interest was mostly focused on how we treat animals with dog bites and pets, as a parent i see how important it is to make sure that our public, especially our children, are educated about how to interact safely and respectfully with pets and wildlife in our city. and on the commission we have had speaker come and educate us and reach out to the community on ways to protect some of those animals, not feeding wildlife, et cetera. so, i appreciate your time and your consideration and i would love to continue serving our city, our animals, and our citizens on this board. >> okay. supervisor tang? >> so, since you are up for reappointment, are there things that you've seen that you would like to do differently on the commission, things that can be

improved, just to get a better sense of what are some of the additional goal that you have if you are reappointment? >> excuse me. like i said, it feels that in two years i am only now understanding how -- how the commission works and what opportunities lie ahead. i think for myself thing that i would like to see and work on, perhaps bring in front of the commission is more ways to reach our community. work on outreach. we post the minutes of course, and we post the agendas. attendance is usually quite low. maybe there are other ways we can reach out to san franciscans about what's happening on the commission and what we're doing for our animals. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next one is shari o'neal.

>> good afternoon. my name is dr. shari o'neal. i am a resident of san francisco for the last 12 years. i live and work in the sunset district. i am currently practicing veterinarian. i practice -- excuse me -- small animal medicine since 1999. in addition to my veterinary degree, i also have a master's degree he in public health and i'm board certified in preventive medicine. i've served on the commission for one term already so this will be my first opportunity as a reappointment. i have a special interest in disaster preparedness, particularly with the overlap of public health interest and animal interest in a disaster situation. i've worked with animal care control on volunteer training for [speaker not understood] animal response team volunteers. i also am the secretary of the

san francisco veterinary medical association and on a state level i serve on the disaster preparedness committee for the california veterinary medical association. >> okay. supervisor tang? >> great to see district 4 as well thank you for your service through the avenues pet hospital as well. again, i'm just going to ask some of the same questions especially for the people being reappointed. potentially get a better sense of some things that you've learned from your time serving as a commissioner and what would -- any specific goals or things that you'd like to zim proved or to be worked on. >> i would agree with commissioner fortier, it take a bit of time to understand how the process works. i've never been on a commission before. i agree that public outreach seems like an important topic we should address as far as

more turnout and more involvement from the public. i also agree with one of the previous candidates about supporting our municipal shelter and animal care control has a lot of responsibilities and pretty limited resource in which to work with. so, a number of our topics have come up is related to that. so, certainly there is more work to be done there. my personal interest is public health and disaster preparedness and certainly i think living in san francisco is an important topic as well. >> okay, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thats was the last one. so, i have a few cards for public comments. as i call your name, please come on up. >> [speaker not understood], [speaker not understood], and chris [speaker not understood]. good afternoon again, supervisors.

my name is [speaker not understood]. i'm a resident of district 6 and i consider myself very active. i'm in the community, but i'm learning something new about the animal control and welfare. one thing i was worried about was when the gentleman, mr. yorck was talking about nonprofits, i was wondering was it ever run by nonprofits because it was it was, it would be a big problem to me because i know the nonprofits in my neighborhood can be kind of pushy and getting things they want done and not what the actual community wants done. but i ask if you would consider appointing ms. lang, annemarie, and shari o'neill and nanci haines to the commission. one thing i liked about what ms. haines was saying about with the cultural competency,

because every neighborhood and every culture, we have a rich history of different cultures in san francisco and one thing that we have to reach out to is the different cultures of the city. so that everyone can be respected. thank you. rule committee, hi. ♪ i hope you're an animal commission appointments turnout right and i hope that big moon is big and bright and you keep the animals alive i'd like to see them dancing animal in the moonlight dancing in the animal moonlight and the city is -- it's gonna turnout right it's a fine and supernatural animal sight holy animals dancing in the moonlight and i hope these commission

appointments turn outright and they don't -- [speaker not understood] so they don't bark and they don't bite and they keep the animal alive and i hope the city really thrives dancing in the moonlight all the animals and they're gonna be bright fine and natural animal sight all the animals are going to be happy tonight ♪ (applause) >> chris? and then there's dayna [speaker not understood]. that's a hard act to follow, but i'm [speaker not understood] i'm on the sunshine ordinance as a citizen. i'm also nanci haines' fiance. like to disclose that. but if you were to select her for this commission, i think you'd find a fearless and

tireless fighter, advocate for animal. i've often walked in and seen her on the internet or on facebook in tears. in fact, we had to ration her to 10 minutes a day on those sites. we all know what we're talking about. i think she didn't really tell you a little bit about how active she is in following legislation and looking at animal rights and that whole landscape is changing right now. there are interesting caseses on the east coast that we're following closely. i'm also a co-founder of rider ranch rescue. we hold happy hours where we raise money for it with our friends. and i think one of the thing i'm hearing is attendance is a key issue at this commission. i think it's good to get? ~ some fresh blood in, some people in our age group perhaps and to drive people to come and listen to the commission and get more involved and educate that way. new media and social media to

do that. that's something nanci is very adept at. she's a yoga teacher which she didn't tell you, and a wine broker. she has some good kills and building consensus and crowds and driving people. she's definitely a connector. i think she would do well. i think for the long term also this would be a great opportunity for her and us to get connected to the infrastructure of the city to make some good alliances and friendships to set up rider ranch as a really effective shelter for animal in need down the road, to understand how it all works and develop friends in the city who could then refer these animals needs to us down the road when we have our physical brick and mortar presence. it would be a very good, a very he good opportunity. and we would certainly welcome your consideration and consider her very strongly for this position.

thank you very much. >> dana? hello, i'd like to talk on behalf of davi lang. davi lang is a wonderful, wonderful person in spirit and helpful. she has helped me on several writing projects. she'd be a perfect member of any team and as an individual she's smart. she cares greatly and takes a real interest in a variety of topics and we are both long-term vegans. thank you. >> is there a steven knight or kite? thank you for letting me

speak today. i was just hoping to speak in favor of davi lang. i've known her for sometime now. she's a truly amazing candidate. i have to give my highest recommendation and hope you take that in consideration. thank you so much. >> okay. any other public comments? hi, my name is sally stevens. i am currently on the commission and serve as chair. i'm speaking as an individual. i just want to say that i've worked for the last two years with annemarie fortier and dr. o'neill. people don't realize we have no budget, we have no staff, so, it really is a volunteer-run organization or commission and both of these individuals have stepped up and have helped with when we're writing letters or doing -- annemarie actually volunteered to be secretary. huge in our commission, but i just wanted to say that they have really stepped up and have been active participants in the

commission. and i would urge you as an individual to support the reappointment. thank you. >> okay. peter, peter stevens? if there are any other individual that want to make public comments, just line up. how's it going, supervisors? my name is peter. i've worked with davi six months now and she's wonderful. i mean, i was going to speak more about her, but i think her experience speaks for itself. so, i don't know, please appoint her. [laughter] >> any other public comments? seeing none, public comment is now closed. [gavel] >> supervisor tang, do you have any thoughts? >> sure. so, i just want to again thank all of the applicants who replied. i know that we all share probably a passion for animals, but all of you who replied are taking it to the next step. so, i want to thank you for that. so, at this time we do have four seats and 7 applicants. and i am ready to reappoint

annemarie fortier to seat 1. shari, dr. shari o'neill for seat 7. again, really impressed for ms. davi lang for seat 3. in terms of seat 2, i'm opening to hearing from my colleague. between nanci haines and amy van nest, both of them i think bring unique backgrounds. i really liked hearing how amy had, had experience witnessing animal abuse in her previous job and also nancy in terms of her volunteer experience and what she and her fiance are trying to do in terms of starting up a new organization as well. so, in terms of seats 1, 3 and 7, those would be my recommendations, and i'd like to hear from my colleague about seat 2. >> okay, thank you. it's always tough when you have more applicants than seats and obviously each person that what

here today is very passionate about this role. and i would have actually -- the person that didn't show up also, amy fuller, just looking at her background, she would have made a very com petitive choice also. but because there are people here that for me are more than qualified, i would have to choose from the people that actually were able to come today. i like all of them. the person that floats up a little bit to the top for me is nanci haines. so, that would be my choice for seat number 2. and i agree with you with the other three. so, would you like to make a motion for -- >> sure. so, just make a motion formally for annemarie fortier for seat 1. that is a reappointment.

dr. shari o'neill for seat 7 also a reappointment. davi lang for seat 2 and nanci haines for seat 2. >> okay -- >> i'm sorry, i apologize, davi lane for seat 3 and nanci haines for seat 2. >> seeing no objection the motion passes. [gavel] >> congratulations. and for those that were not appointed, please try again. there's always seats opening up. okay, thank you very much. madam clerk, item number 3? >> item number 3 is a hearing to consider appointing two members, terms ending april 27, 2015, and nine members, terms ending april 27, 2016, to the sunshine ordinance. there are 11 vacant seats and 13 applicants. >> okay, 11 seats and 13 applicants.

so, let me call the applicants in the order of the agenda. mark rumold. >> hello, thank you all for having me today and considering my application. they say brevity is the soul of wit, so, i'll try to keep this short. my name is mark rumold. i'm a [speaker not understood] frontier foundation. my work -- well, if you are

unfamiliar with dss, we are san francisco-based nonprofit. we do work to ensure that our civil liberties and our rights and privacy and free speech are protected in the digital age. i, as part of that, the work that i do involves a significant amount of freedom of information act litigation. i litigate cases at the federal level and i'm involved in cases at the state level concerning access to public records. so, as part of that work, i'm very familiar with the -- i'm very familiar with the process of requesting and receiving documents. i'm also familiar with the obstacles that, that requesters can face and that the agencies can face in responding to requesters. so, i'm hopeful to apply my

experience on the task force to help make san francisco an open and more efficient government. >> okay. supervisor tang? >> so, i will try my best to somehow ask this of every applicant as well today. some things i'm really looking for are what are some of the things you'd like to zim proved about our sunshine ordinance task force currently. if you are appointed. ~ see improved. the second question is we've all had experiences with some of the members of the sunshine ordinance task force and i think it's important all of us respect the rules of the charter. i know that some folks talk about some changes they make to the bylaws as well. i want to hear also your thoughts around that, the rules and regulations governing the sunshine ordinance task force. any potential changes you want to see there or as is, anyway, if you could just share your thoughts [speaker not understood]. >> sure. so, i will have to admit to not

having an in-depth knowledge of the sunshine ordinance at this point. what i think my candidacy bring is a strong foundation in principles, in the freedom -- federal freedom of information act and in state rules, the cpra. so, i have an open mind about, about ways to improve the sunshine ordinance and those rules and regulations. it is something that i'm hopeful to learn about and hopefully with greater experience will be avenues for making the sunshine ordinance work better for everyone [speaker not understood]. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> i also, before the next applicant comes up, is ms. grant here? i'm sorry, i should have given you an opportunity to come up

earlier, if you'd like to share a brief presentation. >> sure. i had just kind of prepared a couple of remarks about my time serving as chair of the sunshine task force and thank you for having me. and i just kind of like to give you an overview because we haven't had an opportunity to give you an annual report yet. and pretty much what i wanted to do was kind of take you through my two-year term. so, when we started this term, it was predominantly comprised of new members with two hold overs. we missed at the beginning of the term four meetings because we were not in compliance, we did not have a member of the disabled member as indicated by the ordinance. so, we weren't able to meet for four months. we're supposed to have 11 members. we operated with 9 due to the resignation of one member and one seat that never got filled. we did try to talk to various

members of the board of supervisors to try to see if we could fill though seats, but we were not able to suck seat in that. and i think that's really important to kind of indicate the seriousness of this sunshine task force. with that, i may -- because we came in four months later. with that we made a conscious decision for this term to really be about the complaints that had gotten backlogged to make the hearing of the complaint a priority of this term. to get some of the numbers, this over my term there were a total of 190 complaints that were heard. the 52 complaints that are still pending, from 2012 there were 59, 9 of those are still pending. 2013 there were 91 and there are 23 that are still pending. 2014, 40s as of today and they're still pending about 30 of those. ~ the majority of those complaints come from a small core of people.

for instance, we have one person that has filed 35 complaints, one that filed 28 and one that filed 24. so, that gives you kind of some indication of the core group of people that do that. the administrator victor has been very successful in mediating, which i think is really important, the mediation factor. before we get to the full task force and trying to be efficient and things of that sort, in 2012 59 complaints filed, 15 were mediated. in 2013 of the 91 filed, 17 were mediated. in 2014 of the 47 files so far, 7 have been mediated. so, he he does a really good job trying to stop and mediate with the public before it gets to us. as far as complaints, you know, we have these subcommittees. so, what we've tried to do is refer them to the full task force to either be compliance amendments committee, education outreach and training or ethics. we try to kind of give the

opportunities for a second chance at mediation by referring it to one of our subcommittees. the compliance amendments or education outreach and training. compliance and amendments is simple. you know, is there some information that was actually requested or documentation that was not received, i would refer it to compliance amendment because i'm like, can you comply with this and then we can have a black and white answer. education outreach and training, we refer things that we felt that agencies -- we found that they don't -- some of them don't understand the process, and don't have anything in place. we try to refer them to education outreach and training so that they could have a process learn and we could kind of set something up for them to kind of moveorward. ethics, we try to kind of make that a last resort. after that, and they did not refer -- they did not comply, then we send it to ethics. just to give you an idea, in 2012 we sent one item to the board of supervisors, three to

ethics, 8 to compliance and amendments and 6 items to education outreach and training. 2013, one to the board of supervisors, two to ethics, 5 to compliance amendment, and 6 to education outreach and training. when we talk about like the short-term issues, let me talk quickly about the short term issues and long-term issues i think will improve in the future. the volume, the sheer volume of the complaints that are filed and the backlog, it becomes, you know, a tremendous burden and we're trying to figure out how to best deal with these actual complaints that every member of the public has a right to five we have already added one additional meeting per month to try to kind of deal with some of the backlog and, you know, it's still as we're doing that, then more keep coming in. so, it's a constant, you know, process of trying to like work -- figure out how to do that, manage that number. we've talked about the changes to the bylaws because the bylaws, they're still very outdated in this age of

technology and all these things that we probably could do to streamline and make the process more efficient for the public so it's not this long drawn out type of project for them to try to get heard and it takes a long time and we're not meeting deadlines and things like that because we've gotten so behind. so, we've really tried to address those issues. as far as long-term, i think that a lot of members of the public come to us and looking to us to solve problems that are not within our jurisdiction. there are people that really know what the limitations of the sunshine task force is. but there are a lot that don't. so they come here and they feel like they set themselves up to be disappointed or angry because we can't do anything for their case because it doesn't fall within our jurisdiction. so, this is the idea of -- i don't know how we can do this, but between city hall agencies, oftentimes don't really know what they're supposed to do or

haven't been caught up on it as well as the members of the public understanding why this issue is so important, the issue of transparency and open government, why it really can succeed and it should really be, you know, a forefront of importance for everybody. i think it's really important. the agencies and the commissions do need to be taught proper procedures on how to handle sunshine requests, the materials we have are out date and had don't deal with the current types of issues that come up now ask as well as the technological advances. [speaker not understood]. it was a tremendous for myself high learning curve and it took a long time to really get to understand how the process work and what our responsibilities were and where we lie in that process. we talked about the change to the bylaws in the process. i think we've had a lot of issues with ethics. i think the more communication with ethics to determine the

needs in order to go forward with complaints from us. it's discouraging to get something that we worked and it's gone for the main task force and goes to subcommittee, then we refer it to ethics and they send it right back to us. it becomes a circular conversation. it becomes a circular kind of like this wheel that gets no results. so, everyone, the member of the public leaves discouraged and then we are discouraged as well. so, i think something has to be done there. i think one thing that is also really helpful, the sunshine task force can be streamlined before it come to the task force. things of jurisdiction, of that sort, if we could figure out a way to work these out before, they wouldn't get to the full task force, [speaker not understood]. it would ensure members of the public are still being heard but in a smarter way. this in turn will try to change the reputation and perception of the sunshine task force.

[speaker not understood] to the members of the public. i think the rules committee for us, because we concentrated on eot and our other subcommittees, we he didn't have an active rules committee which handled a lot of the bylaws and things like that. i think in this next term we kind of started starting things back up to get to the bigger issues and the rules committee should definitely be a part of the sunshine task force again as a subcommittee -- [speaker not understood]. and i guess i think that's pretty much it. in conclusion, i just think we need to take a hard look at the sunshine task force, what its purpose was and what it is now in open government and give it the tools necessary to make this a viable commission in which we can serve the public's interest and create an environment where we can work together with city official and agencies can be respectful and efficient with each other. people are always like, is the sunshine task force still viable, it's still important? it's incredibly important in that it is the place where the

public feels they have a voice. and it should be heard and they should be able to, you know, get their materials or the information that they are requesting. i think that's pretty much it. i just want to thank you all for your service and i'm ready to answer any questions if you have any. >> supervisor tang. >> sure, thank you. again. the sunshine task force is really important, goes hand in hand with what we try to do in government, being able to do it in a transparent way. i am happy to hear some of the things that you are considering in terms of improvement for the future. one of the things that you did mention was that you have instituted additional meetings, is that correct? >> yes. >> previously you were meeting about once a month. >> once a month. okay. now just twice a month? >> twice a month a a subcommittee. every member is on a subcommittee. >> and, so, with the addition of one meeting each month, how has the length of time of these meetings changed? >> from my understanding from before, i understood that the

sunshine task force was oftentimes here till 11:00 to midnight. now we usually are -- i try to be more efficient because everyone is volunteering and it's a lot. we try to be out by 9 o'clock, 9:30, and then we have the second meeting and we only hear cases. we don't do that much business. we do public comment and just straight complaints, just like hear complaint, complaint, complaint. so, we might allow five. five complaints, we usually can be out by 9:00. so, that gives you -- each complaint does take a little bit of time. so, on a full task force regular meeting, we still hear about five and that, in addition with the minutes and other business of the task force and the subcommittee report, you know, we go till 9:00 or 10 o'clock. >> you know, the reason i ask and why i think it's also really important in terms of meeting efficiency, in term of the people who do have to appear before these meetings and before the task force, you know, i've heard it a many an