strategies for business corridors. for potential business owners it helps them find ideal locations with different advantages like a preestablished kitchen or things that reduce their [inaudible] costs and also shortens their evaluation time to open the business. >> so really quickly we're going to mention our outreach approach. it was close to businesses are. what we decided to do was work in tandem with the invest in neighborhoods staff to let the businesses know along the corridor that we can help them with their individual business needs, but then also try to address the larger corridor

concerns. large part of the impacts on business operation happen based on what's happening on the street. so we did this and i think we are finding that it's useful because a lot of times there's a sense that the city's not doing enough to address homelessness, address crime, address those larger issues and so we have a point of contact and reference to work with, you know, on those larger issues. one of the things we also want to do is make sure we reach out to all communities so with the work of francis we're starting to reach out to the monolingual communities. >> [inaudible] enables us to work with pretty much most of the communities i think in the cross cultural situation.

[inaudible] extends connection and establish network between merchants in the city. according to census 2010 chinese is one of the fastest growing population citywide. [inaudible] language barriers and cultural bias [inaudible] guiding merchants to [inaudible] for example before the super bowl 2015, we team up for [inaudible] middle mission. we establish the emergency action plan we conduct door do door with over 315 english, spanish and chinese speaking merchants to date. we educate on how to [inaudible] now we partner with the [inaudible] doe, mong, et

cetera, to [inaudible] outreach quarters. through [inaudible] which are respectful and responsive to the cultural needs of all small businesses. >> the goal of our outreach is to build those relationships and trust with the small businesses to be effecttive we need to have a better working relationship so we understand what's really on the happening to the businesses on the ground and what they're facing on a daily basis. this is very important to us and that's part of our outreach strategy. we will go out to the neighborhood businesses in the same 25 districts as many times as it takes to develop those connection points and once we have those connection points merchants are willing to talk to us a bit more about some concerns and challenges they have. so the findings i'm presenting

now are a culmination of what we've learned after talking to a lot of businesses, not only in the best neighborhoods, corridors, but also not invested neighborhoods and corridors. it was a little surprising to see what the challenges they wanted to talk about are, but in a sense it makes a lot of sense. their overall concerns had to do with the health of the corridor and what's happening on the street because they felt that was the biggest challenge in their day-to-day operations. they want to address homelessness and corresponding quality of life issues. the reinstitution of a beat cop along the corridor, which means pedestrian safety and the safety of clients that are

visiting the neighborhood. improvements to cleanliness along the corridor, city assistance to improve marketing of the corridor and improve accessibility in enhancing the visitor experience, which includes modifying parking policies. when asked about individual concerns the top were rising commercial rent, compliance with the government regulations and permitting merchant safety and possible opportunities and incentives provided by the city. we believe these findings are valuable and we're developing strategy to better track these over time. we want to expand this to as many commercial districts as possible just to make sure that this is a consistent that we're hearing, but from the findings we have so far, we believe these are the sentiments of merchants citywide. here's what we can learn from

these findings. merchants want a clean and safe environment, they want means to drive foot traffic to the corridor, a better marketing strategy geared to the corridor. /pher cants want relief from stresses based upon their daily business operations. ever increasing government regulations, possibility of crime and rent increases that can be overwhelming at times. we need to come with commissions like these, present them to policymakers. this keeps with our mission to work with others based on our field experiences and we believe these findings can assist in all our efforts to direct resources where needed and improve conditions for the merchant. so the job squad will do whatever it takes to help out

the small business community and we're always really available to talk to departments about ideas and options that they may have and we'll continue to work with regina and the office of small business and invest in neighborhoods to advocate for more tools for small businesses. developing creative strategies and solutions. when there's a benefit to the businesses these are things we want to continue to do and advocate for. we've enjoyed working with osb so far. we'll continue working with them to make sure we're sending the right messages to the businesses that there are resources available to them. we look forward to working with this commission as well to look at partnerships that we can have to develop solutions and help out the merchants. we thank the commission for

letting us talk today and if there's any questions or comments we'd be happy to take them. >> commissioner dooley. >> i wanted to thank you guys for coming and thank you for doing outreach in north beach. we really appreciate it. what is is rollout you know beyond the districts that you have mentioned do you have a timeframe for that. >> right now it's pretty in flux because aside from the 25 corridors that's another 35 that we can easily target. throughout our work we've gone to different neighborhoods as well. i am helping merchants out on valencia street, mission bay, rincon hill and south beach. the reason for these are multiprong. sometimes there's issues that are arising in neighborhoods where a merchant may say we

need some help from the city. in other aspects such as with what francis is doing is with the ada compliance so we're trying to take the same messages and same services we're offering to invest in neighborhoods and roll that out to all commercial districts, but i think we need to work with office of small business and also invest neighborhoods to find a consistent approach. i think the commission has ideas as well on where it would be a good target point moving forward. i think we'd definitely appreciate that. >> commissioner riley. >> yes. hi, welcome and thank you. this questions for francis 'cause i know -- thank you for handling the language barrier in the clement street area. but the language part is pretty complicated in the chinese

community because of the different dialects so do you find that challenging and -- >> i think that's my professional background 'cause i have a multidegree in chinese languages and also i come from hong kong so i'm hopefully fluent in cantonese and mandarin. i think besides the language how you present yourself is going to be a very crucial factor. even with spanish populations, like, for the last week, i spent almost a whole week time at middle mission 'cause we get a call that the whole 16 to 24 corridor was being sweeped by an attorney that's sending outleters trying to sue chinese business. we go door to door for eight days, i signed up [inaudible] i think two thing is the language

that you speak plus the [inaudible] interaction is going to be counted as a part of it, and two, understand the cultural [inaudible] my second mother is asian american so we study a lot with how to working cross cultural situations. >> hm, thank you. >> any other commissioner questions? we have any public comment on this item? >> mr. president we have one speaker card. members of the public, public comment is limited to three minutes, and we ask you to please state your name but you're not required to do so. >> i've been long involved with people i came now because i see this. i want to make a request or suggestion of you folks is you go back to respective merchant groups, but also of the job squad staff. it's based on a really bizarre

negative experience i had several years ago. there was an attorney who was engaging in what i would call drive by ada complaint filings and since job squad assists with this i'm bringing it to their attention. so in the district i live in a supervisor arranged for a meeting with the [inaudible] group about this issue. i got invited. i had to walk up three flights upstairs. nobody bothered to look for an accessible place. if you're going to talk about constituency and have it at a site that excludes that constituent say sends a very bad message. with that negative experience in mind, i want to ask and suggest when you folks hear of

an issue about ada complaints and compliance needing some attention please ask your merchant groups look for an accessible meeting site and the job squad people, maybe you should ask when you're asked to present ask is the meeting site accessible, if not, look for one. excluding people with disabilities and requiring them to walk up three flights upstairs sends the wrong message. it lets merchants know that people with disabilities think these drive by filings ing should not have been done were extortionist in some ways. i helped some latinos in where we could meet. so there may not be a public building nearby, but there's

spaces you can have meetings, presentations from job squad or from other city staff when it comes to talking about access, compliance and responsiveness. thank you. >> thank you. any other members of the public who would like to make comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. are there any other commissioner comments? i'd just like to thank both of you for coming and thank you for the good work you do 'cause you guys have been out there in the community, i've been hearing about it. your work with the office of small business has been great. i like the collaboration with the two of those so i want to thank you for that. we're all working together as a team for small business, so thank you. >> thank you. >> next item. >> next item is item number six, discussion on the package of policy recommendations from

the accessible parking policy advisory committee to increase access and placard misuse. we'll have a presentation. >> welcome. >> thank you. so i'm bob planthold. i chair cal transresponse to their ada lawsuit settlement. i was part of this process and even before that i helped write the grand jury report in 2007 that called for some changes in state legislation and enstated responsiveness. i'll let lisa introduce herself too. >> i'm lisa foster, a consultant to the sfmta, and i was named project manager for the accessible parking policy advisory committee. did you already say that jessie couldn't come? >> so carla johnson, the interim director of mayor's

office on disability and jessie the director of independent living resources of san francisco were both going to be here today and they couldn't make it and they send their apologies so i will be presenting with bob instead. >> on the screen to your left you see a picture of a man driving a vehicle equipped for use by hand control. part of what we need to make you clear of is description of the problem, then the process we went through, our recommendations and next steps. we want to increase access to parking for people with disabilities, as well as decrease the parking placard abuse or misuse. in gentleman is driving a vehicle equipped with hand controls, has the placard.

his problem is not his limitations or his disable. his problem is finding a parking space. people who have disabilities, we can't find the parking we need when we need it close to our destination. that's because current parking policies and state legislation failed to increase access to convenient parking for people with disabilities. in context, the california state law is very, very broad and maybe even outdated. a person displaying a placard has the right to park for any unlimited amount of time without any payment at any green zone that you merchants pay for. we'll address some of that in our recommendations. now on the screen you'll see a list of

the stakeholders. the names may not mean much to you in terms of who we are. there were 16 of us, but 9 of us had a disability. we're going to continue to stress that so you understand this is not a staff driven or staff dominated process /-ft the people with disabilities not only formed a majority of the full body, but we had an internal steering committee and people with disabilities were a majority of the steering committee. that committee was carla you johnson, myself, the point is you're getting input from the people directly affected by what we're recommending by what we suggested. let's go on then to the next slide. in this slide you'll see several cars parked each

displaying a blue placard so we felt there were three challenges to finding parking that we could use. people with disabilities can't find parking, there isn't enough parking turnover to ensure there's parking for everyone and a public perception with people with hidden disabilities. those hidden disabilities, some people feel if you're not limping, if you're not in a wheelchair you don't deserve a placard, that's not true, but the public then find the use of placards questionable. we need to address that in a larger context. we started to ask criteria -- what will make it easier for us to finds parking in blue zones. will the policy make it easier for people, all of us, you, me, all of us, people with

disabilities or not, to find parking in general metered spaces and will these policies reduce placard misuse. with that lisa can take over for a bit. >> on those problems, san francisco and even california are not alone. other cities across the country have tried to tackle the problem that people with disabilities can't find parking when and where they need it. the slide you're looking at shows a map of the united states and a small portion of canada. the 11 dots represent cities that the city surveyed for best practices. they include philadelphia, houston, new york, chicago and arlington, virginia. we heard from disability rights advocates in some of these cities and cities that have various policies in place to find out what has worked for them. looking at these best practices it bake clear that

all successful programs took an approach that integrated three elements -- first, provide for blue zones; second, conduct sufficient enforcement for black placard use and blue zone use, and third, charge placard holders at the meter. we also discovered that cities had only implemented one or two of these were not as successful. houston established a very rigorous enforcement program giving out 12,000 plus citations a year, but it wasn't until they established some meter payment for placard holders that they really saw a decrease in misuse. >> [inaudible] curb painted blue with the mta symbol.

that's the more mall designation of a blue zone. we're recommending increasing the number by almost 70 percent which would bring the total of blue zones up to about 4 percent of meter spaces. that's in line with the ada recommendation. this means that the city would make it easier for us to find parking nearby. i've done my own informal surveys around the greater civic area and found a lot of problems with people parking in blue zones or in accessible loading zones and not getting tickets and not displaying the placard. but mta's already [inaudible] add more blue zones. that's something we can do. we don't need state approval, authority or money for this.

the next slide to increase enforcement of placard abuse, and here again this doesn't require any state law change, but because we talked to the head of security for mta and they gave us the stats on how long and difficult it is to enforce, they're adding three more pco's to the placard detail. we also want the dmv to find a way to code in to the placard number the photo id of the placard holder. right now most people either have a california id, a california driver's license or for seniors and disabled we also have this photo id card that allows for a discount on transit so there's multiple ids that are government ids that can be used and coded to the number on the placard. the reason is simply that if a

pcl is getting out of a car and she goes into a building, they can't automatically know if there's a problem until they actually wait for her to come out. that could be a few hours. but if they can quickly punch in the number on the placard and it shows my face and she's getting out of the vehicle, then they know right away there's a problem. it would make enforce forcement faster. right now it's very time consuming. that's something dmv would need to do, but there's something else, and lisa will talk about more dmv initiatives. >> the third recommendation is to increase state level 'cause the dmv issues the placards. they recommend that the dmv upgrade its database to the dmv's current database is

really outdated. i think it's dos and doesn't have this information in a searchable format. the dmv should also take steps that providers are legitimate and their cigna /kphurs are valid. this will increase the chances for finding placard issuance fraud . the committee also recommends clarifying the eligibility criteria on the application, but not removing any of the existing eye tier criteria and this would ensure they're issued to people with a functional need for them. >> we'll get to the two that are paired regarding meter payment and use of those funds. california's one of only 15 states that exempts blue placard holders from meter payments. thirty-five states still require placard holders to pay at a meter.

those states include arizona and florida, big havens for retirees and for people who age beyond 80. the meter exemption as been around since 1980 and it was started when various veteran's groups pointed out that the parking meter technology was inaccessible, that the meter head was too high if you were in a wheelchair you couldn't read the signs to know how much to put in, how much time you were getting. you needed to be able to grasp a coin and put in a specific coin. some people don't have real grasping use of their hands and fingers, but they can wrap themselves around special knobs on a steering wheel and manage to drive a vehicle with levers and knobs. the idea was make

it free because you couldn't easily use the technology. now we've gotten various technology that makes it possible for people to pay by phone, by a smart card, by any number of ways. what we are suggesting is the state law be amended to allow the authorized and local jurisdiction to require meter payment, but if, and only if, the technology is fully accessible. if they're still using the old meter heads that are high and you have to put coins in, that jurisdiction will not be able to use it. san francisco is moving to accessible parking meter technology. i'll add a personal point here. i mentioned earlier a transit discount card. seniors and disabled do pay for transit. maybe at a reduced rate, but we

do pay. there is no economic basis for why we are getting free parking at the meter. parking costs money, costs money to pave the street, clean the street, paint, pave, that costs money. we should be eligible to pay for that parking service as well as you folks so this is why we're recommending removing the meter payment exemption. some cities like philadelphia found when they did that the meters in the downtown area were more available. now we have the im/prebgs that there use a family member's placard to drive free or easy. i was there one day and i saw a woman that was in a blue

placard vehicle, drove away, came back, got out, took her kid. again, maybe she has a hidden disability, but there's a question of how so many placards are on the street. well, we also went to talk about then if we're going to be asked to pay, rather than just have that go into, if you will, the mta general fund, we're suggesting to direct those meter payments to fund accessibility improvements. what you see there is an accessible traffic signal so there would be count down, lights, sound, to help people know how much time they had to cross the street so we would be partially self funding some of our own improvements. if there was disability to link payment with funding accessibility improvements. okay, with that i'm going to let lisa finish up.

>> the committee's final recommendation is to establish reasonable time limits. they recognize that establishing reasonable time limbs can open up parking spaces and recommend that placard holders have four hour time limits unless the posted time limit is longer. this means if it was two hours they would have four hours. if it is unlimited it would be unlimited. we talked to and they reported that it seemed to provide sufficient time for people with disabilities to do the things they needed to do. at green zones and meters the committee recommended that placard holders be able to stay up to 30 minutes. as you