mr. funge said, that there's some cost to the future project , the to-be-planned funded design project, and that leaving those machines underground encapsulated in concrete would be an additional cost for a future project should it continue up columbus avenue. but that's on the cost side. on the benefit side, we would be relieving north beach of that 9 or 10 months of construction impact that they would be seeing now for a project that they won't at least directly benefit from for many years down the road. so, it is a trade-off. i think it's a reasonable trade-off to make, that the point that i think you'll hear from many speakers -- and we've heard from the supervisor, it's just not fair to subject us, this neighborhood to that amount of disruption when the benefit is so far out and

uncertain at that. and i think that's a reasonable position and a reasonable trade-off and that's why we are recommending that as our kind of backstop plan. if we're unable to make something happen off-site. * the final thing i think you'll hear from folks is kind of our final backstop, which is if for some reason going to the pagoda site doesn't work and for some reason we can't make leaving it underground work, which i don't anticipate we would have trouble doing, but we don't have that fully designed and approved, that we keep the current approved project on the table as our ultimate default. and that is because, you know, we have an approved project. it's a fully funded project. we have an executed contract. we would be putting the agency, we believe, at significant risk

if we didn't have that final backstop to fall back on. it's our hope that we wouldn't get there. i saw some correspondence suggesting that we come back to you before hitting that final stop. i'm certainly open to that. i think folks would -- a you would probably want to know, that we've made our best good faith due diligence effort before getting there. so, i just want to provide a little bit more context. i want to thank mr. funge and his team for this. and i want to thank president chiu for his leadership on this and perhaps with the board's consent we could -- >> actually any questions for mr. reiskin first? >> yes, one more question. i was not on the board -- you weren't here either -- when we approved the original central subway. i know that the union square merchants had a lot of concerns

going in and your team has worked incredibly hard to mitigate the concerns to the merchants and the shoppers and the people passing through that stockton street utility relocation work. do you anticipate that the construction, if it happened on columbus ave., would be more impactful than that one? or will you have ways that you can mitigate that construction site as well? because i'm hearing a lot of concerns about dust and noise. i have walked by the stockton street when it's going on on a regular basis and it doesn't seem to be that bad in terms of dust and noise, for the most part. but could you maybe talk about what can be done to mitigate the construction on columbus similar to what's been done to mitigate it on stockton? >> director brinkman, the proposed construction work or retrieval shaft on columbus is quite a bit less in terms of scope than the work at any of the other three sites along the

central subway. the mitigation measures that we've successfully deployed at these sites would hold true in north beach. we have the ability to have good representation from a parking control officers who have the ability to control the signal lights to flesh through intersection to prevent back ups. we keep the sites very clean and comply with the city's noise and dust ordinances. and that's continually monitored. pressure washing of the sidewalks so that pedestrians don't have to deal with any intended dirt and debris, just keeping job site cleanliness and safety. those measures were -- we've successfully deployed for the utility work since we've been up there since august of this year and it's been quite successful.

but the work that will be occurring in 2013 is more disruptive than what the community actually experienced from the summer till present day. the relocation, utility relocation work removed one lane of traffic on columbus and the retrieval shaft work, the actual excavation of the shaft, would take up two lanes of traffic between nine to 10 months in 2013. >> thank you. >> anyone else on the board? okay, director. >> in terms of exploring, is there any negative impact -- is there any negative impact to the approved project with exploring these options? especially what you have said in terms of the tight timeline and all the contingencies we've built into the resolution. >> we're doing our best to minimize any direct impact to

the existing project, either the budget or the scope or the full funding grant agreement. we're doing that with meetings with the transportation authority, the federal transit administration to keep them up to speed on what we're proposing and why we're proposing it. in concept, we're always looking for a better way to mitigate construction disruption. and, so, the current approach is to evaluate what i believe to be a very good option to explore and will be bringing along our funding partners to support us in that decision. >> [speaker not understood]. let's hear from members of the public. i'm sorry, captain chu from supervisor david chiu's office. good afternoon, mr. chu. >> good afternoon. thank you very much, chair nolan, members of the board of directors and director of

transportation rifkin. i'm legislative aid for board of supervisors president and district 3 supervisor david chiu. and i'm going to keep my comments relatively brief. you've already covered quite a bit of ground. we want you to hear from our neighbors and businesses in district 3 and the north beach in particular. we have come a long way since may and i want to very much appreciate director rifkin's acknowledgment of the surprise that both our community felt and that our office felt when the full scope of the construction impacts, both utility work and the excavation on columbus became known to us in may. we knew that there was an approved extraction of north beach as part of the e-i-r. that's always been in the discussion, but we did not know either the lengthy timeline or the full extent of the closures required and what we feel would be an unacceptable impact on the businesses and residents of north beach. so, i do want to thank director rifkin for that acknowledgment. you'll see, and i think you'll hear today, we have a lot of

trust to build between our members and mta. i think the work that's gone on since may will help in that regard. but we really need to keep at it and our office is committed and david is committed to making sure that we do everything we can to both help find an alternative to the existing plan and to make sure that it's effectuate and had becomes a reality. i want to be clear that we -- supervisor chiu has not supported the existing base case and the so-called option 1 and is very much looking forward to consideration of these other two options in particular. as far as the pagoda goes, we think that is a creative approach that accomplishes the mta's original goal and existing goal of removing the tunnel boring machines from the ground that make sense on its face. and we want to do everything we can to support the agency in pursuit of that option. we have vetted some of those conversations and we'll continue to do everything we can from the city side to help

in that regard. we do also fully understand and support the mta's inclination to limit any impediments to a future extension either a station in north beach or extension at fisherman's wharf, which our merchants are supportive of. we want to help -- we support proposals that would limit the impediments and make -- we don't know what that would be. there are a lot of questions. but we support limiting the impediments, we fully support grassroots community-based planning, of the that we of course need the mta to be involved in to look at a possible north beach station in phase iii before we understand that the project and the questions before you today are not directly related to that consideration. a few more quick points. we do know that there are some questions about the actual impacts of what the pagoda would look like or option 3 leaving under the ground at columbus and encourage the agency if the board moves

forward today and staff then goes back and continues to work on those items, we encourage the agency to flesh out for the community what those options would look like. we also do have some concern about the tight timeline. we fully understand that the agency needs to protect the project overall. supervisor chiu is a supporter of the central subway project, was proud to be there with all of you in october when the forefunding grant agreement was signed. congratulations on that. but we really just don't see the existing base cases acceptable to the community. so, i just wanted to raise some questions about the timing. i'm happy to answer any other questions that any of you have about supervisor chiu's position. really appreciate the ongoing relationship. we hope our community members will have a lot of good input for you today and we look forward to hearing from them. thank you very much. >> thank you. we invited mr. chiu to speak on behalf of the supervisor. now we'll begin with members of the public. members of the public who wish to speak please fill out a card.

please call the names. >> bonnie choden followed by michael barrett and richard hammond. >> good afternoon, mr. choden. start the overhead, please. i'm [speaker not understood] shoden with [speaker not understood] tomorrow. at the outset i'd like to indicate this proposal is narrowly conceived in that while i have offered alternative technical [speaker not understood] if you like that would substantially offset the investments and revenue needs of what is now being proposed, from the beginning the project is, i believe, in violation of the california environmental quality act regarding mitigations required

for increasing cost of housing and businesses in chinatown, gentrification, if you will. that is not being addressed from the very beginning. it continues to beck on your recall. if you would look at it, increased revenues would alleviate funding for muni such as [speaker not understood] free rides. we suggest you look at this more seriously before you go further doing, if i might, some costs. thank you for your attention. >> thank you. and if you like, [speaker not understood]. >> next speaker, please. >> michael barrett, richard hanlon, james bosworth. >> good afternoon. good afternoon.

thank you for having us at this meeting today, the mta board. mr. nolan and all board, i'm michael barrett. i'm a member of save muni. for four years here in san francisco. i'm here to address the central subway construction option of north beach * . our last meeting was november 19th, which has been mentioned, when we finally had representatives of the mta present what they plan to do, and nobody in north beach had heard or agreed with any of it. so, i mentioned at that meeting that i have never missed a vote. i've been in this city for 45 years, but i couldn't remember having voted on this project. i was informed correctly that the taxpayers voted for the subway in the late 1990s for a

$6 47 million expense, which is now $1.58 billion, with a b. the whole project is too little too late. and the mta has made cost cuts, but prices continue to rise. as required by the federal law, the city of san francisco must pay for all overruns on this project. i ask the mta board what are your latest project costs? and how can we continue this new project when our present and regular equipment are continually breaking down, as was mentioned yesterday when 250,000 people were put out of work because of faulty equipment that had not been kept up. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> richard hanlon followed by

james bosworth and craig funero. >> good afternoon. good afternoon, directors. my name is richard hanlon. the extraction pit is done at the pagoda and ultimately at some point a station is put there, it would make me very happy. >> thank you. okay. next speaker, please. >> james bosworth, craig fonaro, lance carnes. >> good afternoon. hello, my name is james bosworth and i am here in support of the chinatown and north beach business communities in their opposition to the central subway. ever since the construction of this project, this organization known as the mta has been using lies, trickery and deception to economically terrorize the chinatown and north beach business communities by limiting consumer accessibility, by using the

construction blockade the mta has been committing larceny against these business communities and will curtail them from enjoying the economic boom from the america's cup. as we all know, this public hearing is a formality. the decision to approve this project has already been made prior to this hearing. it is a huge waste of money because you could have just run rails up concern i street instead. the polls are still there where the 16th streetcar were. for what? so you can be reliable for the deaths in an earthquake in a project that uses flawed engineering [speaker not understood]? how can you sleep when you know you pushed the mayor's agenda in chinatown and north beach just as was done in the bayview and hunters point with the t-third? since the mta has decided to approve this project, it is time for the citizens of san

francisco to abolish this board by putting in an initiative on the ballot to repeal property e. the mta has lacked integrity by making a nonintelligent decision to build a not needed subway while the rest of the system shrinks. >> next speaker, please. >> craig fonaro, lance carnes, steve taylor. >> good afternoon, mr. fonaro. hi, thanks for giving me time to speak. can you hear me? first of all, i want to say that these new options that you have come up with are fabulous if, in fact, they're going to happen. but based on this report that i'm reading, i don't think that they ever will. i don't think february 1st, 2013 is near enough time to take on these new options. and i think that it's funny

that february 1st, 2013, is probably two days before you're going to start digging the trench on columbus avenue. also it seems like to me, based on our future or our past business together, that this is an item to a bees us when the real serious matter is paragraph 3, which says, if we can't do options 3 or 4, we're going to do what we had originally intended. i think that's all i had to say. >> thank you, sir. next speaker, please. >> lance carnes, steve taylor, lorenzo petroni. >> mr. carnes. good afternoon, mr. carnes. yes, nice of you to hear us today, board members. i'd like to underline again

about the community input and the communication to the neighborhood. i've gone to maybe five or six meetings over the last several years and i was told what was going to happen, but there was no input. and i feel like the first input opportunity that we had was after two community organizations wrote kind of stern letters and we scheduled a meeting for november 19th. and a lot of people showed up, i think it was 90 people i believe, and we were presented five options on a piece of paper like this. we reviewed them and we all voted towards the end of the meeting. and the overwhelming, almost unanimous choice was number 2. shortly after that, we received invitations to this hearing from john funge and ed reiskin. and instead of what we expected, we were offered

options 3 and 4. and no mention of option 2 and why it was omitted, even though it was a unanimous choice. so, it seems like we still don't have sfmta's ear for community input. and i'd like to encourage the organization to spend more time and concerns. i think you're going to get a good start today. but the things you have on your agenda you're going to be voting on options 3 or 4 or possibly falling back to option 1. and i think 3 or 4 would probably be reasonable. i just wanted to say if these fall through and you decide to revert back to option 1, i think you'll have a lot of opposition in north beach again [inaudible]. >> thank you, sir. and just as a last comment,

please do stop, reinitiate communication with the neighbor. >> thank you. [speaker not understood]. >> stephen taylor, [speaker not understood]. good evening. my name is stephen tabor. central task force, i'm also the transportation chair for russian hill neighbors. you'll be hearing from russian hill neighbor president so i will confine my remarks to spur. spur has supported this project vigorously since its inception. we have supported the four corridors plan which is based on this project, encompasses two of the four corridors. our major criticism against this project that we have had for some time is it doesn't go far enough. it needs to be extended so that it encompasses the entire north beach corridor. and our principal aim is to make sure that whatever happens does not preclude the extension. we are working very closely

with mta and others to begin the study for the extension. we strongly support option number 4, which by the way, contrary to what the previous speaker said, was overwhelmingly supported at the meeting, citizens meeting on the 19th. only a small number of people supported option 2. most of the people there also supported -- people there also voted that they wanted a north beach station, which is something that we very much support. option number 4 gives us the best of all possible worlds. it eliminates on-street disruption while at the same time providing a staging ground not only to take out this [speaker not understood], but another tunnel boring machine for fisherman's wharf and also for the construction of the station. so, we very strongly support option number 4. >> thank you, sir. next speaker, please.

>> lorenzo petroni, claudine chang and [speaker not understood]. hello, i lived in north beach for 55 years. north beach is going through very challenging situation right now. there are people hanging on their businesslike this. i'm not against the project, but what i'm against is [speaker not understood] in north beach. we don't need to do the extraction in north beach. let's leave like they do in new york the machine on the ground, and then you reuse it later on. you don't have to do anything. you do that, everything will be cool. [laughter] do you understand what i mean? north beach, lot of the little business in north beach are going to go broke. i'm not going to go broke. i've been there for 42 years. the business already, they're feeling already. you go at 2 o'clock in the morning you have roaches this long on the sidewalks and they go inside the businesses. you've got to think about it. i know it's a big project. i know a lot of people are

involved. big money involved. you cannot look back. you leave the machine there and everybody will be happy. and then you -- next 10 years from now, god bless, you can go to saucelido. [laughter] you understand that? leave the machines in the ground like they do in new york. don't come with the machines so long, this, we cannot do this. you are doing a project for $1,700,000. machine is only $11 million. that is reusable. in new york they use the machine there for 18 years. i have nothing else to say. but we are all adults. we all understand. you start a project like this and you do half, [speaker not understood]. [laughter] >> okay, thank you.

next speaker. (applause) >> claudine chang, [speaker not understood] smith, eric scott. >> good afternoon, ms. chang. good afternoon. claudine chang, [speaker not understood] i'm speaking. i'm someone very concerned about what is happening in north beach today. in january in support of the north beach station and a solution that would provide the kind of transit efficiency for the city, and i'm also in support of having no extractions in north beach. speaking directly to the proposed resolution today, the three appreciatevxeses, preference number 1 is to evaluate option 4 which is a favorite option so far from what i have heard. however, the way that the resolution was written, much has to depend on whether additional environmental review is necessary. and as of today from mr. funge's report or update, it appears that it may be, it may

be not. [speaker not understood]. let's put it that way. preference number 2 is option 3, which again, i think has the same environmental review issue that comes to this. the last we saw -- i have the most objections to [speaker not understood] rifkin ha termed the last report ultimate [speaker not understood], that is really an issue. because i think in the community meeting that we have, that is two options that everybody opposed or overwhelmingly opposed. i think, of course, this is the ultimate default and i -- hopefully that won't happen. lastly, i'd like to request for consideration of this artificial deadline of february 4th. i understand time and cost and a lot of things involved in making this very important decision. but the community dialogue, the community planning process has just started. i know the project has been kind of going on for 20-year,

but the north beach process started half a year. we barely started and i'm getting into it. i think we have a deadline of february 1st to make this kind of decisions. i think i'm very troubled by it. i'd like to request that the resolution be amended to reflect a date that gives more time for the community to be involved. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> [speaker not understood] smith, eric scott, julie christian son. >> good afternoon, mr. [speaker not understood]. nice to see you. mr. chairman, director rifkin, thank you, and members. thank you for the seeking additional opinion and reach a resident opinion. my name is rod [speaker not understood]. i'm not here as a past president of the hill dwellers. i divert from the hill dweller's review on this one. no nor have the project members -- steve has eloquently given you purchase's position. nor as a past commissioner.

you're a member of civic design for many years. i am currently a board member at renew sf and that opinion will be given by others. i'm here to support completion of the t-line from bayview to fisherman's wharf. as you say, that's not on your agenda today. that's really what this is all about. we have been working on that since the late 1960s. we have station designs from late 1967 offering the merchants of north beach rapid transit, grade separated service underground. four years ago we cautioned the central subway's engineers to avoid line and station construction that would obviously arouse strong community opposition. i think we put our supervisor david chiu in a very difficult position here. you and we, the residents. specifically we requested but were ignored that the line

should terminate beyond washington square. now is the time for you to offer our merchants the low city treasurerance engineering termination of option 4 that will let us residents, russian hill, telegraph hill, golden gateway, chinatown, commute to work in a modern city's rapid transit vehicle. thank you. * >> next speaker, please. >> eric scott followed by julie christian son, and then joan wood. >> good afternoon. this is not a project that's intended to benefit a single neighborhood. this is a project that's intended to benefit all san franciscans. when it was originally proposed to the public, the timelines and the cost estimates were based upon completion this year with revenue service starting no later than next year. there are very few projects