~ your questions about the board? >> yes. any other question? thank you, ms. brook. now we will be hearing from the applicants in the order they appear on the agenda. i hope i pronounce this name right. errol, is it errol wishom. please approach the microphone. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is mr. errol c. wishom. i'm here for reappointment to seat number 12 on the board of mental health where i served for three years. prior to serving on the board, i grew up in a family of eight. i'm a native san franciscan. my father and mother were

married 59 years. i'm the youngest. i attended rear don high school, archbishop rear don high school. i'm a former marine and i worked at safeway 12 years where i took a retirement because of mental illness. i really enjoy my work and duty on the board. i'm very active on the board. i attend meeting every second wednesday of the month on a regular basis. i am also on the smurf committee where i'm the secretary and treasurer. i have an excellent resume and dynamite performance and i really appreciate your consideration for reappointment to seat number 12 on the board of mental health. if you have any questions, you can call me and i thank you very much for your time today. >> thank you. any questions?

seeing none, thank you very much. thank you. >> next person i have on the list is lena miller. is it okay if we speak on lena's behalf? >> yes. okay. i want to start because i was the one that said that it was okay if she didn't cancel her vacation this week, to be able to attend this. she is the only applicant for reappointment to the mental health professional seat, and we so value her presence on the board. she presented to our board on this past month the results of the trauma summit that she convened in november of 2012 and you'll be receiving copies of that report shortly where she convened members of the community, executive staff of department of public health to

really start looking at what we can really do. she has worked for years in the community and i'm going to let her co-executive director of hunters point family, which is not funded by community behavior health services, speak a little about her, too. so, i hope you'll reappoint her. hi, my name is takai tyler and i'm co-executive director of the hunters point family. lena and i have worked together for about 15 years. lena has always been very much committed to working with the most vulnerable and high-risk young people in bayview hunters point. she founded the agency. our young people that we work with are suffering from community violence, have a lot of mental health challenges around posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, addictions to substance abuse. and lena has really worked over the years to always come up with innovative solutions and strategies for working with the

young people and their families. so, i hope that you will very much hope that you will reappoint lena or allow her to continue in the mental health board. >> okay. so, i think that would be enough. i realize usually at this stage of an item, you would be speaking for her and later i'm going to ask for public comments. other people can support her nomination, okay? okay. >> thanks. next person is ellis joseph. hello, supervisors. my name is ellis joseph. i'm looking for reappointment to the mental health board. i have for the last appointment i've been on the smurf committee also.

i'm currently holding the co-chair position of the board and on smurf. i'd like to continue what i've already started here. it is a challenge and one of those challenges are getting you supervisors -- getting involved with the board. also making the board more accessible. we want the public to know what the board is, to eliminate stigma that's associated with so-called mental health. at the same time we're looking for more openness with our website. these are things we already started, it's getting good now like lena said, we haven't had a quorum. we want people that [speaker not understood] i am definitely dedicated. i have an mba in business. i'm a native san francisco -- native san franciscan and mba in taxation. i have been self-employed here

for all my life, almost 35 years here. i'm on the board of the african-american [speaker not understood] society, excuse me, ms. london very much aware of. i'm involved in my community. [speaker not understood]. i was unaware of [speaker not understood] and getting out the vote in our community. even though we are part of a nonprofit, but we can have directors of nonprofit. we can always advocate people getting out to vote. these are things we have in connection with the community at the same time making people aware of the mental health and getting them to volunteer, come out, look at it totally different. like i said, once again, i'm looking for your support and consideration, i should say, and reappointing me. >> thank you. any questions? seeing none, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next person is joy king.

>> ms. king made a last-minute decision to withdraw. >> thank you very much. next person is marlene flores. good afternoon. i'm marlene flores. i am here to show my interest to [speaker not understood] position as a family member. i wanted to let you know that i'm very interested in the position since i have myself experienced mental health problems. and i have a son who is bipolar.

so, i have unfortunately another member of my family that has another mental illness. and i've been through all the process of the issue with my family and i'm one of the -- who has been able to help them in a way that's now my son and my brother, they are living in a good environment. they have family. my son is about to graduate from college. and my major interest in this is to contribute my experience and my knowledge as to families

in the people besides the paperwork and information that i can get from the mental health board, and especially to work with the hispanic community. i speak spanish and be able to help them to not only to get the right care for the families who are mentally ill, also to help them to prevent, to get big problems, especially with bipolar disorder, that they can be very well managed if we go to the right places. the right medication and

everything that gets involved in this matter. so, my position will be to advise and to get involved with the community in san francisco with the whole community. i know most of the hispanic community are not very well informed, especially with mental illness issues. so, i would like to contribute to that as well. >> thank you. if you have any questions -- >> any questions? seeing none, thank you very much, ms. flores. >> thank you. next person is melody daniel. good afternoon. my name is melody daniel and i'm standing before the board

to ask to be appointed into either seat 14, 13, or 16. i have a son that actually just turned 22 this month and at the age of 18, after he graduated from high school, he started having episodes. and initially we did not know what was going on. he did well through grammar school, middle school, and high school ~. and at this point he had graduated from high school looking forward to going into college. and actually that following day we were headed out of town for a family reunion and we needed to call 911. he was out of his mind unfortunately, and no one had kind of seen anything initially

prior to this episode. so, he had an episode in 2010 in july and was hospitalized for about three days on the mental health ward. they got him stabilized and they released him and we thought, okay, great. when fall came, he enrolled in college and pursued his basketball career and by november he actually had another episode. and at that time he was hospitalized for about five days. after he was hospitalized for five days, they discharged him and probably about march he had one more episode the following year. we'll say at this time he had stabilized, taken his meds every day, also going and

seeing his therapist every month and they diagnosed him with psychosis. thank god i had already been kind of working in the field and was able to really direct him and encourage him to get him the assistance that he needed to be able to kind of stabilize his mental health. i have a master's degree in mst, and i am definitely interested in sitting on the mental health board just so the community can be more aware -- my community can be more aware of the mental health challenges that our young people are challenged with, with being able to be exposed to a lot of

high violence sometimes triggers the mental health. and sometimes other substance abuse. it could be even just the marijuana, according to the doctors. so, i am petitioning that i sit on the board on seat number either 13, 14, or 16 so i can help streamline the resources around the mental health into our community and also just be able to give back to the community because the community definitely was able to assist me and my son through this transition in his life. thank you. >> thank you. supervisor cohen has a question. no, she doesn't. seeing no questions, thank you very much. thank you. >> last applicant on this list is idell wilson. good afternoon, rules committee. my name is idell wilson. i am a native here in san

francisco. i am asking to be reappointed back to the mental health board. when i sat on the seat before, i was a mother, single mother with four children. and didn't quite have enough time. now i am a mother and four children are grown and beautiful san francisco citizens and gone. so, i have the time to serve. i have been currently taking some classes at city college for mental health and currently in the mental health certificate program. i've served here before. i love san francisco. it is such the resourceful, beautiful city in the world, there's no place like it. and there's no place like just being at home, being a native. i am asking to be reappointed back to the board. thank you.

>> thank you. any questions? seeing none, thank you very much. at this point i'm going to ask if there's any public comments. come on up. you have two minutes each. are you going to be repeating? no. i wanted to speak. my name is takai tyler again and i wanted to speak in support of melody daniel. i think that she would be an excellent addition to the mental health board both from her personal experience, her professional skills and expertise and just would be a great blend and make sure that there are, as she said, resources that are coming to serve the most vulnerable populations, one of which is -- are the residents of district 10. so, i just wanted to speak on her behalf and say that i think she would be an excellent addition. thank you. >> thank you. supervisor breed has -- >> oh, no. >> okay. good afternoon.

my name is sean joyce, and i also will be speaking on behalf of melody daniels. i get kind of choked up and compassionate when i speak about melody because i love her so much. she is a hard working, loyal, giving person who not only cares about her community, but people in general. and, you know, she spoke about the episode about her family member. i was there. i saw her go through that. you know, she's so strong that she, she handled it, i know it was tearing her up inside. but her having her masters in mft. and she's trained to deal with even if not only her own family, but other people in the community. and she would be an asset to the board, not a liability. she's a strong-willed person. she's also helped me get my thoughts and my mental -- you

know, in order because i'm not an easy person to deal with myself and she showed me that strong women like herself that i need in my life are here for a reason. and like i said, she would be an asset to the board and hope that she's appointed for either seat available. thank you. >> thank you. and i love the color of your jacket. [laughter] hello. my name is virginia lewis. i'm a licensed clinical social worker and i currently serve on the san francisco mental health board. i'm here today in support of marlene flores as a board member. i have known her for over 15 years. she is intelligent, perceptive, dedicated, hard working and a team player. she is also bilingual, both

english and spanish. she is the parent of a bipolar child who received and made use of public social services because of marlene's excellent parenting and continuing advocacy. her child is now a well adjusted adult working, attending college, married, and a parent. she has had extensive personal experiences with community mental health services. one responsibility of a parent board member is to provide information and insight to the board and the director regarding the delivery of community mental health services. marlene's knowledge of spanish will provide valuable insight -- will provide value in ensuring assets and understanding of the special issues in the delivery of services in the hispanic community. they currently have no one from

the hispanic community on the board. i know that if selected, marlene will prove to be an excellent edition to our board. thank you. ~ addition to our board. thank you. >> thank you. so, ms. brook, i just want -- it was mentioned, do you have anybody that's bilingual on the board at all? >> i'm sorry, do i what? >> do you have any bilingual members on the board? >> not bilingual spanish. we have chinese, vietnamese, the actual demographics are 7 women 5 men, 7 caucasians, 3 african americans, 1 vietnamese who speaks both vietnamese and french, and 1 chinese person who speaks -- forgetting which dialect, but no one who speak spanish. >> thank you for the clarification.

so, seeing no other public comment, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> colleagues, i would like to take seat 12 and 15, since there's one applicant for each one of those seats. we'll take them, if you could move the nomination of seats 12 and 15 without any objections? >> yes. >> do we have to say the name on record? go ahead. >> so, we have a motion to accept and approve errol wishom to seat number 12 and lena miller for seat number 15. i'd like to make a motion that we move this forward. >> second. >> thank you. no objection. motion to move forward. [gavel] >> so, what we have are basically four people for the three seats. any thoughts?

supervisor breed. >> thank you. my thoughts are one of the challenges that we continue to face in the african-american community is the issues around violence and the lack of supportive mental health services. it does my heart good today to see so many african-americans have a real sincere interest in serving on this particular committee because right now this is a really important time so that our children are not growing up believing that the violence that they experience or have experienced their entire life is actually normal. so, we have to address this problem and we have to address the mental health issues in our community. and, so, i'm really excited to see some amazing people, including lena miller who i know and respect and does amazing work with children in

the bayview hunters point. with that, i want to make a recommendation that we reappoint ellis joseph to seat 14, that we support melody daniel for seat 13, and idell wilson for seat 16. >> supervisor cohen, do you have any comments? >> yeah, i just wanted to speak to the fact that, again, that according to ms. brooks, that there is not a spanish speaker on this body. i think it's important to have a spanish speaker, bilingual representative. i think you said 7 caucasian, 3

african-american 1 vietnamese, 1 chinese if i'm not mistaken. what is the male female ratio on this? ~ >> [inaudible]. >> thank you. >> [inaudible]. >> all right. looks like we finally have an opportunity to increase the male representation, which is sometimes very rare. so, what i'd like to propose is supporting mr. ellis for seat number 14. >> [inaudible]. >> i see, but he's up for reappointment. so, that means that -- so, he's up for reappointment. so, to maintain the balance i think is what we're talking about, the balance of the male/female ratio. so, supporting what supervisor breed says and siegeless eeing -- seeing ellis in seat number 14, i'd like to support melanie

daniel in seat number 13 ~ and propose marlene flores for seat number 16. >> i have a follow-up question. >> supervisor breed. >> the other seats, when is the next opportunity for an appointment with some of the upcoming expiration of term? does anyone have that information? >> [inaudible]. >> which is for someone who actually lives in 2 or does it matter? can you come to the mic? i'm sorry, so the people listening at home can hear. >> the state does not have any, you know, requirement that people come from the districts and many supervisors are quite open to participants being from other districts. others are not.

they will choose only their own, so -- >> okay, thank you. >> if i want to say one more thing about the spanish speaking, one of our bigger roles is doing site visits. so, we have not been able to visit any programs for the past couple years where the clients speak only spanish because we've had no board members, with the exception virginia speaks a little bit. she would go to help out to try, but we haven't been able to do that. >> can i ask a follow-up question? so, you need a member of this committee to actually have that ability? >> part of our role in the oversight of the programs that are served by community behavioral health services is that we -- board members go visit programs and interview clients. ~ one to one. so, they go out to all sorts of programs that we fund and interview maybe 10, 15 clients and they need to be able to speak the language.

and that's why we really try to get multiple languages represented. >> so, you don't have access to translators? >> we have access to -- we could, yes. we could actually do that. but when you're doing one on one clients, what we have found over the years when we've had people to speak the actual language, they're much more comfortable talking to, you know, a member of the board who is either a client themselves or is a family member or such who actually speaks the language. and they feel they can speak more freely. that's just what we see. >> thank you. so, just for clarity, i just want to make sure that i make it clear that i stand by my decision to support marlene flores for -- i mean, i'm sorry, melanie daniels for seat 13 and idell wilson for seat 16

and i would hope that we could use alternatives if -- i mean, we'll see what happens based on supervisor yee's desire. ~ for a bilingual spanish speaking candidate. >> here's my thoughts. i would be supporting ellis joseph with the two of you, i will be supporting melanie daniels, i support the two of you. i feel it is very important to have representation. i mean, i don't believe there is even a latino on this board. so, we need that. although i would always support push for translation to happen, i know as a bilingual, sort of bilingual person that when you speak in their own native tongue, that culturally things are a little different from

actually having something translated. so, i'm supporting marlene flores for seat number 16. so, let me go for this one at a time, then. for seat number 14, there was a motion, i believe. >> yes. >> for joseph, mr. joseph. so, with no objection that motion is passed. [gavel] >> for seat number 13 there was a motion. >> yes. >> and without any objection melody daniel for seat number 13 passes. [gavel] >> for seat number 16, i believe there's a motion for two different people. i am seconding is there a motion for -- >> i made a motion for flores. >> i'm seconding marlene flores. we can have a roll call if you would like. roll call, please. >> on the motion, supervisor breed? >> no. >> breed no. supervisor cohen? >> yes.