[speaker not understood]. 35 years ago when my unemployed father had some years before started an auto parts business with a loan from the very pregnant wife of $132, one day he asked me to tag along with him to deliver some parts after a city-owned vehicle yard at third street. upon arrival, my dad exchanged mare antries with the fleet boss and then instructed me to hand over one pair of shock absorbers and two pairs of auto light spark plugs. right back, i asked my dad, dad, why is this delivery so small, what did we come out here for? he said, because that's all i can sell to the city. and, so, my dad never managed to breakthrough that barrier he himself described as a little boy's network. now, the notorious german

practices of the recent past are behind us. the overarching inquiry is whether or not the current law remains fit to assure not only equal opportunity and not the convenience of bureau cats, and also how you as supervisors can measure progress. how do you define progress? and what are the systems of public accountability to make sure that we don't have this big lapse that we've had? you know without data there is no accountability. so, what we're trying to do here is make the law work for everybody. this is a collaborative process and we look forward to working with you as well as the other members of the city family. so, thank you very much. >> thank you. i have called up a number of names. if folks could line up on the right-hand side of the chamber, and let me continue to call other names so that we can get the flow going. mr. president, you have a copy of extended opening statement, i'd like to lodge with the clerk. >> absolutely.

copies for you. >> okay. let's hear from our next speaker, mr. chiu thank you, president chiu. good afternoon, supervisors. my named is alex chu. i am the president of the american association of cpa firms, council of american business association. i'm here to talk about a couple of items that have been raised. first one is the need for an antiretaliation legislation. there have been many instances of city department heads and project managers retaliating against minority owned lbe firms for simply making inquiries into how decisions are made with respect to contract awards or making inquiries as to whether or not the lbe ordinance has been properly apply. in many retaliations, it has resulted in loss of income to

firms and owners. also, such retaliations have resulted in cutbacks in employees. because of the prevailance of such retaliation, individuals are afraid to speak up about the lack of opportunity. people are afraid to report the failures and refusal to apply the lbe ordinance on the part of department heads and project managers for fear of retaliation. people have even been afraid to come and testify at this hearing because of the fear of retaliation. such retaliation should not happen anywhere, and in particular, it should not happen here in san francisco. san francisco need an antiretaliation legislation to people eyes officers and employees who engage some such retaliation. such legislation may be modeled after the state statutes that protect whistle blowers. we will be happy to work with

you on such legislation. the next topic i would like to briefly talk about is the need for an oversight committee or oversight commission similar to the human rights commission. i don't think a advisory committee is sufficient. >> thank you. thank you. >> next speaker, please. hello, president chiu and board of supervisors. i'm stanley chan. i'm speaking on behalf of asian american contractor association as well as value fire protection. i'd like the city -- i want to say the city needs to set consistent policies and goals to keep san francisco's construction dollars here in san francisco. we need to set policies and goals so that all city

departments will strictly adhere to and make accountable -- be made accountable. i'd like to speak about my terrible experience with the sfmta, mta anyway. we teamed up with -- a first tier contractor to bid on the job on the subway, and we were successful bid to [speaker not understood]. but for some reason our contract was torn up. they kept the first tier prime and threw our bid out. we spent a lot of time working on the bid and it will take away a few years of work in the

future from us. we need to regard the importance of benefits for the local economy that can be generated from participants [speaker not understood]. the way we let it go the way it stands, this mta is about to award one of the largest contracts ever in san francisco. essentially no local business participation and no local minority business participation at all. this contract is worth upwards of $840 million. this -- without participation, this amounts to taxation without representation of all the san franciscans. the central is up way will be built and maintained by the

local monies for years to come. our local community should be derive some benefits throughout the project especially from the very beginning where it impacts the most. and this project, i must go by san francisco, what happened -- the concept of project san francisco built by san franciscans. i urge you to support the lbe community. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. my name is spencer [speaker not understood]. i'm owner of baf specialty and i live here in san francisco. i think it's an important role for the byness enterprise program, un[speaker not understood] public works construction and service contracts.

when a nonlocal contractor is brought in without a true commitment to local businesses, he reluctantly and ungrudgingly unbundles those and can lead to a different experience. [speaker not understood] pier 27 cruise terminal, public safety building and san francisco general hospital. and a lot of time i've been in business, i have never encountered a company i've worked for a hostile as the one i've worked for on the project works currently. [speaker not understood] and troubleshoot on-site issues, misrepresented my company information on this, and taking [speaker not understood] over contracted to my company and

try to impose back chargeses for the scope taken over without following proper procedures. these actions have been communicated to the cmd and we [speaker not understood] but this is a slow process. every step of the way this company has worked against us and not with us threatening my company's existence. i have never felt like we were a partner with them, but somehow we were just a competitor. what i'm saying is that i think 14b needs some teeth, some enforcement mechanisms, and opportunities for lbes but protect local businesses from look nonlocal contractor threatening taking over at first chance and potentially driving lbes such as mine out of business. i believe the intent of 14b in the city's leadership is [speaker not understood], but without protections more lbes will be at risk from home --

who bring in smaller contractor to bring in what they see as the work. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. my presentation is in the form of a letter and i have copies here for all of you. thank you, president chiu, for giving us this opportunity. my name is diana la comb, i am president of the associated professionals and contractors of california. today i am representing the san francisco african-american chamber of commerce, asian american architects and engineers, national [speaker not understood] of america, hispanic contractors of california to name a few, and also benness members. today, however, i wish to focus on issues ~ relative to concerns of contracts with the

city and county of san francisco. one of our major concerns is that billions of dollars in design and construction of public facilities and infrastructure have consistently gone to out of state companies. they have continued to do so. these companies have little or no interest in investing in san francisco. it's san francisco homeowners and byness he that bear the brunt of high taxes and high rents. this morning charles schwab announced it is leaving san francisco. why? because of the high cost of doing business in san francisco. what does that say about small business? some member business he asked us to bring attention to experiences they've had as lbes contracted with the city. one of the largest complaints is the lack of communication.

it seems that the city departments, that the contract appliance people don't speak to the primes, the primes to the subs. and nobody knows what's going on. this lack of communication needs to improve and joint very much tour contracts as well. ~ venture they are made to pay a higher percentage of what they are even considering. i'm just about done. and, so, i think we need to look at that. >> we give the same amount of time to everyone. we can't extend it. well, you've got the letter. i'd like to see that you guys look at the recommendations. >> we'll look at the letter with recommendations. thank you. next speaker, please. >> and let me also ask so that folks can continue to line up, miguel garza, ann cervantes,

[speaker not understood], and george chang, and eric lou. if you want to start lining up. first let me say my name is james l. mc gee, i'm with the san francisco african-american chamber of commerce and i am the treasure. these comments are on behalf of fred jordan who couldn't remain the full period of time. i will be short. took some of our major concerns, it will be a little redundant, but with regards to the lbe report, it seems the new department and division have no committee oversight. it seems to be just a part of the city administration office. when the lbe and mwe and hrc, it what a community advisory council which was disbanded, i assume because it moved to cmd. now there is an lb, ~ lbe

advisory council. i'm sure that will help. [speaker not understood] chapter b ordinance, there hasn't been a quarterly report and david chiu asked that question. the port does not include all of the city departments. you addressed that in some of your questions. there's no overall annual goal for lbes and no lbe project by project goals. the percentage of dollars presented are only for the fire departments which you addressed earlier so i won't continue. [speaker not understood] were awarded, former contracts, 100,000 in professional service contracts, 100,000. not subject to the new contract monitoring dollars awarded were

contracted from bid documents submitted by the winning primeses, couldn't find any information on the dollar amount impact on change orders throughout the life of the contract. and i'll just finish by saying that the report, we're very happy the report was done since it's been quite a while. and we showed up with maria cordova [speaker not understood]. so, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. good afternoon, my name is marcus leon with marcus leon construction. i've been in business 12 years in san francisco. i'm born and raised in san francisco. i'm second generation san franciscan. my son is third. [speaker not understood]. i have yet to reap the benefits from this program.

i've gone for two years, three years, going to these prebid meetings and got nowhere. i spent 24 hours to processing these bids. i looked at them hard. after two years, one of the coordinator saw me and said, hey, mr. leon, you've been here a long time. wish you come here every year a couple years, all your subs had to be lbe. i said, fine, thank you for the chance. i turned around at that meeting, the local contractors who came there, they were not [speaker not understood]. i didn't ask why. they just wouldn't touch me. that was fine. i went back to my office and went to [speaker not understood], and online there were all lbe members. they said it was not worth my

time. after that i pretty much gave up. i think that if you look at the lb list and 150 people, how many of them have contracts? it's just too hard. it's too competitive. i don't see it working for me. in two years, the only contractor that came out got a contract with the city. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. president chiu, supervisor avalos, my name is eric lou, thank you for your time to listen to this presentation. i have two points to make. the first point is that i'm really sorry this matter, this issue is really not a sexy issue. and looking at the room, it's really difficult to get some emphasis behind this. but i really want to emphasize how important this matter is.

supervisor avalos, you did a -- you supported and put out the ordinance for local hire, which is absolutely amazing. we all supported it. but you have to realize, however, is the lbe community is the conduit for success of your local hire program. we don't want local hires to be black people. we don't want local hires to be the guys it who take the trash out. we want true trades men. the only true trades men are the lbe that is here today. it's not a sexy issue, but it is an important issue. we need the middle income jobs to support the middle income families that are going to live here. the second issue i want to make is garbage in and garbage out. the data we've gotten is unfortunately difficult to make sense of. so, at the end of the day, the data that we get, we can't do very much with it. so, therefore, we're just

calling it garbage in, garbage out. the problem is that the information is too complicated. just make it simple. we need a simple auditable program that can work for all of us. so, that's why we're looking at a proposing a simple 40% number that can be audited on a budget basis at the end of the year. that's all we're asking for. thank you very much. >> actually, we thought the local hire legislation would have lbes getting works. they will promote that legislation as well, but there is clearly more we need to do to support specifically lbes. thank you very much. is there a time here? i want to be under time. >> okay. well, i might go a little quickly. supervisor chiu, supervisor avalos, my name is josh chen,

[speaker not understood], i'm president of [speaker not understood] lbe subcontractor that does do construction. i just have a few points to make. one is about the agency -- the department needs to be held accountable. just to give you a state of the union what is going on on the ground, i've seen some 0% requirement, 10%, some like goals. if they don't meet the goals, hard requirements. if they don't immediate the hard requirements. we're asking for a stronger lbe program, some repercussion for agencies when they don't meet the requirement or goal. we've done work and oakland in other locales. their lbe requirement is a hard 50% lbe requirement for local lbes of oakland. that gives you a comparison to inconsistency in ag is.

what eric said, it is a good ordinance. it definitely helps lbes, but some time the bigger contractors will go right to the unions and to the local residents to get the local hiring. a lot of the [speaker not understood] lbes have 90 to 100% employment. so, they can help to meet that requirement. right now there is no heavy industry. while it is not the end of the world, i think we can see it from here without a strong lbe program that can bolster kind of revenues for these lbes, i think they're going to see a time when the successful lbes move out and the not so successful lbes disappear. there is no traction or capacity for lbes. we're seeing our membership invest. last one. we heard 90, 95% of the lbe dollars are going to outsiders,

so, we'd like data to support that. >> thank you. i support that goal. next speaker, please. hello, my name is susanne a [speaker not understood] and i'm representing bad specialty, inc. you already heard spencer crowtion speak about the difficulties a small business can have. when working with someone, a contractor because they know they have to bring an lbe in for contract proposal to get work in san francisco. but they don't want to work as partners and often put up obstacles and put pressure on small companies. at the end of the day we're competition. maybe we're small, but we're competition. basically these companies without enforcement mechanisms inside of 14 b, these companies can actually afford to squeeze

the small local business out of business. that's the experience we're having. we can share details and a suggestions to [speaker not understood]. these companies can out spend us on attorney's fees every day of the year. so, that's the kind of risk right now that lbes are working under. so, i know that everyone around wants to see lbe's succeed here. i'm a native san franciscan. my family is here. we want to stay here. again, we can't do business under these conditions. so, we hope you'll listen and that we can see some change in 14b to help protect lbes. i should say good evening. thank you guys for staying here and listening to us. my name is ann cervantes.

i've been in business as an architect in the city and county of san francisco for 21 years. i need to let you know that our businesses -- today i'm representing the san francisco latino builders association. we plan [speaker not understood]. we're not doing well in the city. there are a lot of contracts that have gone out that we can't participate in. specifically, the lennar project that is at hunters point. their contractors here that had to leave. the cmpc, there's no participation. they're just beginning to take a look at it. i want to let you know that they've been in the last five years increasing competition and there is a lot of business outside the city. yet if you see the contracts that a lot of people are

getting contracts here, they're outside the city. and the way they service sector is that they have restrictive criteria for a byness that you have to have five housing projects the last five years. come on, it's been a recession. you have to look at the criteria that's coming out, but also -- >> you have 30 seconds. what i'm going to say is also you need to take a look at the nonprofit housing developers. right now you guys are going to be letting out -- looking in for the transition for the san francisco housing authority to privatization. you need to make sure our local housing nonprofit housing developers are being considered and not overtake not by somebody outside the city or the larger nonprofit housing. anyway, you'll be receiving a letter from us. thank you.

good afternoon, supervisors. thanks for having this hearing which i think in many ways is about addressing the small business displacement at this moment in san francisco. my name is joshua arce representing the latino owe democratic body club. we seek to give voice to latinos living in san francisco and the way it reflects the interests of all american people. we have four points we want to make and it's in a letter to the board. thank you again, supervisor chiu, for calling this meeting, supervisor avalos. we support the ideas that have been stated by supervisor chiu, by many others and we want to add four other points. one, is the idea of a new category of small local businesses the small local resident business? and that is a business which is owned and operated by at least 51% san francisco residents as ownership. around that, too, the idea of

preference points an additional utilization and bid discounts not only for 40% utilization, 80% utilization. let's make sure we include this new category, small local resident businesses, san francisco business owners struggling to stay in the city. it's not just about where your head corners. another good nonprofit housing, five set asides for local business enterprises. set asides are critical here, we need to look at agencies that haven't met their goals and data coming out of their hearing. supervisor avalos showed you can successfully move the needle from 20% local hiring to good faith to -- supervisor avalos's law went into effect, we now have 35%. i think i have five seconds and let's to that to construction.

let's do it architecture, engineering. you can see the mandates work to help [speaker not understood]. >> thank you for keeping the two matts. i have a letter here for the board. supervisors, my name is gary gee, president of asian american architects here in san francisco. we have approximately 120 members of lbes. i just wanted -- we solicit input from bev of our members. many of the points were given [speaker not understood] and protect from retaliation their generalizations and i just want to talk quickly on 5, 1, getting work doesn't mean you get the project. after the project is signed by the prime, many of our members express that they were notified their work was not needed in the contract and essentially they didn't get any work. two, there has been no protection even for joint

venture. this has occurred also in joint ventures where the contract is awarded to an agency -- by an agency in san francisco. the prime goes out with the joint venture and renegotiated the terms of the joint venture where the local lbe gets less work and less contract dollars. three, the overhead multiplier, you get points for in design work for lowering your overhead multiplier. some are 2.0. what we've seen is some members reporting the renegotiating after the contract is signed and makes the lbe accept a lower rate. 4 is the concept of lost share where it's a prime is working on the project, there is an overrun on the budget. they come back to the local lbe who may only have 2% of the total project and also ask for discount in a reduction on their contract. and 5, the demonstration of similar projects and which was

also mentioned by ann cervantes, some agencies issue a pre-qualification of firms which are much more complicated, some are five years experience, some are 10 years experience. it can't be supported by local mbes. this allows the primes to import their own local subs instead of outside of san francisco and this money is not awarded to these local companies. thank you very much. >> thank you for the letter. next speaker, please. president chiu, supervisor avalos, first of all, thank you for the sticking with us after a long day. you're the only guy right there now, so we appreciate you hearing us out. my name is julianne summer. [speaker not understood]. i'm also president of the american asian contractors association. i'm part of the talks the various business