will stop vandalism, would be to increase the officers which would probably cost more than savings we would realize. fourth, i'm sympathetic to the argument that i have heard from some of my constituents which is my tax dollars pay for the park and if i want to use them at 4:00 a.m. and that's my prerogative. i know people that work 12-hour shifts and if they want to walk their dog at night they should be able to and if someone wants to go jogging in the park before they go to work, they should be able to. i have heard the feedback which is it won't enforce them which is exactly my problem. my

5th point that i have serious concerns this law will be enforced. well, if it's not intended to target the homeless, then the investment banker, who is the law targeted? suspicious people, teenagers. i'm not comfortable that we would pass the idea that the law enforcement measure that it would be selectively enforced. lastly, i think there are some perfectly legitimate reasons to use the parks at night. 2 weeks ago, parks and recreation staff presented a packet in support of the ordinance. the last page in large font said nothing good happening in a darkened parkland escape at night. i

don't think that sentiment is true and i'm not comfortable with staff putting that sentiment out in the public. there is so many issues with that law that make me very unkofrt ablcomfortable with it. over all it's not good issues to resolve. in anyone's presence to see who commits those acts. we can shut down the streets so no one would speed, a curfew could reduce graffiti everywhere. i for one, i don't want to limit everyone's freedom in order to deter those who an abuse that

premium. i supported some and got a lot of heat for it. i have done everything i could since becoming supervisor to be as supportive as i possibly could of the parks and recreation department. i know how valuable our parks are and how critical they are to keeping families in san francisco and the firsthand how settling and disappointing it can be to our full and specific treasures. i want to do everything to maintain our parks, but i don't think this legislation does it. including fund to -- funding to increase more supervision around the parks and consequences for citations which currently do not exist. legislation making it clear that violations of the

park code are evictable. that is currently not the case. i'm currently working on legislation to allow the department of public works to produce civil suits against graffiti repeat offenders. this legislation will not further burden our criminal prosecutors. we know that low level crimes are being prosecutes in this city and will allow the city to recover monetary settlement for the worst graffiti offenders and these will have nothing to do with those offenses. it is legislation i'm happy to draft and carry. this legislation before us today however as much i respect it's intent, response o it's supporters, it's something i can't support. >> supervisor campos?

>> first of all i want to begin saying that i would like to fully associate myself with the comments of supervisor breed. i haven't heard a more articulate well-informed and well reasoned argument with respect to probably just about anything that's come before the board in quite some time. i want to thank supervisor breed for the very thoughtful comments. i do want to begin by saying that i understand and appreciate the intent to this legislation. you are talking about good people who are trying to find ways to deal with a very serious problem. so i understand the spirit in which supervisor wiener and the people behind this legislation have introduced it. the ironic thing here is that we have legislation that appears to

deal with vandalism in the park and yet it says nothing about vandalism. it deals with vandalism by addressing a separate and distinct issue which is the issue of park closures. an issue which is already addressed by the code. having served on the police commission, i'm trying to understand how it is that if you are trying to deal with vandalism, that the way you try to address the issue is by focusing on what time a park is opened and closed. if the goal is to deal with vandalism, then let's deal with vandalism. the issue here is not the absence of loss, but the fact that the loss we have in the books are now being enforced. someone that i respect tremendously said this is two parks was to

the streets. that is precisely why i oppose it. as supervisor breed indicated since sit lie has passed we haven't seen and we haven't seen enforcement and what we have seen is selective enforcement. individual officers decide when cid lie is enforced. that's what is happened here. the intent is you can't have it both ways. on one way you are saying you are not going kick people out of the parks and when this item came to committee, the director of operations of parks and recreation dennis kern testified and said that they i in fact will enforce this

ordinance against people who are in the park. you cannot speak out of both sides of your mouth. you either enforce it or you don't. the lieutenant who testimony in favor of this, testified 2 weeks ago which was specifically asked by me, do you have absent this legislation the tools you need to enforce the laws to prevent vandalism? and he said, yes. we have those tools. so what is it that this law is doing? i don't believe in passing laws unless you intend for those laws to be enforced. if this law is enforced, it will mean as mr. kern indicated that people will be pushed out of

these parks. there is reliance here on the civil grand jury, they reported that in the park there is 5200 people sleeping in that park. if people are pushed out of the park, where are these 50-400 people going to go. there are other legislations doing what this city intend to do. i live in san francisco. let's look at new york city. supervisor wiener began by listing the number of city that follow this kind of policy and listed new york city at the top of that list. what they forget to tell you is that in new york city there is an actual

constitutional protection understate law that guarantees that people get shelter. when new york city kicks people out of the parks, new york city is legally required to provide them shelter. that is not the case here. when we kick people out of these parks, these people have no where to go. we heard from the agencies that do this kind of work that we don't have beds to house what people need. if you want to compare yourself to new york city, compare yourself but they actually provide the shelter that we are not providing here. now, we have heard a lot in the past few weeks about what's happening in san francisco and the chronicle talks about the

tale of two cities and talks about the huge wealth we have in this city and talks about san francisco that doesn't have the money to fix broken elevators at his public housing projects, league seniors and disabled residents stranded in their apartments. i hope that tale of two cities story does not include that this city that has a lot of wealth that is kicking people out of park for alternatives for housing. if you really want to tackle this issue, then let's talk about housing. let's talk about where these homeless folks are going to go. it's not just an issue of the homeless, it is a civil rights issue. as a gay mind i'm

mindful the fact that 29 percent of the homeless in the city are queered. and we heard in the city that queer homeless folks are afraid to go into shelter system because they don't feel safe by virtue of being queer. where are these folks going? many of them are sleeping in parks because that's where they feel safe. there are moments when we have to decide who we are as a city. unfortunately there are times when good people who mean well propose things that have negative unintended consequences. this is one of those moments. we are better simply saying no luck. you are out. we have to make sure that we remain true to what san francisco has been. a city ha

historically has recognized the dignity and humanity of every individual. and how we treat the homeless says a lot about who we are as a city. i know that people mean well, but this is not the way the go. this is not san francisco. we are better than this. >> supervisor kim? >> thank you, president chiu. i also want to concur with supervisor 's comments and associate. my comments are with supervisor breed. i almost took my name off the roster after she spoke because she articulated a lot of my sentiment. no. 1, the issue of vandalism. parks and recreation did an amazing job at land use

committee really articulating the problem and show casing the need for addressing the problem about what we need to do about vandalism. i agree that this is an issue and an expensive issue. the basic problem with this ordinance is we are ticketing which is not vandalism but articulating something that is not criminal. what i had an issue was with cid lie. during land use committee another issue we have in our city is with car break -ins. it's a huge problem. what i have not heard is a proposal to ban people walking on sidewalks to parked car. vandalism to cars is incredible. if we found an issue to address that, i would

be the first to propose it. we are not proposing to banned people from walking lying by cars. if a police officer drives by, no one is going to put out their tools for break-ins. which is why we should not criminalize the behavior for being in the park. the second issue that came up is when vandalism happens. numerically 12-5 is when this occurs . we don't have evidence of that. the second issue is this is not about homelessness. we don't carve out people who are sleeping in the parks. i get it, it is illegal to sleep

in the parks. we don't fine poor people for that behavior. this ordinance changes that. you can now get a ticket for sleeping in the park. $100 and $200 and $300 . we are criminalizing people and giving them a fine and this burdens our system and doesn't get result we wanted. the third issue, is the one that i think that supervisor breed highlighted really well which is what i hear over again that this won't be used against the people that are casually walking through the park. this came up in the discussion about what if you are genuinely walking through the panhandle through south park to visit a neighbor after midnight. what we've been told repeatedly, don't worry, we won't ticket

those people. then who is so obvious that we are ticketing. if it's not someone walking across the neighborhood park to get where they need to go or jog between midnight and 5:00 a.m., then who decides that this person has the tool that is going to vandalize this park structure. i think that's the elephant in the room. if you are a white business person that's going on an early morning job, you are not going to get ticketed. who is ticketed, the young person of color in a hoodie? that raises a ton of questions for me and the concern of acid lie when we say what if a five-year-old sits in a sidewalk at the middle of the day. we are not going to ticket that 5-year-old

kid. then who are you going to ticket. i think there are a lot of issues that this legislation brings up simply because we are not addressing the issues and we are opening the door for a ton of discrimination and think we know who is going to get ticketed when they are likely going for a walk or walking a dog. occasionally we have warm nights here. one of my faeft -- favorite things to do is go to like delores park and be with some friends on one those nights that it's 89 degrees and i think it's important to see people hanging out with friends and of course not doing anything illegal but utilizes the space that makes san

francisco great. when i did visit soul i went to one of our parks at 11:00 p.m. and what i saw was an incredible healthy use of force our park. i saw many people out there. i think it's important to what you mean by say there is any type of possible behavior. i think if there is another approach that dealt with vandalism strictly, i'm very open to that. i was really happy to hear there were some discussions coming out of supervisor breed's office. i think it's important to have this very important dialogue. >> thank you, supervisor avalos? >> thank you. i would like to associate myself with some of the comments with colleagues on

the board, supervisor breed and kim and i'm very concerned about unintended consequences. but one thing is for sure if people see e-mails from me at 4:00 in the morning, i'm an insomniac and i'm in the parks very early in the morning because i live a block away from crocker as zone park. i go to the movies after i put the the kids to bed at 10:30 at night and i walk to crocker park and i like the cold clear nights. you can see the stars really well. that is the most amazing views of our stars at night. you can see shooting stars on occasion. it's a

wonderful park. i feel though that because i'm one of the persons who is in the park late at night and early in the morning that there are many other san franciscans there as well. my worry about this legislation is that it's the door for open enforcement. perhaps i may not be the one targeted as someone doing something illegal in the parks, but others will and people who are selectively targeted often will be young people, people of color and the police department that has done a terrific job with racial profiling that might have to live up to that standard so far. i feel that what we'll be doing with this legislation that we'll stop

people and ask questions later. this tool opens the door for that to happen. i know there are problems with vandalism and dumping and i know those are real issues and we need patrol to prevent that from happening and other comments made by my colleagues that the reality that there are thousands of people sleeping outdoors because there aren't places for them to be housed. that problem or phenomenon exist and it doesn't make sense that we are trying to close our parks when there is thousands of people living there. it doesn't make

any sense why i will be voting no against this. and there are issues of vandalism and congratulate graffiti in the parks, but this is not way to go. >> thank you. president chiu. >> thank you mr. chair, first of all colleagues i want to thank everyone for this. i also want to thank everyone in this room who have thought hard about this. this is not an easy topic and i want to thank the perspective that have been raise abide our advocates. like many of us here i did not support cid lie and it did not have the impact i didn't think it would have. like you, i have been supportive of our progressive budget priorities every year for services for our homeless and individual

families. i do think we can and ought to do more. i have worked with you to create legislation for homeless for transitional age and for people transitioning out of homelessness to create affordable housing. with that being said, we do know cloegz -- colleagues who are trying to prevent crimes that none of us think are being committed by homeless individuals but we know these are crimes happening every night including my district. this has not struck me as being unreasonable. we had a discussion about this enforce many. we've all had conversations with those and we do think that this is something

that law enforcement in san francisco does take seriously and works to deal with. one of the things i appreciate about this legislation is that there were amendments that were carved out for particular parks where we know there is often many lawful and appropriate nighttime activity. for example unit square, plaza, herman plaza and panhandle to name a few, because of the input of colleagues in the public we have exempt those out for lawful activities that happen between the hours of midnight. i would be open if colleagues, you had particular parks within your district that you think you would want to see people in the streets. we know we have

neighborhoods in parks where this is very much a real issue. i also appreciate very much the fact that this legislation calls for the tracking of incidents and report backs to the -- i will be among the first to call it out if we see it. we have laws in the parks and these laws have not been used in a selective enforcement. i ask folks to step back and consider what we are trying to do to solve a problem. the last thing i want to say that i think it's easy

to criticize policy proposals when there is an active alternative. what i ask you if you are going to have issues with something that i have proposed give us a different and a better solution. again, i know that it's easy in this chamber to have some hot rhetoric. if there is something on the table, i'm all ears, but i think it's important to do what we can to solve this problem. i'm open to hearing other solutions in the next months and years. but until i hear a better solution, i think this is a narrowly taylored piece of legislation that will make some head way in dealing with the issues we have. and i support the amendments that have been made. >> i want to offer a solution and amendment here that neglected to mention earlier

that is supervisor mar had concerns about language that was giving greater powers to the general manager. i didn't see that, i just want to make sure that those powers that are being given to the general manager whatever powers the general managers has are consistent with current policy. so i'm proposing an amendment to section 231 and section a and that would be deleting section two of that section when language says when public safety is affected or by riot or unlawful assembly activity the city can close the park as he or she deems necessary for

the safety of the public. i want to delete that language but add at the end of that section g, nothing in this section shall limit the authority of the general manager of the director of parks commission under section 3.3 of this code. then i want to add to section 3.3 in adding 3.3 to this ordinance, the language that says, nothing in this section shall authorize the general manager of parks and recreation commission to close any portion of any park or park building because of the content or viewpoint of expressive activities existing or anticipated to the extent such expressive activities are protected by the 1st amendment to the united states constitution. so essentially this amendment is conforming our current amendments that we

are making to this park code with existing park code language in section 3.83 that is saying the general manager cannot limit 1st amendment rights in our parks and essentially what it's doing is just making sure that it's consistently across the park code and not at making sure we have language that contradicts one another. i would like to propose that these amendments are made. if we have copies of that we can share that and i have my legislative aid to bring copies fore everyone. i just wanted to check with mr. gibner if these amendments are substantive if yukon firm that. >> sure. department city attorney, gibner.