shocked earlier in the fall when the department of public health e-mailed to me a copy of the rsp to outsource dialysi s. it had never been discussed or voted on by the full health commission. indeed it had only been discussed at a health commission subcommittee and the joint conference committee which is com posed of several health commissioners and senior managers at sfgh i worked with some of the ucsf staff who staffed the renal center at

supervisor cam pos's hearing was in front of the neighborhood services and safety committee and supervisor campos asked roland pick ens chief operating officer if it had been voted on by the health commission. it was never discussed at the full health commission, they never took a vote on it. most of the

speakers during that october 17th hearing i should say all 40 of them opposed moving dialysis because of the burdens of the patients to face longer transportation times. places a huge burden on them. >> thank you mr. monnet. your 3 minutes has passed. >> thank you. >> next i have mr. robert fitch. >> hello. thank you for having me here. i am with the city college disabled students programs and services and i know you are aware of all of

the stuff involved with a creditation but even on a statewide level as it relates to seniors and people with disabilities. trying to redefine the purpose of community colleges narrowly pretty much wiping out all of the people who go for a class or two the classes for disabled students and older adults programs particularly the ones that are offered out in the community places like the arc and senior center etc.. one of the members of that task force went on to write a state law that got through the senate and luckily stalled in the assembly

rationing classes specifically nutrition and exercise classes foreseen i , seniors because it wasn't academic enough so there's an ugly force going on in the state to really really cut back on services for our aging population which is pretty ironic since we're probably all going to age. >> thank you mr. fitch. >> next item on the agenda is -- do we ask questions of speakers at the public comment? >> all right, well first we'll

start with star then. oh that's a mistake. okay. >> this is such an important issue i wanted to ask a couple of questions if i may. have you heard anything since supervisor campos's hearing regard burdens on their transportation issues and is a survey of all dialysis patient 's that are being treated -- have you learned anything about whether space may be potentially available to keep dialysis right at sf general hospital. >> i appreciate that. the dph

had not explored all options they also neglected to do any kind of patient satisfaction survey to ask the very dialysis patients who have had those increasing burdens on their care. i heard at the hearing that mr. pick ens may had been interviewing dialysis patients in person so. they were not going to do a written survey. either they were going to choose which patients to interview or whether they were going to offer all of them oral interviews. initially dph told

me that they would respond to my records request by next wednesday, november 20th then i got a subsequent e-mail from dph that said mr. pick ens is out until the 19th and he needed sometime after he returned and that quote -- you will receive a response at the earliest possible date end quote without specifying when i might get an answer or be provided with a survey instrument. i recommend that this counsel work with supervisor campos to follow up with the health department to find out how sfgh is going to conduct the transportation survey whether in writing or orally and how many of the dialysis patients will be asked to participate in the survey and to your second question

tatiana, regarding space on sfgh's campus i sent another records request. i was provided with 4 documents that show the current entities that are in building 100 which is where the renal center is currently located and a chart showing by floor number and wing or ward of the building, the current entities in building five which is the current main hospital that will eventually move into the new sfgh when construction is complete. in addition, they sent me 2 documents showing what would happen with the space being vacanted in both

building five the main hospital and building 100 and it appears to my un trained eyes that there is plenty of space in building 5 which is far more seismic ly safe than the location in lag u.n. a, honda which they proposed putting it which is in the old building and there's a number of issues with that section of the building that are mentioned in both the article that i just had published and if you go online to my website, www- lhh-downsize.com it's all one word you will see the links of the recent articles i've published in the last 2 months describing in detail why laguna

honda is not a good location for placing dialysi s. i've requested a follow up hearing to ask sfgh where they intend to place dialysis and to follow up on the survey instrument and i really encourage you to consider adding this onto your future meeting agendas as a follow up because these are some of the sickest most vulnerable patients in the city. thank you >> thank you very much. >> councilmember zarda. >> thank you i should have a follow-up question to the gentleman from -- if that would be okay. i was curious about

just how exactly people in the community can find out more information about this situation because i myself was caught unaware. >> i would communicate with you and ilrc would be probably the most direct. there's pending legislation -- let me backup -- city college serves the adult ed function we call the non credit classes used to be school districts offered adult ed so adult ed was shrinking statewide. but that is changing as different forces are trying to shrink the mission and the legislation that's being put forward is about creating local

consortiums and what's good figure san francisco is going for ring which we know is kind of bizarre. i'd be happy to come back to another meeting and make a longer presentation. >> please do. i'll make my information available to you. >> thank you. >> councilmember wong and then we'll move on. >> yes the update on the dialysis at laguna honda if they are going to continue that service. my concern is how do the consumers get to the hospital because currently the shuttle service from forest hills station to laguna honda is at the new location the new

hospital facilities so that becomes like another situation that, you know, how people will be able to get to laguna honda at the old building so that's going to need to be addressed in the future if they are going to have dial ysis people you know needing the service up there so to kind of put it on record that that needs to be addressed if it's going to happen. thank you. >> may i address mr. wong's point briefly. >> very briefly. >> when they designed the new passive pavillion building there was room so we wouldn't have the reverse situation of having to transport lhh

patients to sfgh they ordered the equipment and it was delivered. it hasn't been installed and both the disability counsel and the board of supervisors should really mount an ininquiry inquiry why lhh patients are still burdened going to sfgh for their dial ysis. >> next a report from the chair. i just have 2 quick items. yes? by all means i just didn't realize. >> i just wanted to make a quick announcement to all of you and to other people who may be here watching that next thursday november 21 st there's

a hearing about food security and food access in san francisco this hasn't come up yet today, has it? okay good. so this of course is a critical issue to people with disabilitied in san francisco. we had senior disability action that had done a lot of work where there's a lot of issues where people may not have and may not be allowed to have microwaves and refrigerators and not real cooking facilities in room and see lack of community kitchens don't exist or they are not open and clean and useable and so many people on ssi who can't afford rent and food and i hope that some of you are planning to attend and you may want to join us thursday around 10 o'clock

somewhere around the second floor. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay back to my report. i've become aware of a piece of legislation and this is close to my heart because i'm chair of the disability disaster preparedness committee. but any way, ab 918 went through the legislation this summer and it's the counsel of emergency services act which sets forth the duties of the office of emergency services with respect to emergency preparedness response activities within the state. this bill would require that the state update the state emergency plan to include proposed best practices for local government and non governmental entities to use mobilize and have evacuate

people with disabilities during a disaster. we'll be discussing the counsel's housing resolution and i want to announce i received a signed letter in support of the housing resolution and we're actively seeking others to do the same. >> thank you. >> next is a report from the director. >> thank you so much co-chair and co-chair wilson and councilmembers. i wanted to start my directors report today with an update on an early er request for an investigation to be performed by the mayor's office and the counsel had

discussions about this request over the last 2 meetings in september and october and the counsel also further discussed this matter at the 2 executive committee meetings that followed and the process and the timing for co-chair elections was really the catalyst to start these discussions, but i think that catalyst was really an excellent opportunity for the counsel to have a broader discussion about good government rules and the issues that were raised at those meetings really focus more upon communications between individual councilmembers but also communications between the councilmembers and the mayor's office on disability and they had questions about the good government rules that apply to discussions that take place outside of counsel meetings and i responded to those questions

by scheduling a special training -- there's a briefing that's given by our city attorney at our last committee executive meeting held in october and i believe that training provided some very clear guidance about the rules that apply to passive bodies like the mayor's disability counsel and what we learned from that training is that the counsel actually has a lot of flexibility much more so than some of the other counsels and boards and commissions that we all work with here in the city and i hope that the training left the counsel with the confidence that as a passive body they have the opportunity to talk to each other outside of counsel meetings and the mayor's office did respond to the co-chair's request for an investigation by asking the

general services agency who is under the city addadministrator to hold interviews as necessary and i wish to report that the mayor's office has completed this investigation and now consider this matter closed and along with that though gsa has committed to being an ongoing resource for the counsel and plan to circle back and check in come december. my next topic that i'd like to address is elevators and in san francisco given that we're such a dense urban environment with all of our buildings going up instead of out elevators are really what it takes to make an skeshl accessible home. and many may have seen an article in the kron c h.r. onicle about

a week ago. what we learned in that article is the housing like many buildings has been having a hard time maintaining their elevators and these properties are affordable housing and by definition what we find in terms of of the population living in the buildings a high rate of older adults and people who are living with disabilities so when an elevator goes out for an hour or day or week what happens is people are either trapped in their homes or trapped outside of their homes but not able to go to the store

or appointments or to visit or to engage so an elevator out age really has a big effect on people. by raising this issue i'm not trying to single out the housing authority because the housing authority is really just one example of a property owner that is faced with this problem. what we have in san francisco besides multistory building is a lot of older building and the average life span of an elevator is about 35 years and many of our buildings are much older than that and you will see this problem with elevators is repeated in privately owned buildings as well as publicly owned buildings and the challenge to try to find the funding for elevator replacements is really what's coming up and i raise

this issue because i think that elevator repair and replacement is rapidly becoming the next big issue for the disability committee and i know the counsel understand this because this is one of the pieces you included in your housing resolution but i wanted to give you an opportunity to know about a meeting that is coming up. you heard jessica here talking about a meeting next thursday that is addressing food security, but there is another meeting that same day on thursday that's a special meeting to talk about elevators and seniors and people with disabilities who live in single room occupy ancy hotels the time is 3 to 5 p.m. the location is the department of

aging and adult services office, 1650 mission street. and we hope that some of you may be able to join that discussion next week. i have another announcement to make today, too, as i think many of the councilmembers may recall i served as one of the chairs on the accessible parking advisory committee and our councilmember wong was also a member and it was made up largely of people with disabilities and we met for 6 months starting last october and we completed our work in march and our work consisted of issuing a set of recommendations that we believe will increase the access for people with disabilities to the parking that they need when and

where they need it. well, those recommendations are kind of broad, you know, more enforcement and they do include an option to remove the meter exemption in cities that have an accessible parking infrastructure in place where you have multiple ways of feeding a meter. and over the last few months there's been a team of us doing extensive outreach and jessie lorenz and myself and we've given now 21 presentations about more than half of those were to disability specific

groups including this body and the mayor's disability counsel and the accessibility committee long-term care coordinating counsel and independent living resource center we've been to a couple of public pour you forums that included the democratic club and we've been gathering public comment which is being documented as if it were an environmental impact report and i'm giving you this background and updates letting you know these recommendations are moving towards the next step and the next step would be a hearing or agenda item on the san francisco municipal transportation agency's agenda next tuesday and next tuesday is november 21 st and what we

are asking the smmta to do is consider a resolution supporting these recommendations it would be wonderful if people who either support or even people who don't support, would be able to attend the next sfmta meeting on tuesday november 19th it's actually going to be here in room 400 city hall the meeting starts at one o'clock i don't have anything more accurate about the time on that just yet because i hadn't seen the agenda before we left but we hope you can attend because like i said whether you support it or have comments all of the information we've heard coming from the community has been very constructive and i think this is an opportunity for your voice to be heard and for your recommendations to be heard.

so my last announcement is a quick one 2 weeks ago supervisor eric mar wants to hold a hearing in front of the board of supervisors that hearing hasn't been scheduled with a fixed date yet right now our best estimate is in january but i am prepared to give you updates as its announces so that you will know and have the opportunity to come. and many people might not be aware that the civil service submission here in san francisco has a provision called civil service commission rule 115. the program defines an alternative process through which individuals with severe disabilities can join the

city's permanent workforce without going through the standard civil service examination process and some of you may or may not be aware that actually i became disabled on the job working for the city and county of san francisco 20 years ago and this civil service rule was the mechanism that allowed me to make my transition to my new job as a building inspect tore so the city's efforts to hire and retain people with disabilities and an opportunity to encourage the city to do more in that area and as soon as i know i'll send an e-mail so you will have an opportunity to participate if that's something that interests you i thank you for your attention to my director's

report and at this point i'd like to turnover the microphone and she would like to tell you about some of the trends that she's seen in these last few months so thank you. >> good afternoon councilmembers. in september and october our office received about 270 inquiries about 85 percent of these inquiries were from the public and 15 percent from city departments. we received 8 compliants 22 curb ramp requests and 22 for accommodations. we believe it was due to a flyer that was mailed by the department of public works informing the public about the curb ramp request program. >> and the make an mayor's office on disability