>> >> neighborhood services and

safety committee meeting will begin shortly. >> sfgtv >> >>

good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the board of supervisors neighborhood services and safety committee. my name is david campos. we are joined by norman yee and eric mar will be excused and today we have been joined by supervisor scott wiener. i want to acknowledge the clerk of the

committee, derrick evans as well as the following members of the sfgtv staff. thank you for covering this meeting. jessie larson, jenny low. >> mr. clerk, do we have any announcements? >> please make sure to silence all cell phones and speak are cards should be submitted to the clerk. items are on the board of supervisors agenda. >> before we begin i would like to entertain a motion to excuse supervisor mar. motioned by supervisor wiener. >> please call item no. 1. item 1: agenda[hearing - fiscal and operational state of san francisco pride]1308331.sponsors: campos; wienerhearing on san francisco pride's fiscal and governance shortcomings as outlined in the 2010 memorandum from the office of the controller, steps taken to resolve said shortcomings and the current state of the san francisco pride organization. 9/3/13; received and assigned to the neighborhood services and safety committee. >> please call item no. 1. item 1: agenda[hearing - fiscal and

operational state of san francisco pride]1308331.sponsors: campos; wienerhearing on san francisco pride's fiscal and governance shortcomings as outlined in the 2010 memorandum from the office of the controller, steps taken to resolve said shortcomings and the current state of the san francisco pride organization. 9/3/13; received and assigned to the neighborhood services and safety >> please call item no. 1. item 1: agenda[hearing - fiscal and operational state of san francisco pride]1308331.sponsors: campos; wienerhearing on san francisco pride's fiscal and governance shortcomings as outlined in the 2010 memorandum from the office of the controller, steps taken to resolve said shortcomings and the current state of the san francisco pride organization. 9/3/13; received and assigned to the neighborhood services and safety committee. >> 1241234 >> great. thank you very much. i would like to thank my cosponsor, supervisor wean -- wiener. thank you for that. before this i would like to make a brief statement to give my colleagues an opportunity to say something as well. san francisco lgbt pride is something that many of us in our community care about. the fact that there are so many people in this room and wafg -- watching and had so many participating. it's one of the best known pride events in the world. last years, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world attended and celebrated the event especially in light of the supreme court's ruling on same sex marriage on

the marriage act. the mission of san francisco lesbian gay bisexual transgender committee so commemorate the world, heritage and community and celebrate culture and liberate their people. the non-profit organization that has been running pride through its mission through a yearly parade as well as a 2-day event held here at the civic center plaza the last week in june. the city and the people of the san francisco are appreciative of the fact that this event means so much to our community and the city provides this organization in this event with a general support grant of about $60,000, as well as

allowing the event to use facilities like the city owns lie city hall, civic center plaza. the city among other things shuts down market streets and waves permitting fees for this organization. proceeds for this event are meant to be shared among san francisco non-profits that serve the lgbt community. non-profits that support the hiv community or provide breast cancer awareness services. as you maybe aware in 2010 at that time i was a relatively new member of the board of supervisors. supervisor ben do and i were approached by the lgbt community because of concerns that were raised because of the operation of this committee and this

organization. in response to that, we asked the city comptroller ben rowsen field to perform an assessment of pride as an organization and the idea behind this assessment was to understand what the challenges were that were facing that organization so that we as a city could have a better understanding of how to better assist that organization. that the controllers office viewed all of pride's book and information and successful for providing the opportunity in a very open way. that assessment found that as sf pride had both 70s -- fiscal and govern nanz,

a $25,000 deficit and no assets and despite hiring a fundraiser at the time their inability to meet those objectives. in terms of issues of governance, those included a board at the time that didn't fund raise nor saw the the organization and failed only 5 of it's 15 allowable positions at the time. the controller also found inconsistent methodology, out of date contracts and oral agreements with partners such as sponsors and beverage sellers. non-compliance with city non-profit monitoring standards were also found including things like not performing regular up to date

audits and using plans and balance sheets that did not conform to accounting principles. a lot has happened since then and a lot has been said about pride and both supervisor wiener and i thought it was important for us, given the importance of this event to revisit the implementation of the audit and assessment by the controller. we also wanted to provide a form for pride as an organization to not only give us an update on how it's doing relati -- relative to that implementation of assessment and how things are going and to provide for the opportunity for the community to have a forum for issues around the controller support or anything relating to pride as an organization could be raised. it's also a forum that allows

people that have been involved in the organization including some of the vendors that have been participating for many years to share any thoughts our comments they may have about the organization. i see this hearing as a positive development. it's an opportunity to have an honest conversation and an opportunity to give pride and also support for many of the advancements and improvement for this support. it's not a goch ka committee. it's about providing support for this hearing. my office has communicated with the director about this hearing and the fact that this hearing will be taking place. we announced that there will be a hearing a few months back before the summer and i know that communications that we

tried to reach out to inform them of when this hearing would happen. if at any point there is a sense -- or a need by pride to have additional opportunity to provide more information, we are happy to do that and to have a follow up hearing to make sure that any information, any additional formation in terms of complooints -- compliance with the report to provide that information. with that, i will turn it over to supervisor wiener. >> thank you, supervisor campos. thank you for your leadership. even from before i was on the board of supervisors around pride and making sure that this amazing and unique community institution is strong and sustain able and meeting our city's needs. i think it's important to just stress how

critical pride weekend and the pride parade and festival are to san francisco culturally to the lgbt community but frankly to the city as a whole. this parade and this festival belong to no one except for the people of san francisco. no one has more ownership of this parade than anyone else. it belongs to all of us, so when making decisions about pride, we have to be sure and back up and evaluate what is best for this parade and festival in terms of the needs of all of san francisco. i also want to acknowledge there are many people both volunteers and contractors, employees who have worked very very hard for many years to keep this parade and

this festival going. although we have had some disagreements and criticisms, i really just want to acknowledge the many people who make this parade and festival such a great success year in and year out. i remember from 2011, after i took office when there was a lot of pressing concern around the finances of the organization, being competent that whatever happens with the controversy at the time, i was still competent that the parade would still happen because there are so many dedicated contractors and employers and volunteers who make it happen. that was reassuring because he is the in incredibly important for the city. with all that said, i also think it's important to always look with a

critical eye at the governance structure and pride and continually evaluate whether that structure is what makes the most sense for the delivery of this parade and festival. over the last few years, supervisor campos and i in speaking with one voice have questions whether the current governance structure makes the most sense for the organization. i try to keep an open mind about that but i think it's an important discussion for us to have. so i hope that will be part of the conversation today and going forward. so i look forward to the hearing today and i want to thank supervisor campos for his leadership. >> thank you very much supervisor wiener. again thank you and your office for the work that you have done on this important matter as well. i think it's important that the lgbt members of this board as much as possible when it comes

to issues of importance to the community that we speak with one voice. with that, let me ask our controller and we are here happy to see peg stevenson to provide a brief overview of the assessment and the work they have done. and again, we want to thank the controller for the very expeditious way in which they responded to the request for this review. >> thank you supervisors, good afternoon. i'm peg stevenson from the controllers office. this review was done at the request at the time from supervisor campos and supervisor dealt oh, i believe. it is pretty dated, it was issued in december of 2010. there is more than 2 years worth of results between then and now. supervisor campos already summed uppermost of

what i would remind anybody about the content of the report at the time. they were showing $225,000 debt and a closing balance and no operating reserve at the time. we documentation as supervisor mentioned of their contracts. the board had not been doing fund raising or holding a finance committee to review audit results or some of the activities that you would expect from a well functioning non-profit board and they had a -- there was no director. our recommendation fell into line with those findings that they make a big investment in fund raising and recruitment of the board and result of the debt issues and get back to having an operating reserve and cash -- on hand. the city standard to that are applicable here

just to remind everybody. my office coordinates a program where we monitor non-profits that typically have contracts with more than one city agency and are of a significant size. i think it's now $200,000 more than sf city. sf pride doesn't fall into that category and just because of the size of the grant that had been received to it. we are happy to take a look at non-profits at the request of board members and use of city standards to view them. the balance sheet errors that supervisor campos refers to come from our non-profit guidelines which are on the website. the requirement that there be a coastal indication plan and a current financial audit and these are all applied to the non-profits that we have contracts with. the last thing i would say is that our work is

very dated. i took a look at it in the last couple of days, the approval of the last meetings that i read in the budget certainly signature re -- significant recruitment to the board in 1990, the 2011 posted on the website and they refer on their documents to have cleared the deficit and having cash -- on hand. i can confirm that we have not done any work or revisited any of their finances. i hope that's helpful. >> great, thank you very much; miss stevenson. colleagues do we have any questions of our controller? no questions of our controller. i would like to at this point provide an opportunity to sf pride to come up and make any statement or presentation and because of the

rules how they govern, usually these presentations are limited to the 3-minute public comment period which in this case i would like to allow for 3 minutes for on this item and if there is an opportunity, if there is a need to expand on it, we will go ahead and ask you questions to make sure that you have that opportunity. i would like to begin by introducing the newly pointed president of the board of directors' and i know that we have been joined by other members of the board as well as the acting executive director and i want to begin by saying this: that i am appreciative of the time that people like you put into this event. this is a volunteer effort and whatever we may think about specific issues, i think that we always have to recognize the

service that goes into this. i'm grateful for that and again i want to thank you for being here and if there is nor discussion, we can follow-up again. >> good afternoon supervisor campos, supervisor yee, supervisor wiener and miss stevenson. good afternoon my fellow colleagues. for those of who may not know, for the past 19 years i have been involved with the pride organization. first in 1994 where i was elected to serve on the board of directors' in which i served two terms and during those two terms i filled in many different capacity including acting as the secretary of the board of directors' and the parade cochair. after my stint

on the board, i remained active with the organization and for the last 17 years, i along with jay grech am have been cochairs of the committee to feed the volunteers on the weekend of the event. many of you are probably the recipient of one of our lunches. 2 years ago i came back to the board of directors' and in 2011 hoping to bring my experience and stability and wisdom to the board of directors'. we made great strides throughout the last couple years towards making pride a very solvent and financially sound organization. so, unfortunately not all my fellow board of directors' are able to join us today and i do

express their regrets to you. we did have 3 days notice to prepare for this hearing, thus i may not have all the information or the answers that you are seeking. therefore we may ask for a continuance of this hearing for future date in certain areas. however, having said that, i am here this afternoon to troo -- try to provide as many answers and respond to questions that i'm capable of. those who may not know that since 2011 identify been serving as board i have been serving as vice-president and as of last week i have been serving as the president of the board. >> thank you, mr. president. the one thing i would say in reference to the notice, my office has been