you are good to go.

. >> thank you, carol, and thank you commissioners for bearing with us i know during this long meeting today, i'm just going to take a moment, carol has already done a great job introducing us, i'm peggy chin, i'm director of education and together i will be presenting with peggy and jackie about our plans for the ecocenter. during the presentation that carol spoke about that happened in december, you recommended that the bay institute aquarium foundation and its collaborator on our initial proposal, city college of san francisco, that we should try and collaborate with apri through many in-person meetings and phone conversations that we have had over the past 8 weeks we found we had many existing collaborations and projects that really behoof the future of the ecocenter. the extent of our presentation today is to share our collaborative plans

on how these three organization rs will work together for the ecocenter's success. so during the many phone conversations and in-person meetings we have had we have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each organization, what projects we're currently working on and how we can work together at the ecocenter. through these meetings we have formed collaborations that we will fauftd foster into the future. we all agree on the vision we have for the ecocenter, how we want to work together toward makes the space something we are proud of that involves the community and is a hub for water front conservation education. we really believe by coming together the ecocenter will be more successful. so really the backbone of our plans is to build upon the complimentary strengths of each organization and we're going to take some time, a little bit of time today for each of us to talk about each of those strengths.

for the bay institute aquarium foundation, really our organization first and foremost our mission aligns with the ecocenter with the experience leading watershed education efforts. we also as carol mentioned been a very successful port tenant for over 17 years and we have the financial and administrative capacity to support and grow the cone center operations and now i'm going to take the opportunity to hand it off to both peggy and jackie to talk about what they bring to this wonderful collaboration. >> hello again, i am peggy, happy to be here again to talk a little, very little, about city college of san francisco. i think you heard at length last time with many who came forward to speak about our long relationship both with heron's head park and most recently with the ecocenter in terms of its daily operations and maintenance as well as their delivery of programs and tours to the public and students. we

bring many strengths via our collaboration, not only are we educators coming from multiple sdmripbs, disciplines, we are very excited especially those that are currently teaching and working with city build and other courses at the evans campus, particularly the renewable energy green building, also our faculty that are currently involved as well as our deans with continued technical education. we also have our, the ecologists, the biologists, environmental scientists and engineers who are interested in coming and furthering programs offering both programs and incorporating more programs and exercises particularly those around workplace training and development, the ecocenter is, as you recall, one of the other places in san francisco where you can actually have a hands-on training with

sustainable systems and also not only do we, are we educators in our fields, most of us have worked in our fields for many years as well as having some of us continue to work in our fields and we bring with us some practical experience to ensure that students that are and the public that is involved with the ecocenter can that workplace training skills. finally, we'll continue to bring our laboratory technical and other expertise to bear during this collaboration. thank you. >> and i am jackie flynn, executive director of apri the strength we bring if you remember from our last presentation to the commission, we're the ones that knock on the doors and we're the ones that will make sure the programs and enrichment we offer at the ecocenter make it

to the kids that need the actual internships and opportunities and we are, we are here to make sure that we really develop and foster a relationship between the ecocenter and the immediate community. so we're very happy to have come together. we both noticed that we had some really great ideas coming out of both of our proposals and then when we were able to all come together and really discuss in depth how we would move forward, there was just a huge energy to bring even more resources and even more innovative ideas to the space. so apri and on behalf of apri we're very excited to be in this partnership. >> so now we want to take a moment to share kind of our expanded programming ideas with this collaboration. so first and foremost, we will have, we will be continuing existing

programs already in place in the ecocenter due to our collaboration with city college and i will allow peggy to really talk about all of the different aspects because she knows them first and foremost. >> so we'll continue to keep the ecocenter open as a visitor's center and also as a place where students can participate and act as docents for visitors both to heron's head park and the ecocenter. we will also continue to work with our collaborators to further the existing programming and develop new programming again ensuring that the best practices are used both for range of audiences from kindergarten through college as well as working professionals. we'll also continue to work with the yfc, the rec and park youth stewardship program and green acres for access to the

facility providing guidance for restoration and native landscaping activities as well as coordinating when programs that are offered in the park by yfp are together with programs offered in the ecocenter and of course having, allowing for interns from city college to continue to participate the operations maintenance monitoring and research and to develop further workplace skills as you've heard about before. and also to continue and to further working with our collaborators to ensure access to the ecocenter for community events, meetings and other things that you will hear about from our community advisory committee. >> one of the beautiful things about this collaboration is that we start with what peggy just described but then we really grow things starting day one and that's really with apri

and tbif really bring to this collaboration is our expertise and our best practices regarding the opportunities. so our hope is that we will continue to move forward after our presentation today and i know the port intends or hopes that we are able to sign a lease starting on march 1st. at that time we will actually be able to hit the ground running with the existing programs that peggy already described but we will also be including these new programs that jackie and i are going to talk about. so one of the new things we really want to start at the site is science saturday events and that's really kind of a catch-all term in which we want something going on every single saturday at the site. so whether that's different volunteer opportunities such as the existing native plant restoration volunteer opportunities or a new shore line clean up opportunity within the park or potentially different thematic watershed or

public private programs based on aspects of the watershed whether it be the wildlife or other pieces. i'm going to hand things off right now to jackie to talk about no. 2 and 3 and i'll be back in just a second. >> over the last 3 years, apri has developed a center for youth to access year round in summer jobs, internships and enrichment programs. through our existing programs we have some with rec and parks department as well as oewd i recently just received a notice of award for a unified school district program with oewd, as well as a small contract with the port through the conservation corps. through our existing programs we have the ability to work with neighborhood youth and really match them with these life-changing experiences and opportunities. we want the ecocenter to be a place where we inspire the youth to get involved and dream really big.

our outreach network, which i'm moving into the third bullet point there for the targeted community outreach, our outreach network includes existing relationships with community leaders, our churches, our unified school district schools, community groups, other youth organizations and collaboratively we will all bring these resources together to make sure that we are extending the information ought -- out into the community and we will continue to grow this network and apply the proven methods and best practices to inform a very diverse audience and i will hand it back over to cary. >> and last but not least one of the things we're going to be starting on day one is how can we grow capacity for all of these existing programs and that's one of the pieces that the bay institute aquarium foundation with the team that we have which supports not only

what we have going on at the aquarium such as grant writing teams, communications teams, we note that it is the intent of this group that we want to start the ground running but really grow the programs into the future. so one of the things we really want to go into depth in on the next couple slides is how do we ensure this is a space the community is involved with. really the outreach to the community is in 3 different faidses phases so i will have jackie talk about some of the phases because that is important for this collaboration's success is apri's success in reaching out to the community. >> what you see is our next steps, our next steps that we have outlined and this is how we will try and clearly inform our audiences and our community

about the opportunities at the site. the initial meeting will include the development of a communications plan and we feel that it's important to kind of take a step back from the process which has been very difficult -- not very difficult, but challenging for us to all collaborate and come together but what we'd like to do is really craft a message that we think is a collaboration of all of us that we can -- and we can represent the ecocenter very well. so what we want is for everyone to enjoy the ecocenter but we are going to specifically target low income families through the connections that we have with the housing authority and other affordable housing project developers to reach youth that can benefit from the ecocenter's programs and opportunities and it's not just youth but it's the families as well. and over the next several weeks we'll continue to

work very diligently to really plan a message but also a community event to re-introduce the ecocenter to the neighborhood. >> all right, and so on this next slide here, this is one of our mechanisms for really engaging the community. we initially had a community advisory committee, we just renamed it to the ecocenter advisory committee because there's a lot of cac's out there. but the goal for the ecocenter is really to, we understand that engaging our communities is essential to the vitality of the ecocenter. our eac or eac will allow the community a space to have a voice and communicate in a meaningful way. so the cac will be co-chaired by cary and i and we will continue to

recruit organizational representatives from the southeast community to serve as advisory members and we actually have, you will see on a later slide a bunch of interest in seeing the development at the ecocenter and we did actually have some initial organizations and representatives of organizations sign on to our original committee but this is another thing that we're going to do in klb collaboration which is really plan out the purpose for that body and identify folks that will really be able to serve the ecocenter. the idea is that we'll advance the goals of the ecocenter allowing community participation in the overall development and the goal is to meet regularly and help guide the future programs and community access allowing public input and output coming from us as well.

>> and last but not least, we want to ensure that there's community representation at all levels within the organization. and so the last piece is that we intend to recruit a new board member to the bay institute aquarium's board of directors that is representative from bayview hunter's point community and this is a way we really want to ensure there is community representation within all levels of our organization. so we will be utilizing both this collaboration and the members of the ecocenter advisory committee to help us identify a representative to bring on to the board of directors. this second to last slide really hopefully shows for you that it does take a village in order to ensure success at the ecocenter. we have our collaboration which jackie earlier today likened to the trunk of a tree. that we are providing and creating the support mechanisms and that all

of these organizations that have expressed interest in working with us over these many months are shown here and this is just the start of the branching of the tree. we really do want to continue to grow this network of support organizations to many more and a diversity of organizations both within southeast san francisco and even beyond. so, in conclusion, hopefully we were able to come together as a collaboration and really show you what our plans are starting hopefully very soon at the ecocenter. we all really truly believe in a vision that we agree upon for this organization and for the ecocenter and we know that this collaboration is really going to prove to be very successful. >> thank you, cary, peggy, jackie and thank you very much, commissioners, for your sustained interest in this item

as of such a long afternoon. pending your approval to award the lease to the bay institute aquarium foundation i hope to return on your next meeting february 25 to request authorization to execute the lease. and that concludes my presentation. thank you. >> so moved. >> second. >> public comment? let the record reflect that several members of the audience are giving a thumbs up. thank you. commissioners, comments? >> i just think that we are extremely pleased to see the results since the last commission meeting that we discussed this and want to commend all the parties and you heard us and just the fact that we don't have 40 speaker cards today is an amazing accomplishment. thank you very

much. >> i would like to say congratulations and thank you. it's great that you have been able to form your collaborative and it seems like you have really thought it out really well to find out everyone's strengths and weaknesses, which is great and i'm looking forward to see what you are going to do and attending the launch event. >> also want to say thank you very much. you found a voice of reason, you guys came together and you guys cost me a lot of money, i want you guys to know, because of you guys i went to antarctica for 17 days right after this and last friday i was in cape town, south africa. i went shark diving in a sanctuary but realistically i care about the ecocenter now and i'm somewhat understanding more because even living in san francisco i've never been to heron park but going down to antarctica for 17 days and seeing the environment, seeing

penguins nesting, seeing orca whales not in a zoo but a natural habitat and seeing we have something like this on a smaller scale in our own back yard i want to go down there and support it and believe me i will be coming down there to see what you are doing. it's not something that we are just going to pass it, this is a working commission and we will follow-up and i will be coming down to see what you guys are doing. thanks. >> carol, i want to thank you for spearheading this and thank all the organizations. it was one of those moments when you came before us, sometimes things do work as they are supposed to. as we sat here we realized everyone had such tremendous strengths and we are all thrilled to see something has come forward that plays to everyone's strengths and i think the community will be that much better for it. so i want to thank you all for coming together and putting this revised approach before us. without further ado, all in

favor? aye. opposed? 10-14 carries. >> item 10, new business. >> okay, commissioners, there was a lengthy list of new business that came out so i'm going to just hit a couple of the highlights. with respect to the 5 year projections going forward you would like to see an operating cash flow statement, you would like to see the variable assumptions in more detail and some what-if scenarios. you want us to aggressively review third party financial sources and aggressively pursue partnerships and i believe commissioner adams at least i took from your words that you were instructing us to do that but also volunteers from the commission to help us. you would like a report back on what our thinking is about the

unfunded portions of the capital plan. you would like us to keep the commission aprietzd of our efforts on sea level rise and seawall. you would like some report on i guess what i would call a vision for the southern waterfront that might guide the eir and then specifically for next meeting, supplemental budget book and a consolidated capital projects in process and proposed. so i think those are the highlights, there was a lot more that was little details but that's hard to do list and we will be back to you over the course of many months. >> did i miss anything big? >> i think i got it. >> without further ado, meeting is --. >> i would like to make a motion while we adjourn that we dedicate this meeting honoring willie brown in honor of the new willie brown bay bridge and also being black history month i find it to be verifitting.

>> and it's also very mother's birthday. >> second. >> we are adjourning in honor of willie o brown and the bridge. >> and black history month. >> thank you, commissioners. (meeting adjourned).you. >> ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ in landing a contract with the sfoifk is pretty champ but now with the opened contracting center visitors can get

opportunity at the new state of the arc facility and attend workshops and receive one-on-one technical assistance and learner what you need to become a primary contractor or what information to be a subcontractor and a created bed public commission it will help people to assist people to compete for and performance open city contract a lot of small businesses do have the resources to loblth the opportunity so one of the things we wanted to do was provide ways to access contract >> access to the plans spiefkz and a data place basis ease contracting opportunity and funding or capital training.

this is and other documents that needs to be submitted. to compete is a technical skill that it takes to win a scheduling for a popular to you can win a professional services job or how to put together a quote it's all those technical pieces. looking at the contracting assistance center is our touch point with we get the people to come and see the planning specks and later than about projects earlier is he get training so you're ready to go arrest hello engineering it has all the tools that a contractor small or large can come here. i can't say enough about the center it's a blessing. we do business all over the

country and world and a place like the contractor center to identify the business in san francisco >> the reality is you need training and that's what the center is here to train and make you better qualified to go work with the city and county and to be successful at the end. >> that will give people the competitive edge e edge at receiving contracts with the city. >> we have krafshth services here that help you find out where you need to get the skills forbidding. >> i mean local businesses participation in city projects is a winning factor it helms

help the business their local businesses they're paying savings and a property tax and payroll tax and normally adhere san franciscans so their bowing goods and services in san francisco it really helps the economy of san francisco grow so its not only a benefit to the project but to the city. the contractors center is 5 thomas melon circle in the bayview area open 8:30 to 5 welcom