>> 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 know, green zones are

paid for by qualifying merchants in san francisco and there are short term parking zones to support local businesses. currently placard holders can stay for an unlimited period of time at green zones and we have heard stories of some businesses choosing not to renew their green zones because it's not helping them, it's not serving the short term parking purposes the way it's supposed to. at the state level the committee recommended that local jurisdictions would have the option of instituting time limits, but no shorter than four hours at regular and blue meters and no shorter than 30 minutes in green zones. to let you know what the next steps are and what we've been up to since the committee

released the recommendations in may, we've been conducting a lot of outreach. since may committee members have done 20 presentations to stake holder groups and we had forum open to the public, widely publicized a couple weeks ago as well. this fall and winter we will be seeking support from the sfmta board, and that date is november 19. in the meantime the sfmta is taking steps to implement items that are under local control including new blue zones and increased enforcement. if approved to move forward we would seek a state sponsor and a state bill could be introduced in 2014 and go into effect in 2015. this is long timeline we're on.

today we are here asking the small business commission to support the committee's recommendations to reduce disabled parking placard misuse and increase access for people with disabilities. we have quite a bit of information at our website if you want to delve into our all research, it's sfmta [inaudible] you want to send via email, parking access as sfmta.com. if you have any questions or comments. >> we have any commissioner comments? >> presentation to the council district merchants we were of our group was henry from that

group so that we've already done some outreach to small business and just wanted you to be aware of that too for however you respond to this issue. >> commissioner dooley. >> i want to thank you for your presentation. it was really informative and i think your recommendations seem really valid and serve both the businesses and disability community so thank you for your work. >> commissioner o'brien. >> i'd agree. thank you for your presentation. i have a couple thins to say. one, i am a victim of getting a green zone for the purposes of giving temporary parking for three different businesses operating out of that building. within a week a relatively close neighbor saw a golden

opportunity and used it to park her car there between street cleanings which occurred once a week and i didn't appreciate the outcome that happened after all the trouble we went to get the green zone. she graciously come to the realization that that's not right and she doesn't do it anymore. i would definitely support the idea that there's a time limit for people parking on the green zone, handicap or not. two, just wondered if, for the purposes of pr, probably more than anything else, have you ever considered having a different colored placard that identifies somebody who may have a handicap that's a hidden handicap so that people -- we see someone who apparently looks like they could compete in the olympic 100 sprint dash

and claiming they got a handy cap, to maybe understand. i do have a close relative who is relatively mobile, but suffers chronic arthritis and it arrives without any notice. i understand how somebody could very cynical towards him and yet, i understand why he has a placard. and then the third thing that i would like to put out there because we're talking about parking central to this discussion, that the sfmta, whom we've had a presentation from before, would revisit the policy of not adding anymore new parking garages to the city of san francisco to not get out of cars and get on to

alternative modes of transport. i think this discussion should involve opening up the possibility of at least consideration /tkpweufpbl /tkpw*eupb given to adding new parking garages in the city because that's going to continue to resolving the issue. those are my comments. >> may i answer? on the second one, i appreciate that comment in suggesting about a different colored placard. that's within the sole jurisdiction of the dmv and state legislature. right now there's two colors, red, which is 6 months or less. blue is permit permanent. we know chicago is going to a gray and yellow one so there is an option for different colors. we can't control that. dmv and the state legislature could control that.

that's a topic we could ask them to consider. regarding more parking garages, here again, i don't know how much mta thinks this might be differing with their transit first policy. i would tell you personally that years ago when bill mahr was the head of parking and traffic, i said to him i think there needs to be city parking lots /o*t in the neighborhoods. nobody ever followed through. i don't have a knee jerk reaction no new garages ever anywhere, but mta is its own large institution and have to be convinced on that. >> [inaudible]. >> thank you. and through the commission president, were there any

discussions during the advisory committee, again, sort of through the mta's planning that where some of the projected plans are going to be removing extensive amounts of parking along commercial corridors for blocks and blocks? >> no. >> in terms of how they're address the removal of an accessible parking spaces? >> the idea of removing parking spaces was not part of our you know consideration. we were looking to expand parking access where parking is allowed. i'll give you examples that we didn't really go into detail. right now the current city policy or guidelines says if there's a tow away zone you don't put a blue placard zone there. well, why can't i still be as responsible as you on monitoring the clock and moving my car if i have one. we're suggesting that mta revise its guidelines so as to allow a blue placard space in a

tow away zone on bush or pine or whatever for rush hour so there might be more accessible parking on streets where there isn't any. but >> the committee's recommendation to increase the number of blue zones has prompted the sfmta to do a full survey of existing blue zones and coordinate between departments more about blue zone placement and how it relates to other projects so it's a really positive force that we're thinking about blue zone placement related to ep or a bike and ped project that might include removing parking spaces. >> do we have any other commissioner comments before i open it up to public comment? okay, director riley.

>> commission er. >> commissioner er riley. >> thank you for your presentation and all your good work. i read your material you provided. it says there are three times more of the placard than all of the metered parking space available in san francisco. do you have any suggestion on what we should do with the existing placards. >> partly why we're suggesting a time limb, a four hour minimum, because as it is now, somebody could park there until the next street cleaning so they could park for the next week, that doesn't allow for parking turn over. established time limits may be four hours or eight hours, that's the way to encourage it. i gotta say also, it may be that we're dealing with a lot

of suburbanites coming into the city to shop or work and we can't control how they are issued. that's why we asked dmv at tightening up the criteria. right now it's very broad, substantially interferes with mobility. others have something like cannot work more than 200 feet or needs portable oxygen. so criteria were tightened up, time limits were established, that could improve the ability of people with blue placards to park more near whatever destination they choose. >> the blue placards -- are they permanent, you don't need to renew it? >> they are permanent, but

reissued every two years. again, the idea is if you have a permanent disability, whether it's arthritis, gout, whatever, you're not going to be cured except by miracle and therefore you /p need to have this readily available, but by having it renewed every few years dmv finds those who aren't around anymore to use it. >> there are 2.4 million placards in existence in california. one of the ideas that the committee did talk about was having all of those people get re-certified for their placards, but in the end they didn't recommend that because it would be such -- a lot of bureaucratic works in the dmv and expense to the placard

holders to go to the doctor again so they recommended moving forward with the clarified criteria but not reissuing them. i think on the whole the committee's package of recommendations will reduce misuse enough that we'll see open spaces in san francisco. >> thank you. >> commissioner o'brien. >> yeah, one more question. so have you kind of defined a ratio of number of parking permits that are out there to the number of parking spaces that are out there? and i'm wondering what that relationship is in comparison to the number of total cars out there to the number of total parking spaces. part of it is -- i'll probably go along with increasing the number of parking spaces dedicated to the blue zone, but with mixed feelings because i'm always

/tprus frustrated when i'm hooking for a parking space, but it always seems the handicap spaces are empty, but i know that's an emotional reaction because i'm frustrated. i'm trying to do the right thing, but i want to make sure that it's the sensible thing. so the ratio of total number of cars in san francisco, the total number of parking spaces in what it looks like in relation to the number of parking permits to the number of parking spaces. >> the approach we took is to recommend the city increase the number of blue placard spaces to be consistent with the amendments likely to be made to the aga that would call for 4 percent of metered parking spaces to be made blue placard zones. we /tkw-pbt look at the number

of cars in the city or the number of blue placards. it just was easier to have us conform to federal law for percent and then to go with additional changes such as better monitoring of the users that a monitoring by dmv of those who issue the placards, maybe some improvement or tightening of the criteria. that can help control or improve the turnover of parking because as it is in general there are more cars registered in san francisco than there are curb side spaces, period. irrespective of blue placards, there would be no way we could establish any ratio, because as you do that, as the population shifts and as more people age and more aged develop a disability you wind up with

larger and larger numbers of blue placards. the idea is to conform to a national standard and manage the parking through enforcement and monitoring. that's the way we're doing it. >> commissioner dooley. >> did you say 2.5 million placards in california and 500,000 are here in the bay area? >> yeah. >> do you have any numbers to compare? i'm just curious, like, los angeles or san diego, how many of that 2.5 million are down there. >> 21 [inaudible]. >> bay area's nine counties that touch the bay. >> that's bigger, that's definitely not san francisco. >> that's for how many areas for how many placards are in

there. i could definitely get those. >> i'm just curious and why there's a difference. >> we have gotten requests and comments from other major jurisdictions about what we're doing so la, san diego, san jose are quite itly monitoring us, letting us be the first-out of the gate with the recommended changes. we will be presenting later to the accessible parking what they can tell us about blue placards in los angeles city, los angeles county, san diego city, county, sacramento city, county. we can ask for that too. >> thank you. >> i did hear the stats for sacramento county once and it was similarly mind boggling. a lot of other cities have been struggling with this in

california. >> i just want to let you know that the vice chair of california commission on disability access and he has let me know that he's interested in what the commission's recommendations are going to be. that's a state body that is also taking a look at reck men recommendations that this advisory is putting forward. >> they gave us positive oral comments about our program. >> does anybody know what he thought of this program -- >> he likes it. >> let's open it up to public comment? any members of the public that would like to make any comments on item six? seeing none, public comment is closed. i'd just like to weigh in. i do like this. i like the fact -- one thing is -- about having to pay for the

meter space, that's only fair because it is the turnover ratio. it's almost as if, like, you know, there's -- being equal and especially on the turn overbecause i do see that abuse where people do park for a full week in handy cap zones and so it's street cleaning day and there are other people who would like to use that spot that can't and i know of some situations where people use it to park all day while they're at work and commute downtown and i just think that's unfair. and the turnover, if you have the turnover then you have more people coming and shopping and going to the businesses in the neighborhood so i personally support this measure. commissioners, do we have any recommendations? >> would anybody go along with

the idea of -- as we do put a policy or motion to approve this, would anybody go along with a suggestion on the end of the motion to ask them to consider increasing parking, adding parking facilities to the city to just relieve overall congestion? >> absolutely. >> i would. >> okay. i'm willing to make a motion to support this as it's being presented today, but i'd like to also include with that a recommendation that the sfmta and their part in this would revisit possibility of adding parking facilities in the city as part of the overall solution to the congestion problem, and that's my motion. >> i'll second it.

>> roll call. >> commissioner adams. >> i. >> commissioner dooley. >> i. >> commissioner dwight.. >> i. >> riley. >> i. >> commissioner white. >> i. commissioner ortiz-cartagena. the motion passes seven to zero. thank you very much.

you doing item number seven. >> review and discussion on recommendations on sfmta [inaudible]. >> thank you commissioners. just -- we have our ongoing matter regarding the sfmta and small business. the commission had a meeting on may 6 and, um, i want to appreciate director ed reskin for his continued interest to help serve our small businesses, but also how to do that with the mandate he has as well, being the director of sfmta. so two things are happening as a result of this, and that is from the small business leaders meeting t group that meets with the mayor quarterly, a working group is

being developed of the businesses to begin a discussion and dialogue with the sfmta and a meeting is scheduled for that in early november . thank you commissioner adams for reaching out to the sfmta chair of the board, so we are going to have a joint hearing with sfmta board and small business commission. majority of boards generally have some sort of -- they provide governance and direction to a regulatory agency so they have very specific things they work with like with the planning department, the planning code, the sfmta has their plan, the

[inaudible] policy. there's thing they work with that govern themselves by. the small business commission, you're an advisory body and so we don't necessarily have those kind of things delineated out so what i would like to do is take the opportunity for this commission to help us help you in preparation for the joint hearing on information that you may need, things that we might help formulate that we want to present to the sfmta board. this is just kind of a beginning structure of what to think and then we have our outreach committee meeting, which they can help work on some of these or start formulating and flushing and then we have our november meet /-ging and then a potential

proposed date for a joint hearing is early december. unfortunately later than that the sfmta is starting january they have all their mou's and every single mou with every employee entity is up for renewal in year that they have to get resolved before the budget season goes into budget season. so we're going to need to do this before the end of the year. you know, i any we'll be able to do it. i wanted to just recap on may 6 some recommendations that the commission had made after the hearing and one is the mayor appoints a small business owner to the sfmta board, the small business is a stake holder related to the bicycle advisory committee, pedestrian committee, walk sf livable

cities, require sfmta staff to meet with osb staff before initiating a project in a business area, require that sfmta staff come before the small business commission at the start of a project in a business district. the outreach needs to happen early in the design and development phase and dedicate staff to be a liaison to the business community. those are some of the recommendations. we can solidify those, continue to work on them, continue to expand on them. i put forward just kind of some list of questions that have come up through some discussions with the commission, committee, the council of district merchants with the small business leaders, with the mayor, various things, so i'll run through and i'm just going to read them through and we can

have a discussion on are these areas of interest you'd like to get more information before we have our joint hearing. how does the sfmta determine whether or not all means of the vehicular traffic can be accommodated on a street? is there a distinction of types of uses in the transit plan for residential streets and commercial streets? are traffic alterations codified in the transportation code prior to implementation of a plan? when the sfmta proposes the removal of parking meters how does it offset the loss in revenue. how are parking principles and goals applied when of types of business

activities in a project area? does it review the zoning for the areas and apply the principles of the master plan, which is the planning department's master plan, when designing a project area? how do they plan for the facilitation of commerce? does there need to be a thorough analysis of loading zones? and i think this is probably a citywide analysis. how loading zones are not utilized, how are deliveries made, types of delivery vehicles? types of delivery vehicles need to be in that completed in the information in the information development of design. census need to be done before the city takes steps in doing dedicated bike lanes, bicycle

tracks. need to help small businesses access loading zones so we have situations -- we had a recent situation with la cacina where they put in a loading zone in front of there, but because their businesses are small businesses, they don't have commercial vehicles or can't get commercial tags for their vehicles so therefore started getting ticketed. that is more of a state legislation, but, you know, i think part of the thing that we may want to present to the sfmta board is we would like to see some creative ideas and staff work on some solutions to help all of our small businesses. does the sfmta do an assessment or analysis of green zone use and the impact of removing the green zones when designing a project area. does there need to be