we're providing world class public transportation. the mayor convened transportation task force in which i served as well as supervisor avalos and supervisor chiu. it was an excellent task force, did great work and has made multiple high-quality solid recommendations to the mayor and to this board of supervisors and we need to move forward with those recommendation and i hope we'll do that and they'll be in a position to draw the charter amendment. the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor wiener. supervisor avalos. >> thank you, madam clerk. a couple items for introduction. first i have an in memoriam for john [speaker not understood]. john [speaker not understood] was incredibly long-lived excelsior district resident, known as the mayor -- mr. excelsior. i've known john for at least 10 years myself.

he has been quite a main stay in the excelsior district. he passed away at the ripe age of 97 last tuesday surrounded by his children in the home where he was born and raised. john was known as mr. excelsior because of his dedication to the community. he helped to revitalize the excelsior district improvement association, the edia. in 1959. and to this day the edia holds its monthly meeting in the spacious basement of his home on santa rosa avenue. john continued to remain active as the sergeant of arms and led the pledge of allegiance before each meeting. as a former president of the edia, one of his proudest accomplishment was to safe 88 homes from the demolition for a parking lot. john organized a petition drive and delivered 8,000 signatures to city hall to successfully stop the demolition. i can't imagine that happening now, what an incredible feat

that would be. john was a very active member of corpus christi church which is right across the street from his home in the excelsior. even recently he he served in many capacities at the parrish and school. along with his siblings john continued the [speaker not understood] that his mother helped start in the church in the 1940s. my father also when he comes to san francisco goes to corpus christi church. john once invited my father to his home for breakfast. john has served as a role model at his alma mater, balboa high school where he has played -- played right end and won [speaker not understood] honors in 1934. in 1 79 he was inducted into the balboa hall of fame in recognition of his accomplishments. john was a proud member of other organizations in the city including the balboa tennis club, madrids, italian cattionv lick federation, italian american social club, holy name society, [speaker not understood] institute, and

men's club at corpus christi. for 44 years john was also an iron worker with j.p. murphy, bethlehem steel, and belonged to the local steel workers union 337. he worked at a number of hospitals, churches, skyscrapers and municipal projects to the bay area including the bart tube under the bay and he would often take people all over the city to show the work he had done and point to a building or sculpture and say, that's my baby. john had a number of stories to always talk about living both in sicily and the united states as a young person. he was also stationed in beliz [speaker not understood]. he gave a lot of spirit to the neighborhood and he was well loved in the excelsior district. he he he is survived by six of his children, 12 grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and 11 nieces and nephew. i hope we can close the meeting in his name.

~ my next item, colleague, is a charter amendment and i'm submitting for us to decide to go to the ballot. the amendment is called democratic special he election to fill vacancies in elected offices, city elected offices. i'm also looking at let's elect our officials act of 2014. the adjournment would allow for electionses to fill vacancies on the board of supervisors, the community college board, the school district board of ed., and city-wide offices including the mayor's office. actually, the board of trustees of the community college board and the school district, the opponents will not be made by the mayor, but they will select their colleague who will serve until the next scheduled election. ~ appointed that will be the only difference between those bodies

and the city offices will be that they will be special elections for vacancies to fill vacancies for the city-wide offices. the special election for city osvs will be held within 120 days. in the event that the vacancy occurred within 105 days of our regularly scheduled election, the special election could be consolidated with that election to reduce costs. what happens during a vacancy? for vacancies on the board of supervisors, the clerk of the board would designate staff to keep the district office open and respond to concerns from constituents. staff will be -- would have to keep the office open for at least 20 hours a week. if the mayor's office became vacant, the president of the board would serve as acting mayor until the special election is held. in another city-wide office, if another city-wide office became vacant, the deputy of that office would continue to run the office until the special election is held.

last year the local area formation commission, lafco, studied how other jurisdictions filled vacancies in vacant offices. one unique san francisco's appointment process is the mayor has discretion to [speaker not understood] to fill vacancy. that process let alone the democratic process for how the mayor makes these [speaker not understood]. there are no time constraints when the mayor make these appointments. [speaker not understood], she was not appointed to be assessor until february 2013. and there are no -- there are virtually no other examples of this lack of public process in filling vacancies in many place around the country. the colorado governor makes [speaker not understood] to fill a vacancy [speaker not understood]. the mayor of philadelphia make appointment of vacancies in

their city, but there is no other executive office where they have this ability. this will bring us in line with processes for filling vacancies in our state and federal legislative bodies. example, appointees that happened over the years. there have been 23 appointees to the board of supervisors since 1960. since 1960s. since we moved on from that administration there have been 15 appointees to the board of supervisors. there is only one case of an appointed district supervisor losing in the subsequent district election. at one point willie brown had appointed six members of the board, many of whom he described as his sure votes on the board of supervisors. gavin newsom had a triple play where many seats were traded, moving a member of the board of supervisors to actually moving someone off -- moving someone off the tida board and an

official from the board of supervisors onto the tida board and removing [speaker not understood] to the board of supervisors. this type of trading is called a triple play in san francisco politics. recently there have been double plays moving supervisor carmen chu to the assessor's office and katy tang to the office of [speaker not understood]. we had christina appointed to hold the district [speaker not understood] until the election happened in november of 2012. there are many people through that process who felt that we didn't really have a transparent democratic way of making that appointment happen and that caused a lot of ripples and discord in the election in that year. we are much better actually having a process that is democratic, that is transparent, that is based on people applying to open vacant seats enthuse a special

election. i want to thank city attorney jon givner and [speaker not understood] for their work on this ~. also in my office, jeremy poet for his work. i also want to thank the department of elections director john arents for his assistants. [speaker not understood] to bring this forward. i also want to thank my colleagues who are so far co-sponsoring. supervisors mar and supervisors campos. i think this is a measure that's really about democracy. it's about good government and how can anyone really be against democratic elections. so, colleagues, i hope we can all come on board with this as it move to rules committee and gets placed on the ballot. and we can give san franciscans the type of democracy that he he we all believe is worthy of this great city of ours. the rest i'll submit. thank you. >> thank you, supervisor avalos. supervisor campos. >> thank you, madam clerk. i want to speak about two item.

the first one i do want to add my voice in supporting the charter amendment that has been introduced by supervisor avalos. in the last few months i've had a number of constituents and residents of the eastern half of san francisco who have asked me questions about, you know, what happens when there are vacancies, including vacancies on those board of supervisors and consistent with the statements that i have made, i believe that it makes sense that when there is such a vacancy on this board or any other office, that it is up to -- should be up to the electorate to the voters of san francisco to decide who fills oyez vacancies. in the past we have seen a power struggle between the board of supervisors and the mayor which is one of the reasons i really appreciate the way that supervisor avalos has approached this because instead

of actually trying to engage a power struggle or a tug of war between the board and the mayor, i think that this takes it out of that and brings it back to the voters. i think that makes a great deal of sense, letting the voters decide. i also think the study that was done by the lafco on this piece -- on this issue is very informative because it actually shows that san francisco is the exception, not the norm. but in fact, in most other jurisdictionses, the voters are the ones who decide who fill a vacancy. and i think that consistent with the democratic process, certainly consistent with the statements that i have made in the last few months, i want to make sure that i add my name as a co-sponsor. the last item that i, that i want to speak about, you know, i just want to just simply note that it is interesting that even in the year 2014 there are

still lessons that even in communities like san francisco people learn and i specifically want to talk about what happened at san francisco sacred heart cathedral preparatory school where you had a pretty incredible and courageous individual, jessica urbina, a senior at sacred heart, who saw in the course of a few days becoming, you know, the center of attention and the subject of discussion. over the very simple fact that she, looking very sharply, had a picture in the year book where she dared to wear a tuxedo. and then we saw the school and the archdiocese of san francisco proceeding to pull that picture from the year book

simply because jessica dared to wear a tuxedo. and i am grateful and really proud of the rest of the student body of that school that rallied behind jessica. and it was really inspiring. and as a gay man, i was really moved and touched that it was the students who organized and taught the adults who run that school and the adults and the archdiocese that there is simply nothing wrong with jessica and what she was doing. and i am pleased and grateful to sacred heart that they reversed course. and i know they issued a statement and i appreciate the statement. but i actually think they have to do more than, you know,

learn how to support students who are not navigating issues of gender identity. i think that more than that, they have to learn that, you know, part of being in the business of educating students is to accept students for who they are and that making assumptions about people just based on outdated notions is simply not how we do things in this country, and certainly not in san francisco in the year 2014. and i think that we all can learn a lesson and i especially just want to acknowledge jessica urbina who has more courage than i certainly would have had at that age and the way that she has handled herself with the class and dignity has been really exemplary. thank you. the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor campos. seeing no other names on the

roster, that concludes the introduction of new business. >> thank you, madam clerk. why don't we now go to public comment. >> at this time the public may comment generally for up to two minutes on item within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board, including those item on the adoption without reference to committee calendar. please note that public comment is not allowed on items which have already been subject to public comment by a board committee. pursuant to board rule 4.22 please direct your remarks to the board as a whole, not to individual supervisors nor to the audience. speakers using translation assistance will be allowed twice the amount of time to testify and if you would like a document to be displayed on the overhead projector please clearly state such to sfgov-tv and remove the document when the screen should return to live coverage of the meeting. >> first speaker, please. yesterday i was in david campos' office asking his people to -- i gave some bad

counsel the last time i was here. he was calling for an independent investigation, but really don't we already have those overwhelming evidence? let's stop. it's going to be blocking rebuilding the bridge. it's what i'm asking everybody to do, okay. we he stop the demolition of the good bridge, the old bridge which was perfectly fine and we immediately start rebuilding that. as soon as that thing is back up, we shut down the piece of garbage that we built for $6 billion. please, you've got to do that. okay. that's the wisest way to go about this. it says in the bible the place of wisdom and i believe god has given me this wisdom. that's the right course of action because we can throw millions, billion of dollars -- we know that the [speaker not understood] bank did not pass the stress test. we have a multitude of problems. i believe this is the correct way to go about it. i don't know why barbara simpson is no longer on kfsa. that lady was a great talk show host and one of the last

broadcasts was about the bay bridge. i don't know why she's gone. i know there are many christians saying she needs to be back on. there is going to be anest to put her back on the radio. i'll tell you what, when ronald reagan stopped the fairness doctrine, he he he did that for good reason and free speech is being shut down more and more. more and more. but this is my advice to you. once again, repetition is the best teacher, all right. if you go -- i guess you can't evict barbara simpson ksfo broadcast podcast. lately you can, but it's easter. if you haven't done that yet, you research that and there is overwhelming evidence that this is the right course of action. we rebuild the good one. there is absolutely nothing wrong with the old one. the professor u.c. berkeley was talking about we don't even [speaker not understood]. >> thank you very much. thank you.

>> next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. i have three pictures i would like to present. this city is the only city in california that had only had one truck route and that's over in the bayview district. the picture that i'm showing you is a tanker truck, double tanker truck that we call a rolling time bomb. it's down between mason and taylor right across from the hilton hotel. the second picture i'm about to show you is the garage that that tanker truck is putting gas to service the rental cars. this is bad. if we check back on september 11, a.k.a. 911, we all know what will happen if a red light bomber hit this truck or someone [speaker not understood] or et cetera on their cell phone.

anything within the vicinity is an accident shall occur, you will have to be at least two football fields away just to stop feeling the jolt. anyone within that range will be attending church by way of a hearst. this is what it would look like if something what to happen. anything within that vicinity will become urban renewal. it will be dealt with and it needs to be handled at once. thank you very much. good afternoon, president chiu and supervisors. i went to the asian street fair last week and it was really great. all the city street fairs, in

fact. ♪ one of a kind city street fair it's the kind you read about in the fairy tale one of a kind city street fairses and i know you're gonna be there and you're gonna care and you're gonna share all i know is you're gonna bring your love and the city's gonna thrive all above one of a kind city street fairs it's the kind you read about in the city fairy tale i knew in the city would come a day when the city would really, really thrive and every day one of a kind city street fair

money, money, money city money money, money, money money make this city sunny sunny and bring it, let it take wing and that's why i sing and the city's gonna ring and we're gonna make us a king money, money, money city money make it won't you bring and let it take wing and your political office and i hope you'll do great in your running and do it before this thing goes ding [laughter] >> thank you. next speaker.

good afternoon. dr. espinola jackson. that rang right on time. i'd like to say i've come before you many a times requesting the same thing, but you don't do anything about it. you know, there are laws on the books like hud, section 3 of the hud guidelines. but this city has ignored and continues, and you all supervisors, did continue not following the laws of the city and county of san francisco. you know, it really hurts me to come here because i know the health department, the city planning, land use, you the supervisors, are not going to pay any attention to the fact that my people are dying and continue to die at hunters point. how many of you live in hunters point? how many of you are homeowners in hunters point on this commission? not one. haven't had one, never had one.

do you know why we raise the salaries for you supervisors to over $100,000? that was because the supervisors at that time were getting 38,000, but they were lawyers and they couldn't attend the meetings all the time. we wanted to make sure that you lawyers would be at the meeting and be there on time to represent the constituents. you all are not representing the constituents. you take longer vacations. you're going to be off on monday. you don't even show up on tuesday. you know, you take more time off than regular people on regular jobs with all the money that you're making, it's a disgrace. you don't even deserve it. i'm going to see if we can go back and bring the money back down. >> thank you. next speaker. if you all don't pay attention when dr. espinola speaks and those of y'all who have been in this auguste chamber, we are asking the city

that has a legacy like dr. espinola come here regularly that when you all have a hearing and make us sit down there for 4, 5 hours so that she gets two minutes and then when she speaks at her two minutes, they challenge her. disrespecting her. i'm watching it. i'm watching, watching like a hawk. now, today dr. espinola and myself were at a meeting at the successor agency. i think they're not called the successor agency. they're called the commission to the infrastructure and whatever. they are related. last night nbc had a beautiful video on how to [speaker not understood] botched the clean up of the shipyard. we have people here so-called representatives, they don't

give a rat's ass about doing right. but they do care about allowing the developers to fill the campaign coffers. and i say this because if you do not represent the people really and you have a few who represent the people really then it's on you. but anyone that does not represent the poor, does not represent those who cannot defend themselves, shame on them. now, some of you are aspiring to go to sacramento and i wish y'all all the best. but i wish the very best to those representatives that really served our youth, our poor and those [inaudible]. thank you very much. good afternoon, president chiu, board of supervisors. i'm going to be really quick. i'm going to read a letter from

my mother's physician. my mother is a current resident university of [speaker not understood]. they announced their closure two week ago and it's due to close july the 10th. and i want to quickly read a letter from her physician. "i have shared the news of your [speaker not understood] ucsf doctors who are [speaker not understood] to hear this from others as well. some thoughts. moving to a new situation is often disruptive to seniors especially with cognitive impairment leading to further loss of independence, developing coping mechanisms surviving in the current living situation is a manner about their disabilities is observed as moving to a new situation they lose these well worn patterns they and their staff developed in maximizing opinions. i'm going to summarize in had i personal experience the best long-term care i've seen at a nursing home facility is at the va medical center in san francisco.

it's almost perfect, but it's also exceptionally expensive, as much of them are. university [speaker not understood] lady's home is not too far from that standard. this is from a ucsf medical doctor of gerontology. i think [speaker not understood] a lot less resources, university ladies home has done an exceptional job at what they do. please, i'm begging you do not close this university. we need your support, okay, and the mayor's support to keep this 125-year-old building sustained and economically -- okay, i'm going to -- my name is sandra parker. my mother is alice parker. she lived here for three years now. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon. my name is eddy chung. my mother is also a resident of

university ladies home. she's lived there 3-1/2 years. she likes it very much. most of -- all of her daily tasks are taken care of by the staff who are wonderful, exemplary people, but low-income people which represents the exact population that jane kim lippe who endowed university ladies home sought to protect, [speaker not understood] the staff is wonderful. however, the board seems to have operated independently and surprising residents and staff alike with the announcement they were going to close and

that it what for financial reasons. but by throwing up their hands and saying nothing more can be done, they are [speaker not understood] the lives of our seniors. this is 100 year old legacy which is an important part of san francisco's history, this is done in isolation without input from the constituency and i'm hoping that the board of supervisors will assist us in keeping this open because it would be inconceivable for the -- for this to happen. and i'm fighting for my mother's life because i know that she would not survive a change a sandra was reading from her letter.

>> thank you. next speaker. hello, my name is christopher valenti and i'm an advocate for older adults. i helped more than 50 residents move into the university of mount ladies home. and basically the quality of care there is so good that if those people are relocated it's going to be hard to find viable options for them. i'm very familiar with the situation and the board of trustees of the university stating there is not really any viable options other than closing. however, i do know that the pacific institute which is a nonprofit that runs the [speaker not understood] community in san francisco is willing to take over management of that company or of that nonprofit and to continue to serve the needs of the current residents. the