to ensure that they retain custody of their children. what you may not know is that often abusers use the civil legal system as another way to continue the abuse of a women who has already obtained a restraining order against them, but they file meritless civil action and the survivor those show up in court. thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon a anna flores the co-director of muhas.

so we wanted to touch a little bit on the decline or the decrease of calls to the police to domestic violence because a lot of it due to the political climate that is happening. we know when a woman is afraid to call the police, it increases the level of violence in the home and a lot of this is due because of the policy of secure communities where women are afraid to call the police, but luckily we have been able

to work directly with the d.a.'s office and have a legal advocate present at our office, once a week, which has really helped to connect the women with legal services. and finally we would like to thank the other organizations that we work with that help us provide legal services directly to the women that we work with. thank you. >> thank you, before i call the next speaker i have a few other cards, if you want to line up. [ reading speakers' names ] next speaker, in any order, please feel free to come up.

>> hi, good afternoon, my name is especially espiranza i am here to talk about the situation that i went throe eight years ago, but mostly to explain to you how much this group has helped me. they have given me references, referrals, therapy, helped me get restrictiveorder and just to come out ahead in germ. they are like my second home

and have help meda lot. because of specialized services that they offer to spanish-speaking population a lot of us can find help there. thanks to all the help i have received, i was able to get out of my violent relationship. 98% of the woman who receive domestic violence services are satisfied with the services

that they received. thank you very much and it's very important that the committee continues to support organizations like ours and our partners. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please? >> good afternoon, my name is reese isabell the immediate past cohair -chair of the alice b. toklas. i want to note that the alice b toklas supports addressing the concerns within the straight community and same-sex community here in san francisco.

[speaker not understood] we give district attorney george gascon our elected official award of the year. i want to say that i appreciate the work that they are doing in the community and appreciate board president chiu's work with these efforts in opposing domestic violence and working on services. >> thank >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> hi, my name is maria hernandez.

today i first they helped me stabilize my emotional state and after that, once i was more comfortable emotional, they taught me of the other resources and references and referrals to access in the community. they accompanied me to get

those services. and they helped me -- they helped orient me as to the legal services available and told me where to go and who to speak to and what my process was going to be like and they helped me through this process.

it's very important that we feel comfortable talking to someone in spanish and having resources available to us. we have a sexual assault crisis line and we see the importance of having someone there listening to you in spanish and helping you through the complicated processes. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> no, it can't be that one with the swing in his budget arms. valerie, count on your

attorney, valerie, good luck with salary. valerie, count on the city and a good budget, valerie, count on your attorney, valerie, good luck with your salary. valerie, count on the city and give it to this one, please. some budgets may be larger and some budgets may be small. and remember this one, go ask alice, i think she will know, when budget and proportions are getting small and we're going to fix it up now and you are going to make it all -- go ask alice and we're going to win

. i have been done since you will be gone, and i hope don't know what went wrong. say it isn't true and don't it make your budget brown eyes -- and don't it make your budget brown eyes, don't it make your budget brown eyes blue, bring it back to you, please. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> anne lehman, director of policy at the department of status of women. i am less than halftime position and i having there for almost 20 years. i am here to tell you that you get a lot of bang for your buck when you have staff at department. we are a very small staff, but

we're a very creative group that has gotten recognition for our novel programs around domestic violence and other areas, not just locally or nationally, but internationally. this year in particular, we're going to new york to share with the u.n. commission on the status of women some of our work that we have done around domestic violence, so that women from around the world. we have received rewards nationally, internationally and on the association of counties on a number of occasions. susan had to leave, but you

have this in your packets about the one billion women on v-day, valentine's day, 4-6 right here at city hall. it basically represents the figures of 1-3 women having been raped, coerced into sex or abused in their lifetime. i know supervisor avalos likes to know where the stats come from. it was from a unifamreport called "not a minute more." and it has been cited throughout the world. thank you. >> thank you very much. are there any other memberswish to comment on items no. 4 and 5? seeing none, public comment is closed. [ gavel ] supervisor avalos? >> >> thank you, chair. i always fertilize to turn the microphone on the thank you, chair farrell and appreciate the district attorney and

public defender and budget analyst and all the work in our office and i know we're operating with scarce resources and we have huge demand on our efforts and skill and i want to acknowledge that moving forward. i want to thank a lot of advocates and people working day in and day out to fight against domestic violence. working with victims and their families, that work is often not recognized as it should be in the city and the contributions that you are making are great and save lives. thank you for your presence today. i have long been someone who has been try saying that the city needs to be do more to support domestic violence victims and make sure that i will support aspects of this today because of my longstanding belief that we need to do more and to

acknowledge with resources, the work that is being done here. i'm not sure it should be this kind of resources and mid-year. perhaps we can make a larger am cation based on what we might approve today. so i will be supporting something and i will let me colleagues make those. i would support the budget analyst's recommendations. i do need to acknowledge the el elephant in the room, has been in the room past year. the elephant is somewhat smaller, but domestic violence incidents with the sheriff has skewed some of the politics in

san francisco and that with all need to make a commitment to domestic violence in the city and i'm willing do that today moving forward. the city those help itself heal and build relationships and a lot of people working together on domestic violence and we want to make sure that we move forward to help the city heal and put adequate resources in place. i just needed to acknowledge that i always feel the presence of the elephant this past year and a half. >> thank you, supervisor avalos, president chiu. >> thank you, colleagues and first of all, i want to thank the colleagues to their consideration of the item and thank the budget analysts and d.a.'s office and the public defend defenders office and the mayor's office and the communitiworking in the

trenches to protect victims of domestic violence. supervisor avalos would prefer we move forward with the recommendations. i will state that the budget appropriation that i proposed was very carefully crafted and, in fact, i took some lessons from the discussion we had about the school's appropriations and the $3 million figure that was set for that. and wanted to be respectful of the numbers that we're talking about and the fact that we have to be fiscally prudent with how we make investments, but i do think that we don't have time to wait. it is important for us to move forward in ensuring that we're taking care of our victims, we're taking care of our witnesss and moving them forward. what i would like to suggest is that perhaps we consider a number and appropriation between where the budget analyst had proposed and

what i had initially proposed just to recap. the recommendation that i had made that we had co-sponsors was for four attorneys. the budget analyst proposed two and hopefully alleviate a 20% reduction in services. because the numbers that we alluded to were greater than that. as he look at table 3 we're talking about significant increases, 73% increases in caseloads in recent years, 58% caseload increases, i do think four attorneys is appropriate, but perhaps there is a middle ground of 3. probably wouldn't be able to drom to a middle ground on the di or investigatives, but i think it's important for us to

have these victim witness positions. we need to have individuals that are working closely with our victims who come in through the office, going through the criminal justice system and going through the criminal justice trial process is a scary one and i think it's important that we have cultural competent staff to assist with that and so i would propose colleagues and hope that you might be able to support some if not all of the victim witness staff that were proposed. so i'm not a member of this committee, but i want to suggest thats a possible avenue for the committee to consider. >> thank you president chiu. supervisor mar. >> thank you, chair farrell. thank you for speaking. i am a proud co-sponsor of this measure and appreciate president chiu and the groups here, district attorney gascon and the counterinformation provided by our public

defender, jeff adachi. i am also supportive of,, as much as we can give to our status on women and the communities i'm supportee of the $50,000 for outreach and legal support for the community-based organizations and the commission on the status of women's staffer and i'm glad that they have expressed how much-needed that position is. for the district attorney's office, i support the family violence and support services part of the budget and after hearing more from the budget analyst's suggestions of the limited tenure positions and other ways to make this strong, but accountable supplemental as supervisor avalos said. i'm supportive of supervisor chiu's recommendations to reduce the attorney criminal civil position from 4 to 3 and reducing the district attorney

investigator request from 3 to 2. i think that is a good balance from what supervisor avalos has mentioned and what our president has said. and it still provides significant support for our district attorney's office, especially in family violence and support services, but especially to the community-based organizations and our commission on the status of women. and their over 13 years' of great work since the tragic death of clare joyce tempongko. so i am hoping that we're supportive of this compromise as we move forward to support your communities and reduce domestic violence. i also just wanted to say thank you for reminding us for v-day for february 14th and i'm hoping that all of our communities participate. >> thank you, supervisor mar and i likewise, just to add a few comments, i want to thank everyone who came here today to district attorney gascon, miss duberry and to the public defender's office and the budget analyst's office, i know

there was a ton of work put in this and most importantly to members of community who came out. i think it's incredibly important to show your support and you guys did come out. i am happy to entertain those amendments, we can talk about it in a second exactly what those amendments might be. i wanted to state, i am a co-sponsor of this legislation. i would be supportive of the legislation as-is. i think as supervisor avalos mentioned, not only has there been an elephant in the room for a while, but i think after what happened last year, i think it's so important from a policy perspective, that we make a statement here in city hall, here at the board of supervisors, that we are supportive 100% of our domestic violence community. and we want to do everything that we can to make sure that any perceived pitfalls that came out of last year are

overcome. i am fully supportive of this, but understand there is amendments. if that is a discussion for the full board, i would support that, but i am supportive of whatever amendments might want to come through today. with that, supervisor mar, do you want to make the amendments very clear to the city attorney's office? >> let me ask mr. rose, and miss newman, if you could understand what i am saying? i'm supportive of the budget analyst's recommendations, but i want to make sure that the family violence and support services are adequate, but to reduce the civil-criminal attorney and district attorney investigator positions from 4 for the tomorrow and investigator from 3 to 2. is there a way you could frame your recommendations, adjusting to those attorney and district

attorney investigator positions? >> supervisor mar, as i understand the recommendation is for the approval of three attorney positions. which would be in the current fiscal year to 85550 district attorney investigator position, which is .66 in the current year 3 investigator positions, .99 fte in the current year. and one 8131 investigator assistant, .33 in the current year. and i want to clarify, you want these as limited terms for two years? >> yes. >>

>> in the original appropriation. >> great. >> supervisor avalos? >> just so i'm clear, i'm work on page 21 of the budget analyst's report, 8177s are gooing from 4 to 3. >> please standby for change of captioner )