>> item two approval of minutes for june 11, 2013 meeting. >> so moved. >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> item three public comment on executive session. no one here. item four executive session. >> so moved. >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> counsel for legal counsel negotiator. >> okay. we have a quorum here even though commissioner katz is on the floor. may i have a motion to reconvene in open session. >> so moved. >> second. >> all in favor. >> aye. >> okay. pledge of allegiance. >> i pledge allegiance to the flag to the united states of america and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> please be advised that the ringing of and use of cell phones, pages and similiar sound-producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. please be advised that the chair may order the removal from the meeting room of any persons responsible for the ringing or or use of a cell phone, pager, or other similar sound-producing electronic device. please be advised that a member of the public has up to three minute to make pertinent public comment on each agenda item unless the port commission adopts a shorter period on any item. next item items not list on the agenda. >> we have alex walker from

san francisco beautiful. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is alex walker representing san francisco beautiful an organization that existed for more than 60 years in san francisco and the cable cars under threat of being dismantled and i am here to talk about an issue in the august meeting. the proposed what is the pilot recognition program for piers for the mou between the port commission and the organizing authority. san francisco beautiful has always stood with citizens of san francisco against the commercialization of this space and keep it unique here in san francisco. for example there have been previous possibilities that the golden gate bridge working on a proud sponsor's scheme as it were and that

was promptly scuttled. in new york city there is barkley's subway station for the name of the banking organization and you have taco bell arena and coors field and enron field and while this might not be that extent we want to say putting names on this structures that are gracing our waterfronts for years to come is not the way to raise funds to make this solvent. it's like akin to a bake sale. the funds raised to plug the hole that is going on. we think there are other ways without commercial rising this and this say slippery slope and it's to register the initial thoughts and we will be back next month to more completely present our case but want to make an

initial statement in opposition of naming these buildings with naming rights. >> okay. item nine executive director's report. >> well good afternoon commissioners. thank you for joining us on such a beautiful day. it's hard to believe we're in the room. thank you to all that are here today. we have an exciting agenda following up on a start to our summer. it has really happened here at the port with a big bang and earlier today commissioner adams commented at the port we want to be a place where you can take your family out at the waterfront and we have seen that none stop since summer began. i don't know how many were around this summer but we started off with the opening of the

jefferson street and then the bart strike and the 4th of july events and the kickoff of the america's cup and louie vuitton series and everything seems to be coming together to make it an incredible summer and it was gratifying this weekend to see the waterfront filled with people. of course on the 4th of july the weather was brilliant and everybody was out to enjoy it. the waterfront looked like it did on fleet week on that particular saturday where we had the championship game and fleet week and the america's cup's world series. it was wall to wall people at the park at least through pier 14 through up to 11:00 p.m. on 4th of july itself and on both sides of the embarcadero which is a unique event. we saw in the morning families around and teenager

kids in the afternoons. our restaurants are full and in fact we're getting a lot of help from the chronicle who just this sunday in their food and wine section launched a series of profiles on port restaurants which they are doing to help us celebrate our 150th anniversary so it's very bright outside this room and we're very excited and i just want to take this opportunity to say a tremendous thank you to the port commissioners for all that you have done, the difficult decisions you made over the many years to get us to here today, the difficult decisions of course ahead of us and we're no longer talking about bringing people to the water. they have arrived. they want to be here. if you didn't see my new quote from pat coletta that said "it's not about not being at the waterfront. it's the only place to be." it's my favorite

quote and if you're living under a rock and we have been striving for this and there are many people in the room that deserve the credit for that. we are going to hear more about that from the director of city planning talk about the department of city planning and the port have been doing during the last decade to get us to where we are today and i hope to take a short moment to blast in the glory of this and commend everybody that has worked so hard. [applause] yes thank you for that. so i did want to take a minute and talk about the port's response to the bart strike. i'm not sure how many of our public knows about what our response was. we are not responsible for transportation directly, but we definitely want to support our partners of whom there are many when things like this happen, and we have worked through these issues a couple of times when there has been changes to

bart or the bay bridge and it came together fairly well. thankfully it wasn't sustained longer than three days and i hope it's not returning to us in august, but i wanted you to know in particular the maritime staff work worked with the ferry operators and passengers and deputized themselves ambassadors of the ferry and the water transit who is here today and thank you for coming. basically what we ended up doing is -- rene if you would start that first. renee is my vanna white today if you don't mind. >> [inaudible] >> all right. so here at the ferry building there are two gateses that run three primary lines. -- or four primary lines. there is gate b that runs a couple lines. that is

here on the other side of the slanted door and you know it as gate b and next to sin bads is gate e and where these lines from them and if you can see from the picture it created a challenge for us. basically the two gates are either side of the -- or one of the gate it's sorry. it's over here by sinbads with the lagoon and that was a challenge for us for people to cue so we had very long lines at all of the gates and they had to fan out into the embarcadero roadway. vanna -- renee. can you turn it for me? i'm sorry. i printed that wrong. there you go. all right. so this is one of the lines that was for gate e. as you can it stretched coming from along the ferry buildings

side, say the north side of the lagoon, if you could push it up rene a little bit, it went past pier 14. you will notice it's an extremely orderly line. people behaved very l they made themselves great coffee drinkers while waiting in line by judging by the garbage that we collected and for all of the intensity that was happening we couldn't commend the ferry riders more. if you could do one more picture for me renee and this is the line on the other side of the lagoon stretching up towards it is building behind us so you can see there is quite a bit going on, so what happened the port staff and the rest of the staff were ambassadors handing out fliers and they had the job

in the east bay side, the oakland side where the lines were longer and passed out fliers and answered information for passengers, how long they might be waiting and what might happen. it seemed like the average wait time was 20 minutes except in the height of the 5:00 o'clock hour and could be 45 minutes. occasionally people would have to wait for another ferry to arrive but mostly they got on the ferry that came so we were staffing from 345 in the afternoon to 8:00 p.m. and try to help out colleague c and passengers. as i mentioned the passengers were appreciative. we got kudos and smiles and we tried to help out and they were overwhelmed but the lesson we want the

downtown project to hurry up so we get the lagoon filled in and stage going forward and we will have a presentation on that in the early fall so we will tell you more about that and i would like to close on this topic and say thank you to the port staff and john davey who is here and erin and anita who is here plus sidney, peter daily, tom carter, the maintenance people, denise turner, a huge group effort. they prepared for it well and took it upon themselves to be out there and i appreciate all the great and -- i can't think of the word, voluntarism, for lack of a better word that they did night after night and i want to thank the ferry operating partners and the emergency water transit authority and bay

crossings and mtc for coming together to make this happen so i will pause there and let you know if you have questions. i know there is a little public comment on this particular topic. no questions? okay. do you want take public comment on this topic now or wait until i go through the whole executive director's report? >> i thought you wanted to wait until everything was done. >> okay. i have quite a few more -- >> why don't we take the public comment? no. there are two. >> [inaudible] >> madam president, commissioners, ditto what monique just said. thank you to the staff and having a fabulous facility here in san francisco to operate the ferries to and move people in and out of the

city. i am anita reynolds and director of the ferry authority in san francisco bay and there was an incredible amount of activity down here if you weren't here to see it. we carried approximately 75,000 passengers in and out of here during the bart strike which is over three times our normal amount of people. in terms of landings we typical -- on a typical day there are 30 landings. from our service it was 77 per day during the strike. people were moving both ways. our ferry service tends to be commute oriented so mostly moving people in within the day and out in the evening but during the strike we saw an incredible amount of people moving in both directions and particularly between oakland and san francisco there was a huge

demand both ways. we carried commuters, tourists. we carried families. we carried service animals wheelchairs et cetera. we carried anybody and everybody that needed to move across the bay during the strike. ferrys are important the bay area. they keep people moving and important to the economy and i think we saw what ferries can do during the bart strike. it's why my agency exists and we're excited to be here and being your partner in moving people here to san francisco. i want to thank our service operator. caroline is here to speak with you next. their staff stepped up during a busy tourist week, fourth of july week and provided unended service. we are running -- to give you a sense we are running 12 vessels all day,

10 of our end. we borrowed one from them and one from golden gate to move the need that needed to move so thank you very much and i believe we are coming to you at a future meeting and talking with you about all of the work that we're doing here with the port to look at where we can provide additional ferry services in the future, and talk about the project that we're working collectively with you to expand the berthing capacity here in san francisco. we saw during the strike the need to have more gates and more ability to move people. thank you very much. >> caroline. >> good afternoon madam president and commissioners. i just want to also thank the port fiduciary everything they did. john davey's staff did a wonderful job of lining people up. having people going to four different locations on four

routes at one gate is pretty phenomenal and we were carrying -- as nina said the number of people that went to oakland and from blood gold is the bay monarch and holds 780 people so we would load them up going to oakland and then the golden gate boat could load 400 and we would clear out the dock but then you would turn around 10 minutes later and it was filling up again, so it was pretty incredible. as i said i am caroline and the president of blood gold fleet and we're a contractor for the emergency water transportation authority and we operate, maintain and crew the vessels for the four routes they operate in the bay area and it was great to see everyone work together, our staff, the port staff as well as other staff. our administrative staff as well as our union crews and ticketing people worked

long hours and some on their days off willingly to make sure we were successful, and the emergency makes me think of more emergencies, things in the future, nina mentioned another -- other places to operate out of at the ferry building. also pier 41 has a 10,000 fuel tank and we could fuel boats. we didn't need to worry about having trucks coming in and we could keep operating and we have four slips in an emergency if the port because of a seismic event or whatever we could operate out of the port and thanks again and appreciate being here. >> thank you. so again commissioners and members of the public and everyone else thank you for all of the cooperation that went out to help support this effort and get us back

to our roots of being able to rely on the water when all else fails. that was really revolve wonderful and my thanks to nina and carolyn for coming today and the port staff. i am pleased to talk about the crab wheel at fisherman's wharf which we know as the iconic symbol of fisherman's wharf. it has been somewhat silently decaying over time, and the fisherman's wharf's comment district had the thought they would like to replace it -- rene anytime -- oh you are ahead of me -- with something more durable but keep it -- it's always been in its iconic format if you will. fisherman's wharf community benefit district has been focused on a series of improvements and beautification as we know that the jefferson

street public realm but also this great new crab wheel. the crab wheel is a little bit more environmentally friendly as well and it is now using led lighting. it's a near identical of the original crab wheel sign and it was completed by a company named arrow signs. it is constructed out of aluminum to avoid rust and durable materials and the new lighting is donated by general electric which is really terrific and we are really pleased about that, and i want to thank the community benefit district for coming forward with the projected and funded by the benefit district and the fisherman's wharf and the merchant's association and great

collaborative work and get set up in time for the holiday and kudos to those groups. equally as exciting are the roads along the waterfront and they're a function of the america's cup permit and they're cool. they went up july 1. they were designed in partnership with the explor torium and the design group and steve and blain from the design group are here with us. thank you gentlemen for coming and kudos to you. these are amazing. i won't do them justice in explaining them so rene put up a picture of the first one and got over exposed here unfortunately, and you may have noticed it near pier 24

and a half and near the fire boat in that alcove and it was designed in part because it's a place people like to hang out, take pictures and watch the vessels and the bay bridge lights and other things so our great designer s designed it to accommodate these uses -- where did my notes went -- i said that part and encourage people to be in them, and there is a second one between pier nine and 15 where the exploratorium is and cement coloring and over exposed here but it's a blue color. it has great features where people can move their seats around and play with it. we of course have seen skate borders on it already and also lots of families

what is shown here, and what is interesting about it that you know if you visited the area, they're interested how people come together in a public social setting and this plays to that and you have people that don't know each other to hang out at the parklet. maybe they're waiting for friends or looking for something to do on the waterfront and interacting with each other. i hope you can tell from the picture it's about 6500 square feet. it's quite a bigger than pier 24 and the half one which is a tenth of that size and so far they have been incredibly popular. our permit with them runs through the end of the summer through september 2013 but diane scprts are in conversation with them about leaving them up longer. they weren't designed with materials to stay up in

perpetuity but we are hoping they can stay up longer if there is public demand for that so we will keep you posted on that and again my thanks to steve and blain and diane and many others for their great work on this and i am happy to report we're in compliance with the bcdc permit which makes me very happy. next is a quick one. we're are cutting the ribbon on the brannan street wharf at 10:30 a.m. next week and i hope you can join us. you will hear about the presentation later and renee has presentation on the ribbon cutting ceremony and more to follow on that. next we have a accommodation for one of

our long time employees linda battaglia has decided to retire. linda joined the port as a executive secretary and been with the part since 1993 and as a typist in the juvenile probation department so two unique departments to work with and happily has spent the bulk of here time with the port of san francisco. i am sure you have seen linda many times. she has a great ability of welcoming people into the facility. she has helped with events over the years and we wouldn't be able to get along without her so that should be interesting and she recently has been stationed down at the

harbor and helping out there and popular with them possibly some of the neighbors -- nod your head -- so linda it's wonderful to work you. you always volunteer to staff the desk or the steps for the gala or anything like that. you have been a terrific ambassador for the port. people love talking about you. they're going to be asking for you and please leave a forwarding address for your many admirers and port friends and hope to see you back here often and i believe president woo ho -- >> yes on behalf of the port and the commission we would like to give you this commendation. [applause]

commissioner i think there were a few people that wanted to say a few words for linda if you don't mind. >> elaine fords deputy director of finance and administration. i had the extreme privilege to work with linda since i arrived at the port and served as my executive secretary and executive director moyer has expressed that linda has a incredibly contagious warm personality and makes friends and can work with absolutely anyone. she never ever said no to an assignment. everything i can think of linda was always

enthowziatic to do which is why when south beach harbor came our way and we knew there were fee increases and wait list and insurance changes we asked linda if she was willing to go there and like every other assignment she jumped in and handed it exception althoughly. she's a kind person and makes everyone welcome at the port and makes it a fun place to work and i will very much miss her later and -- we had a young woman with a piewt and upset and we were looking for a room for the woman and time elapsed and i went to the front and linda taken her

under her arm and sat her down and diffused the situation and calmed the young woman down and no one asked her to step up but that's exactly the time of person she is. we will miss you very much. [applause] >> okay. >> [inaudible] >> hi commissioners, madam president, executive director i am james walter the harbor manager of south beach. i can't add enough to what these ladies said about linda although i worked with her a short time it was amazing. if there was a situation over a period of time to continually put her ability to interact on group of people and south beach