francisco in honor of the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. please, dr. jones step forward. >> [applause] >> dr. jones, on behalf of the city please accept this award of recognition for all your words that live on today and will love on forever with us. >> [applause] >> [music]

>> >> please call the role. >> commissioner afoul? >> here. >> commissioner low? >> here. >> commissioner errata? >> here. >> commissioner [speaker not understood]? >> [speaker not understood]? >> here. >> commissioner mc donald? >> here. >> commissioner levitt son has an excused absence. real quick, as a reminder if you have any electronic sounding devices, please turn those off so they do not go off during the meet ing. we would also ask that you please take any secondary conversations outside in order to have the meeting proceed as efficiently as possible.

if you would like to speak on an item today, we have some blue cards over on the table. if you could please fill those out. and then if you would like to speak on general public comment, which would be an item not on the agenda but that falls within the jurisdiction of this commission, public comment is on item 4 and it is continued on item 13. and last, please address your comments to the commission during public comment on all items. in order to allow equal time for all, neither the commission nor staff will respond to any questions during public comment. the commission may ask questions of staff after public comment is closed. and unless i'm otherwise stated by the president, each person will have three minutes. so, three minutes on each item. with that, we are on item number 2, the president's

report. >> thank you. i'll be brief. >> i apologize. one item that i did forget to mention is that we will be hearing items 9 and 10 as one. they will be voted on separately, but they will be heard as one. thank you. >> thank you. and let me announce that item number 8, which is the southpark 345 brannan street shadow [inaudible] -- >> okay. >> shadows tend to do that. will be put over to the next meeting. i understand at the request of supervisor kim. briefly, i went to the cabrillo playground opening on august 3rd and i want to congratulate the staff involved in that. there were two things that i saw that i think are worth noting. one is the donor recognition program there is very artistic,

clever, discrete, and suitable to the site. and the second was that -- and i found out something i didn't know, that the dalia is the city flower and the friends of cabrillo street a dalia garden there. it's worth looking at. it's very nice. but it shows this effort of each friend group for each park being able to plan and model play grounds and parks according to the neighborhood and according to their wishes. and the thought occurred to me and i passed this on to the general manager that we ought to take the opportunity to capture these individual achievements in different parks and duboce park comes to mind and the effort that was done between groups to work out dog areas on leach, dog areas on leash, the playground, et cetera. ~ leash i've asked the general manager

into looking making 5-minute videos with those people who achieve those kinds of successes in each of those areas and then put them online on our site so that we can tell people who come to us and want to redo their playground or their park or want to take advantage of unique opportunities to go to the satiety and be able to see success stories in other parts of the city. ~ go to the site secondly, i came back last night from two days in camp mather. i hadn't been there in 25 years. i had a great opportunity to meet with the staff and the operations there. and i was quite struck by how well things are going up there. and i took the opportunity because i was -- i looked like a regular old camper to talk to. a lot of the folks that were there -- well, i had my granddaughter with me so i looked pretty authentic. but everybody was giving a lot

of kudos to -- this year to the place, the horse program apparently is substantially improved. the tennis courts look great. commissioner, thank you for initiating that and much appreciated. our own general manager instituted -- there used to be some long lines as they served in the cafeteria and he instituted a two-line system with a second serving line and now people don't wait in line. so, our general manager in abstein shad gets a gold star for that. ~ now, finally, i want to say that it is my pleasure to introduce a new commissioner, eric mcdonald, who is the executive vice president and chief operation officer for united way bay area. and before i ask the commissioner if he'd like to say a few words, i want to tell you that tomorrow he's getting married. (applause)

>> with that, welcome, commissioner. >> thank you. thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here and i'm thrilled by the opportunity to join commissioners and the opportunity to support this great work. i, too, two weeks ago had the opportunity to spend a week at mather and it really was phenomenal. they're doing some amazing work. just a quick side note. while the two lines are successful in moving folks through, there are some folks who are concerned, now there isn't socializing time. when there was a long line, you could take your chance to catch up. now they're moving through. it was all very, very good. and, so, back to the script. thrilled to be here and thrilled to have the opportunity, again, to bring both my knowledge and expertise, interests, and passion for our city and in particular our parks and i'm excited about the opportunity to join the commission. so, thank you very much for the

welcome and look forward to our work together. >> we look forward to working with you. thank you. and lastly, i know that commissioner low went to the ping-pong festival press event. i thought if you wanted to make a comment about that. >> all you ping-pong players, come out on sunday to chinatown at portsmouth square. you can meet harrison barnes. even if you cadthv take the ball to the rack, maybe you can beat him in ping to betionv. i encourage all of you to attend the ping-pong event. it's a great event, hosted every year. rec and park is one of the hosts and it's wonderful that it's bringing people together. >> thank you. with that, that concludes my report. >> is there any public comment under the president's report? seeing none, public comment is closed. we are now on item 3 which is the general manager's report. >> good morning, commissioners. denny kern, director of operations. i'm sitting in for phil today.

he is at camp mather finishing his week up there. it's one of his most favorite places of all the great places we have in the park system. so, he's enjoying his time up there, although it's usually a work-cation not a vacation when he's up at camp. good to hear all your good experience up there, commissioner buel, and also commissioner mcdonald. so, getting to the report, it's hard to believe that summer is actually almost over, but we've had a very exciting month here in august. i'm happy to update you on how our parks are doing as we close up our very busy summer season. having mentioned camp mather, sadly the end of summer comes with the end of camp mather and other rec and park. we are quickly moving into the fall season with registration for all of our fall activities and programs. perhaps the crown jewel in august of all the jewels in the park system is outside lamps and this is the sixth annual

outside lamp festival we had in golden gate parkful kicked off last weekend offering another weekend at music park and the best culinary offerings in the city. this city's festival featured the longest of marquee performers including sir paul mccartney, red hot chile peppers, [speaker not understood], 9 inch nails, and today we have greg, ceo of another plan entertainment and sherri waser man of plan entertainment here to tell us about another successful partnership we've had with outside lams. so, both greg and sherri. >> thank you so much. this is one of the more pleasant tasks i have. forgive me for reading some of this, but if you had told me six years ago that we'd be getting more press from our food and wine at the outside lambs and the music, i would never believe it.

but if you get a chance to go on the internet, there's a staggering amount of culinary articles in the paper today where they're asking people to write in and say what their favorite restaurants were. [speaker not understood] lambs has become in addition to this wonderful music festival really the number one food, wine, beer, art festival of all the festivals in the country. this year over $80 million was brought into the local economy and we're really pleased that we got a clean report from police chief suhr on the activity on the different incident report. and as you know, in addition to the money that the park district makes, you have full cost recovery for city services with outside lambs.

so, over 200,000 people came to outside lambs. noise complaints were down for the second year in a row. we for the first time u-stream had a webcast which was a live feed all over the united states in the world showing off golden gate park and the performers. and it was really quite exciting, including sir paul mccartney, who said, i want to make sure my performance is good enough. so, his was the one feed on paul mccartney was done sunday night as the last act of the festival, and he approved, a tremendous amount of material. 72 san francisco restaurants were involved in the festival. 36 northern california wineries and 16 northern california breweries including four from san francisco proper were

involved. this was our sixth year. and to remind you, the first year of the festival, park and rec brought in $8 25,000. this year, the total permit fee paid to san francisco rec and park, and even phil will be surprised, is $2,225,7 96.94. this includes 89,$250 for the gardner endowment that we added last year ~. and 15,000 for the polo generation fee, the polo field fee to make sure the fields are in mint condition. so, after six years arthur lambs has brought in $8.2 million to san francisco rec and park. and another thing that was new this year is we did a benefit

for rec and park this past sunday ~ at the independent night club, which is our club. and we raised an additional $20,000 approximately for rec and park. ~ outdoor lambs >> bravo. >> on a humorous note, one other thing. this is the first time -- this is a true story -- that sherri was driving on the outside of the park. and for the first time there were neighbors all over the place asking us to turn up the sound when [speaker not understood] -- [laughter] >> it was a wonderful moment. i assure you, the age of the people that live around the park. >> great, thank you very much. congratulations. >> thank you for letting us put the show on. >> you bet. >> thank you, greg. continuing with general manager's report, in other events, this coming saturday cai ewing a park, a 2008 park

bond project will be reopening this weekend on august 17th. one of the most interesting features of this particular outer mission gem is the story of this retired and long-time gardner [speaker not understood] who transformed cayuga's naturalistic surroundings into works of art. [speaker not understood]. hundreds of his pieces have been restored by the arts commission and are on display throughout the park. he will be present at the ribbon cutting ceremony and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque. in addition, the park includes several green elements such as a living roof, a buyer retention pond filled with capture stormwater, and rec and park staff will help celebrate the reopening by showcasing each of our rec competencies and their upcoming fall programs after the ceremony. moving from cayuga over to mclaren, make sure to mark your indicatedxv for an exciting upcoming event in mclaren park

called saturday in the park, saturdays in the park. ~ calendars i'm going to [speaker not understood] for may wong who has posters about this. friends of jerry garcia amphitheaters producing six free shows at the jerry garcia amphitheater this fall. first show is saturday unction august 17. great group of volunteers is working hard to bring the shows to the park this season. thank you, may. lastly, coming up on august 21st at the random museum, our general manager phil ginsberg will be chuck of the san francisco chronicle to discuss how rec and park is using innovations and partnerships to ensure access to open space as well as how groundbreaking youth education programs are training the next generation of environmental stewards. this interview will be included in the commonwealth club of california's nature 2.0 series. that concludes my portion of

the general manager's report. i didn't see if linda is out there if there is a prozac report this time or not. >> [speaker not understood]. >> okay. so, we'll dispense with the prozac report and with that and turn it over to our videographer jamie hopper who will show you yet another month in rec and park. >> [speaker not understood]. powerpoint. powerpoint. ♪ >> it's been a labor of love and we're proud to be providing this gift to the city [speaker not understood] organizations and individuals.

and to the city of -- or to the children of san francisco. and i'm very proud that our neighborhood finally has a playground to call its own. >> today is play day. it is the highlight of our summer season. as you can tell it's 90 degrees and balmy here. kids have a great time. [speaker not understood], just enjoying each other and rides and games, supporting activities. >> so thrilled that this is finally reopening, the final piece of the new and revamped commission playground. i tell my colleagues on the board of supervisors they have to come to mission playground. it is just spectacular. every aspect of it is so great, and this is just the touch stone. >> we love making [speaker not understood]. >> we need to treat it with respect. [speaker not understood]. we need to keep it clean and we need to keep it fun it. that's what we're here to

celebrate tonight. ♪ ♪ >> and with that, that concludes the general manager's report. thank you. >> thank you.

>> do we have public comment on this item? please come forward. council, we're going to speak on 4 also? >> [speaker not understood]. >> thank you. [speaker not understood]. go ahead. kathrin howard, golden gate prer vation alliance. and we have the screen, please. thank you. today i'm going to talk about the outside lands festival. as you know every year we walk

the park and we give a review and our interest is in preservation of the park and trees in the park. next screen, please. trees need the roots. trees cannot survive without roots. they breathe through their roots and absorb nutrition through their roots. they cannot thrive if their roots are continually damaged and they cannot thrive in compacted soil. what compacts soil? heavy equipment, constant pressure. next, please. this is a drawing from the arbor day foundation and just very quickly tree roots, people think they go down, but they actually go out. top 18 inches of soil. two to three times the roots of the height of the tree. so, when you go out and see a large tree, their roots fall through that area. next, please. trees and trunks are not a good mix. ~ trucks an entire grove of trees is used for a parking lot of trucks. the same location we talked about last year. there is a lot of paving in golden gate park. let's see if we can get the

trucks off the tree roots and onto the paving. next, please. trucks should not drive under tree canopies. we have trucks driving right by them. there is a street right next to it. let's keep the trucks in the street. next, please. you see this tree here, is this tree important? is it worth protecting? next, please. i think it is. remember, it takes 60 years to grow a 60 year old tree. next, please. fencing, fencing protects vegetation during the concerts. this is good and this is one of the things that outside lands excels at. however, fencing also locks people out of their park for two weeks and degrades the park experience. this is not good. next, please. i want you to be able to see the top is the mass of the festival and the fence around it. but the map shows only the fencing around the interior

part. the lower map shows the interior blue is the festival fencing for the concert itself, but the red is also completely fenced off. and the yellow area is an area that we were told we were not allow today go into. a few of us went down there and we walked around and we couldn't get in there. i'm going to go through the next few slides really quickly. next. and next. and next. and just so you see i'm almost out of time. i want to let you know the good comments are at the end. if you give me a couple of seconds at the end i can give you some good stuff, too. take over ocean beach parking lot, they could have parked on sunset. crowds got off on judah and went down the southern end of the park and degraded it. >> keep going. i want to get to the good part. the good news, okay. next, please. that's ocean beach. that's the degradation. next, please. the good news is i could not find a single bike tied to a

tree. so, i want to congratulate the festival because this is a problem. when trees have bikes tied to them they get the bark damage especially when they're young. then that is going to impact the life of the tree. and the next, please. there was a volunteer group, i believe it was called good vibes, i'm not sure, that did clean up. huh? clean bikeses. they were there after the festival and they were doing stoop labor, picking up every single bottle cap, every single thing they could find. and i think this kind of clean up is very good and admirable and it's something that we need. so, the last slide is just some suggestions. put up the outer fences closer to the concert date. take them down more quickly, please. make root protection a priority. use sunset boulevard for truck parking, protect plants at the southern end of the park and keep up the good work with the fencing that protects vegetation, the bike parking and [speaker not understood] clean up. >> very helpful. thank you very much.

>> sandra? thank you. sandra decker with the san francisco green party. i've lived in san francisco about a year and i was amazed at the blue grass festival when i saw the huge number of people and the damage that was happening in the park. and then i met cathy howard. and, so, i walked the outer lands with her. and i want to mention just two specific things. one, there weren't enough outside the fence. there weren't enough rest rooms. they were garbage cans and i watched people take bags of garbage and take them over and put them in a pile which i thought was very nice of them of other garbage [speaker not understood]. so, it appears we needed recycle bins, big tubbs for garbage and recycle outside the fences for all the people on their way in and all of the other people using the park. and then i myself walked for miles needing a rest room. have you ever walked for miles needing a rest room? and there were no

port-a-potties and there were no rest rooms we could find on the outside of the fence. so, more port a potties and rest rooms, please. >> thank you. >> is there anyone else? may. good morning, commissioners. may wong from the excelsior representing friends of the m. first of all, i'd like to thank each and every one of you for supporting our dream to bring more programming to the amphitheater in mclaren park and let the public know we have a wonderful park with wonderful facilities and we'd love to have sir paul mccartney at our -- [laughter] so, as our first show is this saturday, if you're at the opening of cayuga and you're done there, please come up the hill. we'll feed you lunch, and then you can sit back and enjoy the entertainment. so, once again, thank you, thank you, thank you. >> thank you.

>> is there any other public comment under the general manager's report? okay, being none, public comment is closed. we are now on item 4, which is general public comment. at this time members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission but that do not appear on the agenda. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. i have one card and that is kelly watts. sfgov-tv have a video?

first of all, welcome, commissioner mcdonald, and congratulations. prior to this meeting i electronically submitted to this commission a short video clip for your consideration. it is in part presented to address the shortcomings of the reports that have been generated by the rpd and zvi fields foundation partnership as well as the 2008 synthetic fields task force. it is specifically intended to address the scarcity of -- and virtually lack of medical testimony presented by the rpd and city fields foundation

partnership in the reports. the video tip is comprised of nationally recognized public health professionals including medical doctors, pediatricians, epidemiologists, toxicologists, neurobiologists, chemical engineers, as well as others. they are shown testifying about and commenting on the various health risks associated with synthetic fields including key facts that dispute this commission's findings. the video clip along with others that have been provided to you can be found at youtube website and you simply type in sf parks synthetic turf and children. the video contains testimony and presentations from, for example, dr. thomas haar tongue of the johns hopkins school of public health. dr. joel foreman of the mt. sinai school of medicine.

dr. phil ip landrigan, dr. kathleen michaels, dr. david brown, nancy alderman, president environmental and human health, incorporated, deborah davis, epidemiologist and author of the book the secret history of the war on cancer. dr. joel foreman, dr. susan bachman, jeffery grossman, executive director of the integrated nano mechanical systems at u.c. berkeley. paul [speaker not understood], director of the material science division at the lawrence berkeley national lab. dr. andrew nelson and our local person, dr. kim [speaker not understood]. it also includes new jersey deputy health commissioner, the connecticut attorney general, as well as abel maldonado who sponsored the california synthetic trip study and today can be found to be most vociferous debunker of its findings as