment, we might need that. but the idea that business above all and let our space earn money more than let someone quietly live there is a wrong concept and they do this on the railroads too, of course, freight before passengers. i think this is a wrong trend and i urge a no vote on this and i'm sorry supervisor campos brought this up. >> is there anyone else from the public that would like to

speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, can we move this forward without objection? thank you. mr. clerk. >> item no. 5 is an ordinance amending the police code regarding the junk dealer and junk gatherer permit process. >> and the sponsor is supervisor cohen. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. colleagues, i want to thank you for hearing this item. i've spent nearly 8 months working on this legislation with the police department, the city attorney's office, junk dealers and the community members with the goal of curbing and better regulating the sale of metals, copper and other junk materials. now, metals theft is a significant problem in our city. if you recall, there was very much media coverage of it earlier this year. we have seen individuals go to great lengths to steal copper and metal by breaking into public housing units, homes, businesses, as well as historic

buildings. we've seen metal thiefs sail small boats and even pull copper line from the cable lines. not only does metal theft cost thousands of dollars in damage but it can disrupt the delivery of critical transit services. unfortunately some metal thiefs have an incentive to engage in this dangerous behavior. junk dealers who buy and sell these materials often pay up to $4 per pound for metal and copper. while several junk dealers provide a service to local residents and contractors by allowing them to recycle lawfully obtained items, our police department has conducted a number of undercover investigations and has discovered some junk dealers illegally purchasing stolen

material and accepting false documentation from sellers. now, all of the large junk dealers that engage in the business of purchasing metal and copper are located in district 10. the -- this legislation that we are reviewing today does a number of a few things. it updates and provides more structure to the permitting process for junk dealers in an attempt to combat the trafficking of stolen metal. 2, it brings the permitting of junk dealers more in line with the permitting structure for commercial towing companies and parking lots which the board of supervisors has recently updated. 3, the legislation requires junk dealers do 4 of the following: renew their permits with the police department annually if they have a facility or every two years if they do not,

provide a process for the city and the neighbors to work with junk dealers to abate a nuisance and crime and finally makes conforming changes to our local regulations to make them more consistent with the state law. i appreciate the effort some of the junk dealers have made to establish better communication and working relationships with my office and with the police department. i hope that we will be able to continue to work together to implement these new requirements and collectively continue to work to address and abate metal theft. we have a representative from the police department here, we have the lieutenant o sullivan from the bay view police station, he's here to answer any questions that you may have, but given the length of this meeting i thought it would be best to spare a long presentation and just go ahead and go to public comment. >> okay, colleagues, let's open this up for public comment. is there anyone from the public that would like to speak? please come forward.

>> ladies and gentlemen, my name is mark med, i'm the director of government affairs for sims metal management which has a metal recycling facility at the end of pier 70. i want to focus my remarks on just two things. one sft general comment that we are as worried, concerned, anxious and otherwise about metal theft. we have done much both locally and in the state of california to try and combat it. i will offer this. effective metal theft deterrents and prevention rests on really 3 legs of the same stool. one of course, is for people who -- and we include ourselves here -- who have materials subject to metal theft take active steps to protect their property. banks don't have screen doors. we have barbed wire and security in our own facility because we store a

fair amount of copper in particular. the second thing is that it's very important that we support our police and local law enforcement in general in catching people who are actually taking metal illegally from housing, public utilities, private utilities, et cetera, and we are the third part of it, which is to make sure that all the transactions we do in buying this metal are properly done, legally done, completely recorded, et cetera. that's the general comment. the single comment i want to make about supervisor cohen's proposed ordinance is this: we have a 5 year lease with the port of san francisco and we would very much like to have the licensure be commensurate with that time period because as you know companies who invest like we do millions of dollars in an acre in our case that is actually not ours need to have some reliance on our

ability to continue to operate within the strictures of our lease for the period of time of our lease. thank you very, very much. >> thank you. is there anyone else from the public that would like to speak? >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is dan dote, i'm a bay view resident, home owner, business owner, and director of the bay view office of community planning which is a community-based land use entity. we are not city funded. i'm in full support by the effort of supervisor cohen in introducing this legislation on behalf of our district. we believe the legislation will potentially reduce the overall pool of debris collectors by requiring a consistent licensing and regulatory structure. it also may reduce the incidence of illegal dumping which adds significantly to the blight in district 10,

throughout district 10. it's obvious the residual effects of illegal dumping has effects both environmental, physical, criminal, economic and psychological. it contributes to the unwarranted negative impression of our neighborhood. the legislation with also reward the legitimate hard-working and licensed contractors who engage in such work and it will further enhance, i believe, the overall climate within district 10 and our community. thank you very much. >> thank you. is there anyone else that would like to speak? >> i'd like to --. >> public comment is closed. supervisor cohen. >> i'd like to give lieutenant oh sullivan an opportunity just to go on the record and express his opinion on the legislation. thank you. >> thank you, good afternoon, supervisor, as the supervisor stated, i am lieutenant robert

osullivan, acting captain of bay view station. from the ground level i can state that this legislation is much needed. i've been at the bay view station for the last two years and over the course of time on numerous occasions i've seen the impact that illegal theft has had on the district, primarily public safety in nature as well as environmental in nature. we have had instances where wires and copper have been removed and have caused the shutdown of traffic signals. as the supervisor alluded to, we have had individuals under cover of darkness landing at hunter's shipyard and stripping metal from that abandoned yet soon to be definitelied property and we have had both commercial and residential facilities that have broken into and stripped of wires. a number of years

ago at 17th and tejaro the police department moved into the facility there and getting that particular building up to speed, the entire infrastructure had to be replaced because all the copper and electronics had been stripped from the building. we welcome the legislation, we think it brings things in line, san francisco in line, with what is done statewide by redefining what a junk dealer is. and like often is the case with abc violations and premises that are required to be licensed by the abc, it affords the chief of police and the department and persons like myself at the station level to suggest conditions on permits should an individual who is permitted run afoul of the existing legislation. thank you. >> thank you very much. i do want to bring one technical before you to your

attention, change the date the existing permit expires from the end of this calendar year to june 30, 2013. you have in the packet that i circulated to you, in front of you, it reflects this change, this process has taken longer than i anticipated. that's the slight change i need to make. i would urge your support on this matter, thank you. >> thank you. it looks like a junk dealer permit is did $1,308 and can we adopt the amendments without objection? thank you. can we also move this forward with a positive recommendation without objection? >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you, supervisor cohen. mr. clerk, can you call the last item? >> item no. 6 is a hearing on the municipal transportation quarterly progress on

increasing and improving tax service. >> scott wiener. >> about a year ago i submitted a hearing request to request quarterly updates from the municipal transportation agency about taxi service in san francisco and efforts to reform and improve our taxi system. if we are ever to become truly a transit first system, muni, those critically important, will never be enough by itself. we also have to have in addition to great biking and ability for people to walk around safely, we need to have car sharing and very importantly we need to have a world class taxi system. we currently do not have enough taxis in san francisco. taxi service is not where it needs to be. people still have incredible trouble getting a cab, whether they are visiting the city, whether they are living in the city, and if we want people to be able to live

here without owning their own vehicles we need to give good cab service. i know that the mta has been moving forward with some very positive measures to improve service and i want to commend the mta for doing that and today we'll be having our quarterly update and miss hiashi is here from the mta so i'd like to invite her up to provide a update. >> chris hiashi, deputy director of taxis and accessible service. 2013 is going to be an exciting year for taxi service in san francisco. around the end of the year in a few weeks a report from our best practices consultant who is looking at best practices in taxi regulations throughout the country and internationally. we're very much looking forward to the results of this study

because, among other things, it represents a very comprehensive data collection effort from customers and stake holders that has not taken place in san francisco in many years and this will both quantify and validate our neighborhood service issues rather than having to rely on anecdotal information. in addition to analyzing the immediate needs on whether taxi supply is recommended it will also include a longer term structural analysis of how we might look at the licensing structure for taxi operations not only how many are needed but how we can structure taxi licensing to meet neighborhood service demand. and then in addition i believe that we'll see this report identifying a further potential for taxi usage in san francisco, as supervisor wiener indicated, if we are going to make san francisco a place where people don't need to use their private cars that is consistent with the sf mta's goals of getting

more people to use taxis and into other forms of public transportation. in addition to our best practices study which we think will provide us with a lot of very useful information at the beginning of the year, we're also going to be receiving responses to a request for information that was issued and those responses are due on december 28th. that is for the purpose of attempting to construct a data platform, if you will, for electronic taxi hailing applications to come into san francisco and be able to see the entire taxi fleet through these applications so that they can become more reliablely communicated with by individuals on the street using burgeoning forms of mobile technology that are available today. third, i'm very, very proud of the accessible services staff and the work they have done to implement our wheelchair

pick-up both incentive program and disciplinary program using this carrot and stick approach we find that our 100 ramp taxi vehicles that are accessible to wheelchairs are much more in service now than they were when this program was beginning to be enforced at the beginning of this year. and then, finally, not the only thing we're doing but i'm trying to give you a sense of the highlights, we are implementing a color scheme performance standard system whereby if color schemes don't meet certain basic pass/fail requirements and by color schemes i mean the taxi companies, if they don't meet certain pass/fail requirements they will not be able to grow their business by attracting more medallions until such time as they do meet those pass/fail requirements and leaving the pass/fail requirements aside, using a scoring system to rank these companies based on their dispatch success, the level of

paratransit performance, the number of complaints and compliments received but it will be very heavily weighted toward dispatch success, not just number of phone calls but based on a per taxi count of how many times people successfully are able to get into that vehicle as a result of a dispatch call. so i think this is the first time that we are going to be holding those companies accountable to public service and i'm really looking forward to implementing that in 2013 as well. so those are some of our service-related highlights and i'm happy to take any questions. >> thank you, miss hiyashi, i want to commend you and miss bose and others for our strong work moving this forward. i know it's really challenging. i work but i think the agency is moving in a positive direction. do you have, i know this is --

everything in san francisco takes a little bit longer than we anticipate, just the nature of our city, and i'm wondering if you have maybe a gross estimate for how many years you think it's going to take until we have what you believe will be adequate cab service. i know adequate cab service might be in the eye of the beholder, but just trying to get a general sense. >> i was thinking more along the lines of it's always going to be a moving target. there's always going to be solg else we can do to make things better, but i think the best practices study that we are expecting soon is going to be a really valuable platform torus to look at what other cities do, what options we might have, what sort of creative solutions we might have. for example, san francisco is the only -- other than las vegas -- is the only town in the united states that

has part-time permits and we did that in order to try to deal with peak time demand. there may be other creative ways that we can get more taxis into the neighborhood. for example, the 8,000 series of permits that was just issued to companies are not allowed to pick up at the airport. we may find that we want to implement some zoning kind of criteria to make sure that certain taxis stay in certain neighborhoods or find other incentives and motivators to get more service out into the neighborhoods. so i don't know that it's something -- to me it doesn't feel like a chronological exercise so much as how creative can we get and really identify what the sources of the problems are and try to do something about distribution. >> and i agree distribution is a big issue. there are parts of the city where it's almost impossible to hail a cab on the street and challenging to get a

dispatch cab. i'm glad the agency is considering those issues. i do believe that as supply increases we'll probably organically see cabs moving to a broader swath of the city and in my view i think we have a real pent-up demand in this city. there's a lot of people who don't even think about taking a cab because they don't believe they can get one. as we have more cabs on the street that pent-up demand will be unleashed so i'm optimistic about that. >> colleagues, any questions? >> just a quick question. we heard a hearing on car sharing and new types of programs that might seem to compete with taxi service and i'm wondering how as those types from zip car to city share to new types of zip

cars coming into the city, how will that affect taxi service and competition with taxis. >> pier to pier sounds like a fancy way of getting grandma's old corolla out of the garage and making yourself into a taxi. we are serious about getting people into taxis by whatever mechanism it takes. we are not afraid of technology and we're not trying to be anticompetitiveness. however, there is a factor of public safety. we need to make sure when somebody gets into a vehicle that that's a safe vehicle and a safe driver. with that said, we're all in favor. if we can satisfy those concerns there's also a concern about unregulated meters, for example, and what the customer

can expect. some of these sfrlses, services, will say it's a suggested volunteer donation and it's no different from the casual carpool but what they don't say is in their 26-page user agreement when you put your credit card on file that if you do not make the suggested voluntary donation that it will be automatically deducted from your credit card, making it neither voluntary, suggested nor a donation. this is not a viable consumer situation. motor vehicle for hire regulators exist in order to screen the safety of the drivers, screen the safety of the vehicles, and make sure that the basis for the fare is fair. so if those considerations are satisfied we are in favor of anything that will increase transportation service in san francisco. >> supervisor cohen. >> i just wanted to say thank you and acknowledge your department's hard work. i

appreciate you putting in the effort and looking into this matter. as you remember last year, earlier this year, we have always had this on-going conversation. i certainly had an opportunity to talk to you about my concerns around the taxi, not only the concerns but the challenges around the taxi industry. so thank you for coming back to us and making this report and i look forward to seeing you again. >> thank you. >> thank you. shall we open this up for public comment? please come forward if you would like to speak. >> ro*pb on miller, i took a taxi to get here from market. it was 7.95, i gave the driver a $10. there's only a shortage if you are hysterically running

around with your head cut off. if you call for a taxi you can get a 5 or 7, 10-minute wait, a taxi will come. we need more planning on individual lives and less running around as if we were competing on donald trump's game show to be the most active and most aggressive. so you plan and you call for a taxi or you go on a busy thorough fare, you flag one down in 5 or 10 minutes. these new pefky little taxis, what do they call them, cyber come things. we have a california state law that says you are not supposed to not be texting and not be on these mobile devices while driving so we don't want more people looking on their gps and rushing here and let me see -- again, my same theme today. we just don't need more speeding and i hope you will text the

hell out of private automobiles like london does, $25 a day for every car that comes into california and put it right into muni and taxis. and tax the hell out of automobiles every day, every car that comes into san francisco. i said that twice on purpose. thank you. >> mark gruberg, taxi association. i wanted to call to your attention what the mta is doing with regard to drivers. this is extremely important in terms of service because the drivers are the ones who provide the service. if you don't have good drivers, you don't have good service. if you don't have experienced drivers, you don't have good service. so far they have taken more than $25 million out of the

taxi industries, they have approved the leasing of medallions to cab companies, 150 to 200 medallions that are being leased by cab companies cutting off the drivers who have waited for these medallions for up to 17 years. in the next year alone they will receive a minimum of 20 to 25 million dollars from the taxi industry and possibly as much as 50 or 75 million or more. i am not making these numbers up, they are real numbers, i can pencil them out for you. they have taken drivers' futures and thrown them into the gutter. this is what this agency is about. i'm not laying this on staff, i think staff is trying to do their job within the constraints but the pressure is from above and it's all based on money.

these rogue taxi services that are out there, they are based on a false and fraudulent premise that they are not providing taxi service. they are providing the same service through the same means as taxis. you can't have two parallel systems providing the same service, one of which is regulated and the other of which is not. it doesn't work for anybody's benefit, especially the public's benefit. and that will come to pass. thank you. >> next speaker. >> nola gravis, also with united taxi workers. always a hard act to follow when i follow mark or anyone follows

mark. if you want good cab drivers, if you want good cab service, you've got to have good cab drivers. 25 million dollars out of our pockets. and out of the industry as well. the mta has about 10,000 drivers. 5,000 have health care, have optical, have medical, have dental, have paid sick and vacation days, have a retirement. then there's 5,000 workers that don't have any of that and they have to buy their job on top of it. and the money that they are using to buy the job, the part that doesn't go to the bank for interest, is going to the mta and i would presume is going to pay for the benefits of the muni drivers who get those benefits that we