discussed this and we have discussed it lengthy. i would like to go with joanna, maybe go back and finish what she said. finish a little bit of the writing of this and maybe bring it back to the next executive meeting. or did we vote on it and it's gone or put amendment to it. excuse me chip. >> i would respectfully remove the motion and that would allow us to do whatever we want. i just want to also say to john paul that we did discuss with people on the council that had disabilities and might need extra time off and while we didn't make it explicit language there was no intention to force someone off the council to take each meeting to take the case on an individual

basis. at the point that someone has three absences within a year, we would have discussion with that person about why and the language does not say to be removed from the council or anything, just at that point we might want to have a discussion with their health considerations were for personal or work reasons preventing them from attending the meetings. however i'm not -- to putting the language in the bylaws. i will move we take this addendum back to committee to executive committee and maybe have something better to look at next month. >> thank you, chip. tonya? >> i wanted to ask denise. did you say that they could call in from work and/or if they are

ill? that's what i thought you said. >> i will clarify, i'm saying for whatever reason someone is not able to attend a meeting such as myself scheduling, i would call and be on the bridge line. that's pretty much it. what i say if they make accommodations if they can not be there in person. >> okay. thank you. >> would you like to comment? >> i want to second chip's motion to move it. >> okay. we want to have a vote. let's have a vote. roland? a vote to table this to the next meeting. >> chip?

>> yes. >> denise? >> yes. >> tonya? yes. seeing that this is. we will move on with our agenda. i apologize. thank you guys, very much. we are on item no. 9. elections accessibility. the department of elections will explain how it is training staff, providing voting information, and making voting accessible for voters with disabilities in preparation for the november 5th municipal election. >> good afternoon. thank you for in inviting me. my name is

jill fox. i'm the outreach manager for the san francisco department of elections. it's nice to come upstairs out of the basement once in a while. we are currently preparing for the next municipal election to be held on november 5th, tuesday november 5th. many people don't know we are having an election. an city san franciscans will be voting for city attorney, city treasurer, on district 4, the residents will be voting for supervisor and we have four local measures on the ballot as well. we make

all our voting information accessible both in language materials and in large print and other accessible materials. so i will go over a few highlights of these. we do have a report that i prepared that you should have in your packet. those of you only council. i also have printed copies here. large print copies that people may use. and we will also have it on your website on the mayor's office of disability website. we can do that in the next few days. i can help you get that. it's a very simple report that highlights the elections disability efforts that we make. one thing that we have for the upcoming election are large print brochures in

english, spanish, chinese for everyone. they are available by request. they are also available in our office room 48 of city hall. we have a new brochure about general information about voting also in large print in english, spanish and chinese that we have distributed to lots of organizations and we have available upon request. it explains all the ins and outs in san francisco for people who need special access of in any kind. >> we have copies available and versions available upon request. we have distributed them in english, spanish and

chinese to anyone who has requested them and we have them in our office. we also have them at a lot of institutional organizations like lighthouse for the blind and the veterans hospital and in the public libraries so that you can read it in large print. and we have audio versions of our voter information pamphlet. again, it's english only and it's upon request and we distribute a number of those. all of that information is also on our website which is one of the highlights of this election season is we've made some significant up grades to our website for accessibility. we have updated our technology so we have improved screen read

ability and new html forms new this season and we have lots of other registration online capabilities from california and updating registration information from our website on all forms so you can change your address by e-mail on the website to the best of our knowledge this is as accessible website as possible, but as you know technology changes constantly and this is an on going process. and we love to hear from this body anytime that you hear of technology that we can incorporate to make voting more ak cezanne -- accessible from our website. another thing we have upgraded

is staff training. all of the staff get a lesson on disability rights and we take that out in public outreach and we also take it out to our poll workers. we are currently training 2086 poll workers for the election and they are all getting information about not only how to set up the polling places to be accessible, to use the machines for accessibility but also how to interact with people who may have special request of any kind. and we are very proud of the training that we do. we do it through a video and through verbal train, live verbal training and also it's in their workbook they take home and read before election day. there are many practical aspects of voting that they

have to learn. we try very hard to train them and we do want to hear if there are any issues at any polling place so we can constantly improve our service to voters. speaking of polling places. there are 391 polling places for elections. of those 391, 19 are accessible. i have a chart that shows how much we have improved over the last 10 or 12 elections. we would love to be at 100 percent accessible, but this is a city with lots of old buildings and hills. so you all know as well as i do how difficult that is. everyone gets in their voter information pamphlet information about whether or not their polling place is accessible and we do accommodate at a near by

polling place for anyone who needs that accommodation. everyone can contact us for help with that. that accessibility is access to the room to vote. we have extra poll workers and lots of thing, there are elevators and things like that. once inside all of our polling places are accessible in terms of voting booths that can accommodate wheelchairs and our edge machines, which are voting machines we've been using since 2008 and our audio and touch voting screens in four languages and english spanish and chinese on our touch

screen. that's all good. of course, if you do not want to go to a polling place there are other ways to vote. you can vote in our fully accessible city hall. early voting is going on now. everyday. the last two weekends before the election we are open. you can enter on grove street and it's a very accessible opportunity for voting and of course you can vote by mail. you can request to vote by mail. vote from the comfort of your own home. those request can be made until october 29. you can still vote by mail for this election. we have some exciting new drop off opportunities. you can drop off your vote by mail as long as it's returned. we receive it by election day. you can drop it off at any polling place. we have a new feature, we will

have drop off stations outside of city hall. this saturday, sunday and monday and on election day. you can drop off your ballot with staff that will put it in a safe box and brought it and be counted and that way you do not have to get out of your car and come in. we think that will be very accommodating for votes, last minute voters and people who don't want to have to come in and park outside of city hall. we are trying it out. that's new. we are constantly trying to think of new things to accommodate all voters. we do hear from our community. we have a voter information network that i know the mayor's office of disability participates in. it's about 500 organizations citywide. of

those, over 131 self identify as serving people with disabilities on some kind of levels and we get feedback from them and that's very helpful to the work we do. finally, we want to make sure that people in this body know about the voter accessibility advisory committee. we have openings. we can give you more details. it in the report, the printed report i brought today. we are seeking knowledgeable and committed volunteers to give us advice for voters with disabilities. our next meeting is scheduled for early december. so if anyone is interested in that, we can give you more information. all of our outreach materials,

presentations, are available on our website and that is sf elections.org. and of course you can also call our voting hotline anytime from now through election day at4155 554-5673 for any kind of questions, accessibility needs. we can help you out. and if with that, if anyone has any questions, i will repeat the number.4155 554-5673 that's the department of elections voter hotline. if anyone has any questions, i'm here to serve you. >> thank you very much. we'll

take questions from the council and then from the public. >> chip? >> hi. i have a couple questions. you say you are hiring over 2,000 poll workers. are you still hiring? >> we have a few position open. we had over 500 poll locations. we have a few. you can come down to our offices at city hall if you are still interested in applying. >> okay. thank you. >> one other, this advisory committee, who do you speak to, who do we call to apply, how do we apply? >> you can apply, probably the easiest way is to call that same voter hotline number and they can take a message or you

can e-mail sf vote at sf governor.org. that will get out to the right person. >> thank you. >> do they still have to take a test to be a worker, a poll worker? >> yes. all poll workers are tested and they have to take a class. >> right, is your test once in a lifetime or evident -- every time you apply for a poll job you take it? >> no. there is retraining done that is all pretty web base. you still have to take a live class, however. >> right. i was referring to your test. it's a once in a

lifetime. >> i'm not sure if it's once in a lifetime. i'm sorry, i don't know the answer to that. but it's not every single time. >> okay. thank you. are there anymore questions from the council? any from the staff? >> to the chair. thank you for your presentation, miss parks. now, in case during the day of elections constituents or people with disabilities have difficulties with the accessible voting machines, who do they call and who do they do? >> okay. good question. the poll workers, if they are at the polling place, the polling workers are instructed to contact the election center where people will either talk them through working on the machine if they are having trouble making it work. we have all been trained, part of our accessibility training, many of you -- us set up the machine

so we have more hand on knowledge than we had the last little while. that is the one thing they do or they can call the voter hotline and someone will help them there. if no one at the election center can talk the poll workers through, we have people in vans all over town and they will be radioed and they will moreantly -- more knowledge on how to get the machines to work. >> it sounds like there could be snafus because we can't get technology to work the way we want it to. what would be your advice for voters with disability who are hoping to have an experience like everybody else going to vote on the way to work or after work?

>> all of our polling places should be fully up and running by 7:00 in the morning. as you know many polling places have changed. so you may not be going to the polling place you are used to. 1 piece of advice is to be sure you are aware of your polling place and allow enough time. those machines are , they not the easiest machines to get up and running, but they all work. they have all been tested and they should all work. if i have any advice, i would say as soon as you think there might be a problem to ask the poll workers to call the centers so we can get help as

quickly as possible. >> is there any questions from the public? seeing no questions from the public, thank you so much. >> thank you. i will leave materials here in large print in several languages and our brochures and my report and at the end of your meeting i will come up and bring them back so we don't waste the paper. thank you very much for the opportunity. >> did you leave your information? >> yes. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> we will take a 10-minute break right now. thank welcome back, everyone.

thank you for your patience today. we are going to move to information on the affordable care act about registration and how to get disability accommodations for the process. angela? >> thank you. i'm here to talk about affordable care act reform. and about the program for people with disability and how to enroll for people with disabilities. was i supposed to ask the control room to focus on the slides? okay. thank you.

the first slide i have is how is medi-cal changing. one of the important things to note is that traditional medi-cal will exist as it does today with the current rule. an of january, the medi-cal will be expanded to childless adults. that is a very big change. some of the rules will be based on a concept called modified adjusted gross income which is aligned to your tax returns some modifications to it. the benefits of traditional medi-cal and expansion medi-cal. but i will keep with

the terms traditional medi-cal and expanded medi-cal. the benefits package between traditional and expanded medi-cal will be the same. there is one note that i think is of importance to this group is that there is some state and federal policy pending regarding long-term support and services for the new expanded popping. it's definitely, i don't want to say a gray area but there is some waivers that are pending and we are still waiting for some policy clarification around there. so to kind of bring that full around, i think most people are familiar with the medi-cal program. i did want to put that into the context of health care reform. health care reform does more that expand the medi-cal program. traditionallly medi-cal will continue for persons with disabilities. expansion medi-cal will now expand it to children with

income below 250 percent federal poverty level. i do have some examples on what that means because i know not everyone knows what fcl is. and adults with 138 percent poverty level, they are part of that medi-cal expansion group. there is another option of health care reform called "covered california". it's a federal initiative down to state initiative. it a website, a call center, but it's a place where people can go to buy affordable health insurance and compare their options more easily than they are able to do today. that is available to any legal resident. anyone, bill gates can go a buy "covered california" if he wanted to. it's for people below the 400

percent of the federal poverty level. anyone below 400 percent of the poverty level had get financial assistance for the "covered california" health insurance marketplace. the program remains in place. for people who do not qualify for medi-cal or "covered california" they will still be able to utilize the healthy san francisco program. something we unique to san francisco and something we are very proud of and that will still remain in place. this slide talks a little bit about the federal poverty level. on the right side you can see i covered a little bit about "covered california" without a subsidy and with the

subsidy, menial financial assistance and expansion medi-cal for children and adults. on the left side i try to have the poverty levels with dollar figures. no income without a subsidy, when you go e to the next like when you qualify to "covered california", financial assistance. if your annual income as an individual is below about $46,000 a year, you would qualify to purchase "covered california" health insurance but with financial assistance. for the expansion medical group for children, if you are at 250 percent of the federal poverty level or essentially as an individual about $29,000 a year a. , if you have income below that, you qualify for the medi-cal expansion program. if you are an individual with 138

poverty level which translates to $16,000 a year for the individual, you would qualify for the expanded medi-cal programment. i did want to talk about services for seniors. traditional medi-cal will continue to exist pretty much unchanged as it exist today for seniors and again for persons with disabilities. the note we would make and there is some, again policy clarifications that we are waiting on around persons with disabilities who are underage 65 have more options today. currently they might be able to apply for the

medical expansion program. some of this population maybe on a share cost for the medi-cal program. they may actually qualify for the medi-cal expansion which means they may qualify for the no cost medi-cal. there are some additional options for this group. that is one consideration. on the last one is persons turn 65 with the medi-cal expansion, they will transition from 64 to 65. at age 64 you are under these new rules and once 65, you are under the different rules. there are a little bit eligibility requirements. when you go from 64-65 there is a transition there and some things that you may need help walking through to make sure that you are having equivalent

benefits or getting the benefits that you are eligible going from 64 medi-cal expansion program to the 65 traditional medi-cal program. i do want to call out, there was a wonderful forum last week that the seniors with disability action for health, their website is. sd action.org. they listed all the materials for their website and heightened the awareness for consideration for persons with disabilities. so then i wanted to move a little bit as to when