particularly seen over the last two week of the holidays is a serious wake-up call to the city in terms of what is our commitment to making this city a safer place. we know that you are more likely to be hit if you are a child, if you are a senior, if you are low-income. this is an important public safety issue for everyone and we also know that this is an equity issue. and i think there are three things that our office will be looking at along with several of my colleagues here on the board who i know will be speaking after me about what we can do. number one, we must look at fully investing and funding the pedestrian strategy. this is not just an issue policy. this is an issue of life and death and critical injuries here in the city that are absolutely preventable. there are so many ways to go in the city, but this is the one that is 100% avoidable and 100% preventable. and often made by reckless driving that could have been prevented just by yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalk or turning carefully when making right or left turns. i think it's also important as

we look at driver education and r. of course street redesigns of our most dangerous enter seconds that we also think about what we are doing regarding enforcement ~ of bad driving behaviors. and working with those sfpd and the district attorney to make sure that we are also enforcing minor infractions to change behavior, acknowledging that we live in a city where we share the road with cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers. as our city continues to grow in density, particularly in the eastern half of the city, i think there will be more pedestrians, more drivers and more cyclists on the road and we have to learn how to share that together. new york city has recently announced a zero tolerance campaign to end all pedestrian fatalities by 2021. nothing make these numbers more real than attending the memorial services of the victims who have passed and meeting friends and families

who are mourning their loss whether it is ms. mulak, mr. lie, mr. lasi, and ms. lou. there is a big commitment i would like to make to ensure that we are continuing our efforts and i look forward to working with my colleagues. i do want to, if possible, defer both to supervisor avalos and president chiu so that we can talk about this issue. thank you. and the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor kim. >> colleagues, if i could without objection, proceed to -- a number of us have had a number of pedestrian facilities in our districts and i know there are others that would like to make comments on this subject. i would like to recognize supervisor avalos and at least supervisors mar and yee would like to speak on this topic. if we could proceed to that conversation and go back to our normal roll call. [speaker not understood]. >> while we see a concentration

of pedestrian facilities in i would say district 6, the tenderloin, south of market where we've seen also a lot of bike fatalities from collisions with cars, cars colliding into bikes, that it is a city-wide problem and it's becoming almost hep dim i can in its nature in the city. on new year's day, the same day that the young girl lost her life, district 11 resident also lost his life on the corner of rolph and naples in the crocker amazon neighborhood. mr. zeng was walking along the intersection of rolph and naples, was hit at 3:30 in the afternoon, broad daylight, but a driver who had failed to stop at a stop light. i do believe that we need to have a real investment in our pedestrian strategy. we have to have investments in enforcement and we have to have real investment as well in driver education.

and i fully support what's been proposed by supervisor kim. i'm sure other supervisors as well that we have a zero tolerance like they have established in new york city so that we can actually look forward to a year where we have zero fa salts from cars hitting pedestrians. ~ fatalities so much work has to be done and as a city we truly have to put our resource he to improve the streets for the most vulnerable people who are on them. those are the pedestrians. and i do want to also acknowledge what supervisor kim has mentioned, that the people who are most at risk and most vulnerable are people who are seniors and people and children. the man who lost his life in my district was 86 years old, had lived a long life. at 86 you would expect you would be able to live at that age to natural causes take your life away, not a car. and, so, colleagues, i look forward to all of us working

together on how to make this city safer and acknowledging the lives that we have to save and the lives we lose clearly because we don't have the stamped ardx in place we need to have to protect pedestrians. >> thank you, supervisor. colleagues, i would like to join supervisors kim and avalos in recognizing a constitch went in my district who passed over the christmas holiday. isabelle hughey who was an incredible activist and dedicated her life to serving our community. isabelle passed away after being struck by a speeding caron jackson street in chinatown at the age of 84. she was born and raised in san francisco, attend [speaker not understood] in san francisco and city college, her long career in public service included working for a number of it nonprofit organizations in chinatown including the chinatown english language center, chinese for affirmative action and the northeast community federal credit union. she served on the commission on the status of women, the state employment service board and [speaker not understood] rights

commission. after retirement she remained active on civic issues with her recent commitment to helping to support the building of the chinatown north beach city college campus in the heart of my district. over the span of 30 years, she served on 20 boards and committees dedicated to i am riching the economic, social, and political welfare of individuals in our community. on behalf of the city, i want to offer our condolances to isabelle's family, her husband george, her children georgette, tina, jeanette, tommy and nancy. she will be missed dearly. there will be a remembrance service on sunday, january 12, at 3:00 p.m. at the hie presbyterian church and in lieu of flowers the family requests contributions be made to chinese for affirmative action. and let me also just add my voice. our city is incredibly -- we have had a tragic season by the losses of so many of our

constitch wenttionv ~ constituents. and this is a reminder we cannot wait to do more to protect pedestrians [speaker not understood]. according to sfmta2 people are killed or severely injured every week walking our streets and older people are most vulnerable to be killed or injured. [speaker not understood] account for all trauma cases seen at sf general. half of pedestrian fatalities are deaths. we have implemented 12 miles of pedestrian safety improvements, this is not enough. the last couple weeks has been an enormous wake-up call for our entire city. we can do better and i know that all of us are dedicated to working with sfmta and other agencies to making sure that we are significantly attacking this problem. and we need to do this so that we do right by isabelle, we do right by sophia, we do right by

all the victims to tragic deaths on our street. so, with that i'd like to recognize supervisor mar. >> thank you, president chiu. my deepest condolances also to mr. zen [speaker not understood], mr. donald and his family and friends, and michael [speaker not understood] as well. i wanted to add on what president chiu just said. isabelle hughey was a good friend of mine. i met her in the early '80s when i first started as an activist in chinatown and she was with chinese for affirmative action. she was an incredibly beautiful and warm and effective community leader. i really -- every time i saw her, i had a smile on my face because i knew she is a living example of committing her life to making the community not just chinatown, but many communities a better place for everyone. her commitment to civil rights and a better life for so many immigrants was really commendable. she spent much of her weekends

as well in the richmond district with many others registering chinese american residents and voters and. she used her cantonese skill to give voice and empower chinese americans and other immigrants. i know recently ~ with henry dur from the richmond, [speaker not understood] and others, she helped build friends of educational opportunities in chinatown to support our new chinatown north beach college campus and dedicated her life to key issues that improved our communities. i also wanted to say that she was a mentor to many, many others, including me. and i think her legacy lives on in the many people that she supported, but also that she mentored in our community. and i hope people show up to her memorial. it will be a community memorial also acknowledging her work with many organizations at 3:00 p.m. on sunday, january 12, at the presbyterian church as president chiu mentioned.

i also wanted to say that given the death in the deadly december that we just faced, that sophia lou would have been 7 years old today. it was her birthday, according to her mother, and the harm of juan lou, the mom, and her little tiny brother anthony, it's horrifying, the experience that that family must have gone through. and as a dad, i can't imagine the loss of my daughter at such a young age. so, i express my deepest sadness and condolances to the family and the whole sherman elementary school community as well from teacher janet coupsctionv who started the effort to raise some funds for the family ~ to the whole sherman elementary community as well. ~ coons. i hope we support with the you caring.org for the sophia memorial. i just wanted to add that there is a connection with uber and ride sharing companies with the

lou spaeerctionv and the hitting of the mom and young brother as well. and i just wanted to say that today i'll be looking closely with my office at the various factors of the regulation of new -- this new so-called ride sharing private sector companies like uber side car and lift so that we can understand more of what the legal liabilities and regulations should be in a city like ours. with the rise of ride sharing services, i think it's really critical that we look at public safety in this era of new industries emerging. there are questions that some have raised if the driver -- and i'll just say that i'll wait for the facts to come out, but companies like uber have been slow to answer questions after the incident happened. and while private ride sharing services can play an important role in under served areas like the west side and the richmond, i think public safety really

shouldn't be driven by an unchecked free market. so, the horrible killing of sophie lou and injuring of the lou family and many of the concerns raised by community residents, i think we have to look at not allowing companies to play by their own rules and look more carefully at how corporate liability and legal rules should be established for this new sector. we have to make our streets safer, as supervisor kim and president chiu have said. i also recognize that this new sector -- private sector of ride sharing also can provide better service to some poorly served areas, but i want to make sure that residents have an opportunity to weigh in on thises as we as a city look in with the hearing that i'm calling to come up with public safety regulations that help with this situation. and i know you've asked us to talk about the in memoriams. i'll say those are my items or

introduction and the rest i'll submit. >> thank you, supervisor mar. i want to recognize supervisor yee who requested to speak as well. >> thank you, president chiu. i also want to add myself to the list of people that send condolances to the families that's been impacted. ~ recently. basically, i've seen this was a horrible year. it started as a horrible year with the 8 that got killed by vehicles being in district 7. and regardless of whose district, we shouldn't be talking about our district. excuse me. this is a city-wide issue and we need to tackle it as a

city-wide issue, not district issue. i, too, been a friend of isabelle hughey over four decades and seen her work throughout those decades. not only from the places she worked, but also sitting on various boards and organizations. i hope that we all could ask people to support the lou family in terms of helping them with their financial difficulties to deal with this situation. i think the sherman school is collecting funds, as supervisor mar mentioned. as i mentioned at the beginning of the year, this issue was already important to me. one of the things i never talked about -- actually, my

grand to they are got killed by a car, too. so, i started this year really focusing on capital improvements to make our streets as safe as possible. and the other pieces that supervisor kim has mentioned, we need to be more aggressive in this city. it's one thing to try to have traffic calming. but if enforcement is not there, it's not going to work and we just need to raise our level of enforcement. at the same time, when we talk about education there is two folds for me. a lot of times when people talk about education they're talking about pedestrian education as if it's pedestrians on purpose walk out in the middle of the

street to get run over or something. and i think we need to spend more time on figuring out what the best method for us to do driver education and take it more seriously. i'm happy to -- i'm thankful that supervisor campos is having a hearing on this, i believe a joint hearing. is it joint? yeah, so, and it's next week, i believe, so, i'm hoping that others can join us and really put our heads together to think of as many of these solutions as we can to solve this. i really -- we all need to put our heads together so that we don't see all the bad accidents that we've seen not only this year -- this past year, but in previous years. thank you very much. >> thank you, supervisor. supervisor wiener. >> thank you. and i want to thank colleagues for doing this in memoriam, in

memoria for these victims. i think the point that several colleagues have made are very important and we need to not lose sight of, and that is that we need to do things differently in this city when it comes to pedestrian safety. and the good part is we know exactly what we need to do and we need to have political will to do it and make sure our city departments are doing it. we have a pedestrian safety strategy. we know from the mayor's strategy, from this board's better streets plan, and from the 70% of voters that passed prop b, that doing physical improvements to our streets to make them safer is a top, top priority. every policy maker that weighed in in this city, that includes shorter crossing distances through build outs and other improvements to have safer streets.

and we know what we need to do. and we finally have the funding to do it and we have -- everything is in place to be putting these projects forward. and unfortunately it seem that with each project, even just improving one intersection, it's a constant struggle. it takes too long. different city departments, they don't coordinate with each other. mid level people in the department will make a decision that can kill the whole project and escalate it. they're constantly walking on eggshells and the projects are constantly at risk of just falling off of the track and dying or getting severely watered down. and he we need to change that. supervisor yee and i sponsored legislation last year to try to improve the process for implementing and improving pedestrian safety projects. it was very good legislation, but we continue to see projects that get delayed, that get watered down, that don't move

forward at all. and it's incumbent on all of us -- it's a city-wide issue, but i think it's incumbent on all of us as elected supervisors to be very, very engaged in every safety project in our district and to make sure that when something bureaucratickally happens that we're there to help pull it back [speaker not understood] because it is so important. i also agree, it is remarkable how little traffic enforcement we have in san francisco. i mean, it's actually astounding. i, like a number of people here, we've lived in different parts of the country. i've never been in a place with less traffic enforcement than in this city. and i'm not being critical of the police department. the department is short staffed at 300 officers. there are a lot of demands on the department. but as the department staff is up again, we're doing three academy classes a year. as the staff is up, we need to work closely with the police department to make sure the

department is doing more consistent traffic enforcement. the people think they're not going to get a ticket or moving violation, people aren't going to comply. it's just human nature. people need to understand they're going to get a ticket and moving infraction and we need to make sure that happens. these tragedies are all avoidable, as supervisor kim mentioned. every single one is avoidable and we need to do our part as a city family to make sure that we have all the pieces in place to have safer streets. >> supervisor breed. >> thank you. i just wanted to add my 2 cents to the situation. we all i know cared very deeply about making major changes to our city for pedestrian safety at one time or another. we all are going to be pedestrians and i'm sure ~ -- i've had my -- or i'm sure many of you may have had your near misses stepping off onto the

curb and people are turning around and moving in the city fast, everyone is in a hour and i things are moving so quickly. ultimately i think we have an enforcement problem. and i notice when there was a time in my area where i live where we had some consistent enforcement, not every single day, but a couple months ago it happened on a regular basis and i noticed a change in behavior. there was a change in behavior from motorists and they were a change in behavior from bicyclists. and i haven't seen those officers recently giving tickets because, of course, we all know they're limited and they're all over the city and they go where the hot spots are. but it does make a difference. enforcement changes people's behavior and we need to as a city get more aggressive with providing the resources necessary to ticket motorists who are breaking the law.

ultimately, sadly, these vehicles, you know, people who -- i don't think people are intentionally, you know, doing things to harm people, but vehicles are weapons. vehicles do kill people. intentional or not. and it is important that we make sure that the enforcement to obey the law, which is to protect us all, is out there. and, so, i just think stepping up significant support to where the police department provides more officers in the traffic division of our city could really help and focusing on those hot spots where we tend to have a lot of problems. and i definitely think that that would make a significant difference. it's already made a difference where we have a camera where people are getting tickets in the mail on market and octavia for running that light. it's already making a difference in people's behavior when they enter into the

freeway. those left turns that used to happen, those left turns are not happening in the same capacity as they once were because people know that they will get a ticket. so, i think san francisco needs to step up aggressively in its enforcement arena so that we can make sure that folks behave appropriately, along with a lot of the other things that have been mentioned here today. but i do think enforcement is key to the success of making sure that we're protecting people on the road. thank you. >> supervisor campos. >> thank you, president chiu. and i want to thank my colleagues for all their comments. it's not how i certainly want to start the year, you know, our first board meeting of 2014 to be talking about this. but it's the sad reality that he we face as a city. and i want to thank my colleagues for their comments.

i especially want to acknowledge the work that supervisor kim, supervisor yee, and others have been doing on this issue. as supervisor yee alluded to, we actually held a hearing on this issue that was called for by supervisor kim a few months back. and at the time the issue that became clear as a key issue to address this problem, this epidemic, is the issue of enforcement, which is why a number of us wanted to have a joint hearing with the policy oversight body of the police department, the san francisco police commission. and i just want to note that following up on that, on thursday, january 16th, we will be holding a special joint meeting of the board of supervisors, neighborhood services, and safety committee with the police commission from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., starting at

5:00 in these chambers so that we can have a frank discussion not only of the additional resources, but also what else can be done by the police department to deal with the issue of enforcement. so, the rest -- i just want to say that, you know, our hearts i think for all of us go out to these families. i mean, there's no justification for any of this. thank you. >> thank you. supervisor. colleagues, that concludes comments on pedestrian safety, i'd like to just ask if we could do without objection all the in memoriams on behalf thev entire board. without objection that shall be the case. [gavel] >> madam clerk, if we can go back to our regular ~ for roll call. >> thank you, mr. president. supervisor mar has already submitted his items so we will move to supervisor wiener. >> thank you, madam clerk. today i'm introducing a request

for an oversight hearing and my co-sponsor on this hearing request is supervisor cohen to delve into the issue of code enforcement relating to buildings in san francisco. and i should say code enforcement or lack thereof. we have many, many buildings in this city and this is really a city-wide issue, but there are some neighborhoods that are more impacted than others where we have buildings that are [speaker not understood] in awful condition, dilapidated, some time missing entire portionses of the building, construction project that started and stopped years and years ago, situations where we have severe hoarding creating a fire hazard. and it seems that sometimes these issues just linger. sometimes maybe a notice of violation is issued, but then there is not sufficient

follow-up and we've seen i know in my district some very, very bad situations that until our office got involved to bring departments together, we had a dangerous conditions that were lingering and not much was happening. we need improved coordination among departments. we need more willingness to go into enforcement when appropriate. and i think we just need to learn from our city departments what their strategy is, how they make decisions about when to enforce, when not to enforce, why they make some of these decisions, whether they had the resources they need to do adequate enforcement and so forth. so, we'll be holding the hearing, inviting these departments to present. and then considering whether legislation is needed to

require both better coordination and also more consistent enforcement against these often serious code violations that have pretty significant impacts on neighborhoods throughout the city. i also have unfortunately two in memoriams today. the first is for bishop otis charles who passed away on december 26. bishop charles was born in north town, pennsylvania, and was raised in new jersey. he was the eighth bishop of the episcopal dieess in utah. he came out as an openly gay man making the first of any dee ~ denomination in history. he moved to san francisco, [speaker not understood], the lgbt of the die sis of california.

[speaker not understood] and the congregations they serve. in 1999 he he was arrested for his civil disobedience of the owe piss co-pal church general [speaker not understood], long history of oppression against lesbian and gay people. he married dr. [speaker not understood] sans he paris in 2008 and sanchez paris died july 31st of this year. bishop charles is survived by his first spouse, his five children, 10 grandchildren, his four great grandchildren and the four children of [speaker not understood] sanchez pares. i'd like to request the board adjourn in his memory. and then i have a second in memoriam for paul williams who passed away friday, january 3rd. paul was originally from cincinnati and returned to san francisco in 2010. he was a commander in the u.s.

navy. he was a popular and long-time member of front runners, which is a really terrific organization of primarily lgbt runners who get together to run and walk every week in our city. and he is someone who is very well thought of in front runners and in the community. he was 6 feet 4, so, we were a kindred spirit in that way. when his kidneys failed him in 2001, many expected him to withdraw from front runners, but he continued to participate. he was a regular participant and someone who was a real key part of the organization. he received the front runner of the year award at one of the annual banquets for the organization. he survived by his family in ohio and many, many friends here in san francisco. and the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor wiener.