(calling roll). >> mr. chairman, you have a quorum. item 3, prohibition of sound producing items during the meeting. sound producing items are prohibited during the meeting. any person responsible for one going off in the room may be removed from the meeting. please be advised that cell phones set on vibrate do cause microphone interference so the board respectfully requests they be turned off. item 4, approval of the minutes of november 5, 2013 regular meeting.

>> all in favor say aye. thank you. >> item 5, communications. >> members of the board, ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to ask that the board today adjourn our meeting in memory of david forest. dave drove a taxicab for nearly 50 years for the city, first for desoto, later as a driver for the luxor company. at this time i'd like to ask director i'd like if you'd like to say a few words about mr. deforest. >> i'll be brief. dave deforest was a high school basketball star, he held a business degree, he held a degree in computing before anyone knew what computing was. this january 3rd he would have celebrated 50 years as a tax

driver, almost all of which he spent in the city of san francisco. i was privileged to know dave and through him i was privileged to know other great drivers at luxor who remember him as a kind and generous person who liked to smoke a big cigar. even younger drivers remember him who took the time to teach them the tricks of the trade. he will be affectionately remembered by a lot of people for many years to come. thank you for this opportunity to remember this ciefer. >> with members' consent we will adjourn the meeting in memory of mr. deforest. >> items 11 and 16 beth call for the board to take approval actions within the meaning of chapter 31 of the san francisco administrative code as it was amended by ordinance 161-13. as to each of these items the planning department has issued a determination that the items

are categorically exempt from the california quality act. the exemptions are posted on the planning department's web site. these exemptions determinations are subject to appeal within the time frame specified in the admin code section 31.16, which is typically 30 days. for information on filing an appeal a member of the public should contact the clerk of the board of supervisors in room 244 at city hall or by calling 415-554-5144. in a later challenge you may be limited to raising issues previously raised in a hearing on the item. >> i notice the cameras don't appear to be -- right here. >> all right, let's, we'll contact sfg-tv. there we go. okay, item 6, introduction of

new or unfinished business by board members. >> members of the board? >> thank you, on june 21 the policy and governance heard the polk street repaving pedestrian safety and safety improvements project and tag gave the staff feedback so we really prefer to see the options moved forward which have the greatest safety improvements. we clarified staff will be able to work on a block by block bases on parking plans to be sure specific business concerns are addressed. the 5 year pedestrian and bicycle injuries statistics are really chilling and we deserve the best so i'd like to ask with member consent when the polk street project comes to the board we have a pilot plan option similar to what's on the agenda ka for

folsom street. i think we really need to have a measurable way to determine what the impact will be on safety and on business and the best way to do that is with a reversible pilot project so with member consent i'd like to ask we have that. >> any other new or unfinished business, members of the board? seeing none. >> item 7, director's report. >> good afternoon, chairperson nolan, members of the board, staff and members of the public. three quick items to cover today, we have a big agenda. i did want to let you know that we successfully sold the $75 million worth of bonds last week, these are the bonds you had authorized a month or so previous. we had very strong interest both at the retail level which we opened up on november 13th and then at the institutional level. we had,

although we only had $75 million worth of bonds to sell, we had orders of more than $350 million dollars so a lot of folks eager to invest in the sfmta, which is great. so the market environment combined with that strong demand for the bonds resulted in a true interest cost of 3.8 percent and an all-in interest cost of 4 percent over 20 years, which equates to average annual debt service of about $6 million dollars, so it's as good as we could have hoped to have done with that bond sale, again reflecting the strong credit rating, the strong market and a clear desire of investors to invest in securities such as ours. with regard to the central subway, just wanted to mention we are making better progress than anticipated in terms of the tunneling, having hit as

much as 100 feet per day, sigtsly more -- significantly more than we had expected. it is possible we will be tunneling under market street this weekend. it's a pretty big milestone for us, there's still some vetting to be done to be sure we have the full sign off but so far all of the instrumentation and everything we've been evaluating suggests it's been working as designed and only happening better than anticipated in terms of schedule, so great news, big milestone for the central subway. if not this weekend it will likely happen soon thereafter. then finally, just for those who weren't able to attend and for the public and employees, we held our safe driver awards ceremony this past sunday up in the presidio and what the safe driver awards is is a program

to recognize the muni operators with 15 or more years of safe driving record. very pleased to be joined by our board chair as well as directors lee and ramos and this was an event we did collaboratively between the agency and local 258, the transport workers a union, the folks who represent our operators. we had 174 operators who were eligible for the award, six of whom had more than 35 years of safe driving with the mta, one of them i think had 41 years of safe driving with the mta, really phenomenal given the challenges we have here. we will be bringing some of those operators to our next meeting for this board for some public recognition but just wanted to acknowledge really the superior commitment and skill that so many of our operators have operating in san francisco.

we're happy to bring back this award program and it was something that we did again in conjunction with local 258 and i did want to thank the team that led on this, it was led by janice ewan from our communications group and included eric williams, mark deanda, lavinia, helen low so happy to have brought that back to the mta and that's something we will resume as an annual event from here forward and that concludes my report. >> thank you, director riskin. >> i know there was a chronicle article blaming us for the rat infestation. did we have an opportunity to talk to the board of public health to see if there's anything we can do. >> we have department of public

health approved rat abatement program. there are some things we do pre-emptively and the balance we do upon any evidence there is any such issue. we had not, before that hit the newspapers, from the public, the department of health or otherwise gotten any complaints and we checked and nor had the department of hub -- public health, but we immediately took steps to address this. i advised director kim and we will work with the department of public health to make sure we don't have any such consequences from our construction work. >> thank you. >> members of the board? thank you. >> mr. chairman, no one has turned in a secret card under this item. member s of the public who are standing or sitting on the floor do need to find a seat in accordance with the fire code specifications so people do need to get a seat,

please. item 8, citizens advisory council report, mr. murphy or mr. weaver is not here, so we will move on to item 9, public comment. it's an opportunity for member s of the public who make comment on items within the jurisdiction of the sfmta but not on today's calendar. member s of the public who are here to speak on an angendized item will be called when that item is called. first speaker, roland wong >> good afternoon, mr. wong

>> yes, i'm trying to get to it but the -- thank you. >> it's been a long time since i came to speak. today i'd like to compliment the new 5l folkton alliance. i think it's very great that we finally implemented a new service. as i used to -- well, i take the 38l and it's always congested so with the new 5l i got an alternative to make it easier for a lot of people. and the second item i'd like to bring up about the new fire busses, boarding on the new

fire busses are a great improvement from the previous low floor busses but ideally i'd like to see that we continue to improve the safety of passengers to be able to board on the sidewalks. that's all i have for now. okay, talk to you later. >> thank you, mr. wong >> christopher folkerson, followed by michael katrellis. >> good afternoon, mr. folkerson. >> good afternoon, board members, in item 13 i'd like it speak about the needs we have in the taxi dispatch proposed for this item, i'd like to speak about the situation we actually have. i'd like to apprise you of the fact the taxi tronic is far less

accurate than our worst case scenario of what it might be. i'm not able to even get all my waybills off it and of four waybills away, just in four waybills that i've been able to find, i'm being overcharged, it's being claimed i made $51,000 more than i have, just in 4 shifts. one waybill 100 pages long claims i made $30,000 one night. taxitronic is completely out of control, they cannot be relied upon under any circumstances. their administration is slow to respond, the ship's log itself has errors, it will say on a given night i drove 15 hours. you look at the waybill itself, if it happens to be accurate it says i worked 9 or 10 hours. you can't sign out which leaves

you subject to hacking. fly wheel has pretty bizarre policies of punishing its customers, the drivers, whereas with taxi magic it is standard to send an order on. adding 5 minutes is not thought to be unusual, fly wheel will book us off for 5 hours for losing 3 minutes. >> michael katrellis, followed by cory lamb. >> hello, my name is michael katrellis, i'm a blogger and i'm also a renter and an affordable housing advocate. the reason why i'm here today has to do with the messages that get put up on the headers of muni busses. right now a lot of them say go giants, go niners, a lot of sports teams,

cheering them on. in july i inquired with paul rose about what the written procedures are to get a message to appear on those headers because i wanted it to say, housing for all. i have printed out the emails from july between me and paul rose about this matter and i still have nothing in hand. paul has written to me saying there are no written procedures about how one gets a message to appear at the front of the busses. i find it very odd and unacceptable that million-dollar sports franchises who have plenty of money for advertising can use the public busses it get their messages out. there have also been messages for equality for all for gay people and also after the tragedy in boston we stand with boston. well, how does one get those

messages up there? i'd like access to that public part of muni. i've printed out these emails which i'm going to give to tom nolan, and i ask that you share it with your colleagues. i don't think it's okay that after 3 1/2 months of filing public information requests, public records requests, and other emails that i still don't have anything in hand about how you decided who gets access to the headers. i ask that you look into this. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> cory lamb, followed by karen mccoy >> good afternoon, mr. lamb. >> good afternoon, director, my name is corey lamb like the

sheep. i would like it talk about the massive increase in the number of busses for approval, and others that go down to san jose. the traffic they create when they pull over to the bus zone does not allow for accessible services for my passengers, sometimes i let them off because of being blocked by the big busses, they take their time when everyone is getting their laptops together. i think it would help muni although we don't want people in their cars to talk about the bus service about how to speed up their service somewhat. 18th and castro is not the area to have the area blocked by two busses. i work castro a lot and it's really hairy when you have people jumping out of busses and trying to get into taxis

and i'm afraid we're going to have a severe accident there. the other thing i was talking about there was a service that popped up that wanted to mirror one of the muni lines up and down van ness. that seems like a revenue source for the dpt to cite every time they are double parked or pull up into a bus zone. >> karen mccoy, followed by charles rathbone. okay, charles rathbone, followed by eric williams and then ed healy. >> good afternoon, commissioners, charles rathbone, dave deforest worked at luxor cab, a very long career, we were grateful to have his services. dave was much loved and much missed and your comments, director and the

kind comments of miss hiashi are much appreciated. >> eric williams and then ed healy and then han sue kim. >> good afternoon, board members, director ruskin. i want to thank you for putting on the event sunday. as you very well know operators have been taking the brunt of the ridicule about the system for many, many years. i have expressed this to ed, many people, anybody that has anything to do with the sfmta that we need to regain at any cost the image that we're doing out there, the hard work they are putting in day in and day out, the men and women should be recognized. and we're not asking for anything special. but if we're talking about building morale, we're talking about having employees ready

and willing to come to work, it's a good thing. like i said at the event, sports events, after the game, everybody gets a game ball. no matter what office you go into, they have those recognitions of employees who stand out. it helps, trust me. it's only been two days, i've got a number of different phone calls from members wishing that they had came but one reason they didn't come was they wanted to make sure they were at work come monday morning. that says a lot and that message needs to be translated to the public and from me to you and the public that we're not just going to sit back and be scrutinized and labeled as the problem child of this system. we have a number of good employees out there working this system. like any profession you have a bad apple, that's part of it. but

the majority of us, we're out there working hard and i say thank you again to ed and ed, i know you mentioned by miss robin courtny, she did a wonderful job on that team. >> next speaker, please. >> ed healy, followed by han sue kim. those are the last people who have followed in a card for public comment. >> i would like to echo chris on the first part of his talk. i don't know if you read my blog, but from my blog you can get a great deal of research he has done showing the inaccuracy of the veriphone system. however, i don't know why he's trashing fly wheel since i get 10 rides every night and no no-goes. fly wheel, the management has agreed to stop this practice, i guess i'm going to have to have a talk with them again. otherwise it's an excellent system. i

think the veriphone is the main issue . >> next speaker, please. >> han sue kim. >> good afternoon, chairman nolan, fellow directors, han sue kim. i want to bring up again the problem the industry is facing, it is a real existential moment right now. there are now, there is now an open entry system where anyone without licensing can take their personal car and act like a commercial vehicle for hire. that is a fact. right now drivers for taxicabs are drying up. i've never seen in the 15 years i've been involved in taxi issues a shortage of drivers on the busiest nights? why is that? drivers are feeling why do i want to go through the expense and time-consuming aspect of getting a public passenger

vehicle license when i can basically take my perm car and start picking people up like a commercial vehicle driver? this is a serious problem that is going to threaten the medallion system. if companies like mine are actually going to soon say why am i paying up to $2500 for the use of a medallion if i can get a state tcp license or state new tnp license put vehicles charge for rides, put as many cars as i want, this is going to move in this direction if we don't do something about this. as a matter of fact, this is not like what i would call hitchhiking dot com. when you do not set standards for who can pick up the public, criminality will follow. this industry needs to be tightly regulated in terms of the type of vehicles, the inspections on vehicles, when we just look the other way here, the industry will collapse and it's starting

to do that now. i truly believe the industry still can be saved and can be recovered but when there's an open entry now to anyone picking up the public as a public passenger vehicle, it is an existential moment for the taxi industry. thank you. >> howard strassner. >> good afternoon, director, howard strassner, i want to continue where we left off a couple months ago about the history of parking in san francisco. so we go back to 1955 and people came to the board of supervisors and they said, gosh, all these buildings are being built in my neighborhood and they're not providing parking and that's going to take my slot that i've enjoyed for many years at the curb. supervisors said, we'll change the law so we'll require this parking. so as we good along we have to look back 50, 60 years and say was that a wise decision? how much of

what they decided then is causing the housing shortage and the affordability shortage we have now. we don't build anything because we have to provide the garages first and that should influence everything you guys do, too. we wanted, when we wrote prop e we wanted a board that was not, could not be voted on, would be wise, would look ahead 50 years and make all the right decisions. we wanted a kind of platonic board, but the wisest, the best, who would do the right thing. okay, so even that's long ago, that wasn't enough. so then they went on and they found they could have residential permit parking and they needed that. oh, that's great, let's do that. somehow this passed the supreme court and here we are in a time where we're trying to grant, recover people's rights, rights due to gender problems, race and all that, but the right of address is so supreme that you get a

right essentially for a free parking place nearly in front of your house because you happen to have the right address. well, that needs to be reconsidered, i think. it's time. what is the purpose of this thing? we bend over backwards in all these things and people get their parking spot and the next thick -- thing they do they use their car and there's that bus in the bus zone and all that. >> last speaker, jim mitchell. mr. mitchell here? >> are you mr. mitchell? >> mr. mitchell? >> please come forward. good afternoon, mr. mitchell. >> good afternoon, my name is

jim mitchell, my company is j mitchell group in san francisco. i've been an lbe for 21 years in this city and i came today to get paid. i was a subcontractor for 13 years on your worker's compensation program. i have an outstanding invoice of $66,000 that you guys have done an investigation on and found out that the crime was in noncompliance of 14b. that amount totals $18 million in contracts over 13 years, of which i was the subcontractor. the 5 percent goal was not met. yet and still in your investigation you saw fit to find out that the $800 million a year contractor who had the contract was i