>> thank you. the only feedback i have is if there is a way that we can do like community workshops, or for example, if there are neighborhood associations or merchants associationses and they have transportation community meetings, if there is a way that we can teach the public how to use this application, i think it's an incredible application. it's probably under utilized. very complex, but really fun once you're able to develop charts and see exactly, you know, how we're spending money or how our bus systems are running on time or whether or not 311 is working or whether or not, you know, we're abating graffiti. the fact we have this where the average, you know, person in san francisco could go to the controller's website, use this particular barometer and information and prepare these incredible charts, i'd like to maybe see more outreach to work with the public to figure out a way in which we can educate the public on how to use it.

so, that would be my only feedback. thank you. supervisor chiu. >> just a quick question. i think we could delve into any of these topics. but do you have the average muni bus speeds? is there a quick way for us to know why my line, what those numbers look like? >> i know they have that information. it wasn't looked into that level of detail for the benchmarking report, but they do have it. >> okay. >> on i think a daily basis. so, we can work with the muni staff group to get you those reports. >> that would be great, just to get a sense of what those numbers look like because i know obviously different lines vary dramatically. okay, thank you. >> okay. thank you. so, let's open up this item to public comment. are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item at this time? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> colleagues, can we continue this item to the call of the chair? >> so moved. >> all right. without objection, this item will continue to the call of the chair. [gavel]

>> madam clerk, can you please call item number 4? >> item number 4 is a resolution declaring the intention of the board of supervisors to establish a property-based business improvement district (community benefit district) known as the "lower polk community benefit district" and levy a multi-year assessment on all parcels in the district; approving the management district plan and engineer's report, and proposed boundaries map for the district; ordering and setting a time and place for a public hearing thereon; approving the form of the notice of public hearing and assessment ballot proceeding, and assessment ballot; making environmental findings; and directing the clerk of the board of supervisors to give notice of the public hearing and balloting as required by law. ~ public hearing. >> okay, president chiu. >> thank you, colleagues, and i want to thank the members of the public for considering this resolution of intent to establish a new community benefit district in the lower polk neighborhood in my district 3, which is the southern part of polk street. this is a neighborhood that i have spent a lot of time in in large part because before i elected i chaired local neighbors and we had a vision of moving forward with the local district. i'm excited about that. part of the reason we want to focus on this is the southern stretch of polk street has faced numerous challenges over the years related to public safety, quality of life, vacant store fronts, homelessness, a sharp proliferation of the number of bars, and other

conditions that have challenged the neighborhood. i do want to note that this past year lower polk was named come back neighborhood of the year. there is a lot that's moving forward, but i think it's important and i think the neighborhood leaders and residents also believe it's important for us to continue this work with the creation of a community benefit district. i want to also just take a moment and thank the neighborhood for helping me to support in the last couple of years a seasonal farmers market, art walks, activities in the alley ways. we just announced this past week a new soccer field on top of the parking garage. there are a lot of things that are exciting about it. over the past three years this has been a steering committee comprised of business he he, residents, representatives of cbos and property owners that have worked hard on the formation of the lower polk community benefit district. their work has included extensive public outreach, surveys, community meetings and engineering report, a detailed

management plan describing this proposed services as well as a proposed budget for the cbd. the cbd would include 22 blocks with boundaries roughly at california, van ness, larkin, and geary, including the new cpmc hospital property. ands as envisioned, the budget would be an annual budget of about $800,000 of assessments from property owners to provide services and to provide services that go above and beyond the current levels provided by the city, including street cleaning, maintenance, safety, beautification services and marketing. and in addition to the $800,000 in the annual budget for proposed cbd would also manage an additional 2.7 million in funding that cpmc has agreed to give to the neighborhood for capital improvements. in the last couple weeks the steering committee successfully garnered 67 petitions representing 35% of the weighted support of property owners in the proposed district given that 30% is needed to

initiate the formation, we can move forward and i want to just note that the petitions were overwhelmingly in favor, outweighingthe three petitions that represented only 1.8% of the weighted support. i want to take a moment and thank all of the neighbors, businesses and city staffers who have worked hard on these efforts. i want to thank the cbd's steering committee member for their work, lower polk neighbors as well as the city and cpmc. i also just want to take a moment and thank shell thomas for his work to put together this effort and chris shulman and other leaders from the lower polk neighbors. and with that, colleagues, unless there are any initial comments or questions, i'd like to invite up from oewd [speaker not understood] to give an overview of what we're talking about and then potentially a brief description of the cbd from cheryl thomas and then move on to public comment. >> good morning, president chiu

and supervisor tang. chrisy otano from oewd, [speaker not understood]. as stated, we are presenting on a resolution of intention sponsored by president chiu to establish the lower polk cbd. members of the steering committee have been working very diligently to determine the interest of forming this district, setting the boundaries, determining the services and working very closely with an assessment engineer to look at the assessment methodology. on may 12 our office received all the petition and reviewed all of them concerning that 35.58 03% weighted support where submitted for the 15-year term. there are a total of 307 parcels located within the 22 blocks of the proposed district. as stated, there is a total annual budget of $836,049, [speaker not understood] coming

from assessment funds, 46,9 56 to be funded by the lower polk cbd. my colleague cheryl thomas will be reporting on the actual service delivery that would be commenced on january 1st, 2015. the anticipated date for mailing of ballots would be june 13th. per the resolution of intention, we intend on collecting all ballots by july 29th and a hearing would be held and the board of supervisors may vote to establish the district. the term of the district would expire on june 30th, 2029 and be allowed to deliver service until december 31st, 2029. i'd like to bring up cheryl thomas from the consultant lower polk steering committee who will present on all the surveys, budgets and goals for the district. if there are any further questions, i'll be available to answer.

>> mr. thomas, again, thank you for all your work on the last couple years to move us to where we are today. >> thank you, [speaker not understood]. good morning, supervisors. my name is cheryl thomas with lower polk cbd. [speaker not understood] and supervisor david chiu as well. so, i'll try to be brief in my presentation, which is quite lengthy, 20 pages, goes into a lot of detail we just spoke about. first of all as david was saying earlier, we'd like to focus on a little detail, the unique character of the neighborhood. this is a neighborhood that has currently no open space, no green santa fetion. ~ space. we he don't have a center for recreation. [speaker not understood]. proposed district everyone has a major thoroughfare. [speaker not understood]. a lot of proposed folks in the cbd [speaker not understood].

they are plagued by crime, prostitution, drug use, violence, et cetera. it's also truly a mixed use commercial residential neighborhood and also the edge of two different supervisorial districts some time don't get the full focus it should receive. short presentation. lower polk once again, chrisy and david chiu talked about what is a community benefit district. a community benefit district is basically a special assessment district that provides for the levying collection assessments within a specifically defined geographicalary. in the past san francisco has 14 cbds as a highly funding mechanism for district improvements, services and activities. assessing revenue for the benefit of properties, [speaker not understood], the services and activities will be provided to a specifically defined cbd area.

i think this slide is probably the most important slide of all and this talks about the vision of the neighborhood -- that the neighborhood had in moving forward with the cbd. for the last several years we have met as a group. and before they allowed me to even move forward with other work they wanted to provide a very specific vision for this unique neighborhood. the first vision was a cleaner, safe neighborhood replaces a [speaker not understood] including open and public space. also look at repurposing of the public spaces since we don't have any open space there within. second is to welcome to this population, if you look at lower polk we have a very difficult verse population, socioeconomic, ethnically and [speaker not understood]. third art ask culture. we started an art walk which started with initial four galleries. next month we will top out over 20 galleries. we're showing growth and want to maintain it as a viable source he he ~ of he economic

growth. 59tion, the appearance reflect the local history and culture. 6, community based partnerships working with nonprofits such as ccdc larkin street youth, and new nonprofit which will be cpcmc in the neighborhood. architectural and street design to promote experiences with no open space we want to put folks at looking at green verizonth cal walls and uses of green space. we just installed a green vertual wall on cedar alley at larkin as an example. very important was the next one, was to not courage cpmc, they sat at the table for several years, to provide quality access medical care to the residents of the local neighborhood. its was very important to the steering committee and also to the members of cpmc that they were there to represent and create almost a healthy neighborhood -- a healthy lower polk neighborhood campaign as i look at resourcing other parts of the city as well. lastly is to utilize funding. as david chiu said there will be additional funding if we're able to create a cbd on behalf of lower polk neighborhood,

cbmc is staged to he provide an extra $2.77 million [speaker not understood]. everyone will take advantage of that additional funding. it will come in the way of capital projects. our overall budget for the cbd project is about $800,000 a year. on top of that we will receive the 2.77 specifically for capital based projects. want to be clear with those two different funding sources. first cbd projects is for [speaker not understood]. capital based projects. green vertical walls, vertical gardens, anything capital based, park benches, all these large capital expenditures we can use those funds for. cbd boundaries david chiu went through, [speaker not understood], van ness over to larkin, there are a couple small little parks as you can see on this map. this would be the large cpmc hospital project which is coming in. the reason that was included within the boundaries is because there is a natural bridge that will be go

underneath the street to connect with the medical center which is on the other side of the block at geary between van ness and polk. couple project highlights. we look at 35.8% as supervisor chiu said are the property owners petition in favor. the number was actually higher than that. the number was actually 37.5. a couple petitions came back with typos. we took those out. so, we got a very good, very large number people [speaker not understood] in the special assessment district. surveys, we sent out to over 2,500 property owners. 80% of those property owners surveyed felt the current conditions of the neighborhood were negatively affecting their business or property. also the survey results, 65% of the people surveyed were also interested in getting more involved in cbd campaign. some other thing administered by a nonprofit, government by laws, the brown act and also california public records acts

[speaker not understood]. services, what kind of services is cb looking to provide? community guides programs, clean streets programs to include the alleyses, streetscape improvements beautification, marketing and community outreach, community events and public activation, business attracted to support needed with a large store front , advocacy of a neighborhood soretion, and project planning and support. ~ as supervisor chiu said earlier, it's been a long road. they've been working on this diligently the past three years. as recently as last year, lower polk neighbors received neighborhood of the year award. thises was a long time coming. lower polk neighbors is an all volunteer agency. it has since paid off and hopefully some short term goals. as we look at the steering committee, want to point out

how reflective that is of the actual district, the proposed district. we have one, two, three past chairs of lower polk neighbors which is a neighborhood organization david chiu is the president of at one point. the hospital project which is a billion dollars project. we also have small business owners. roy martins who is a local resident and also a local business owner. we have someone from redding elementary to develop a partnership with public schools and their open space. we look forward to funding eventual other thing such as the soccer field that they opened last week on top of larkin street. we have ron case who is an architect and a business -- residential property owner. we have jamie fontaine, director for larkin street youth. various mike all people contributed to the effort over three years. and i also have to say the steering committee raised the bar not only of their work but of my work as well. when you work with people such as alan who work on billion dollars projects they hold your work very, very high. his expectationses were extremely high, much higher than i've seen in other cb

formations. process has been extensive. we've had over 22 steering committee meetings. twice a month to for 2 to 3 hours at a time. four large community meeting. letters went out to residents. we had surveys which were also mailed out. we've had over 15 community group presentations. we had local or monthly updates at lower polk neighbors. we have a website. print mailings, all the social media as well. in looking at the budget, it is a 15-year term that we're proposing to supplement the community services at the lower polk neighborhood. the baseline community services will continue, of course, at their current rate. the assessment budget is 7 99,000 of the total budget of 8 46,000. you can see how those are made up, almost the entire 57% go to cleaner save. the steering whole heard loud and clear from the neighborhood that is a priority.

we don't have a large event budget, we don't have a large capital fund budget. if you were to could have pair our budget to other cbds about the same sort of service area you'd find our budget is much lower, $800,000 is a very bare bones budget for 22 lower partial blocks. i'm just going to go a quick overview of services. the lower polk proposed lower polk services sweeping sidewalks, graffiti in 48 hours, removing public waste [speaker not understood], power washing and spot cleaning, looking for those hard spots in the neighborhood. also steam cleaning sidewalks once a month. dpw removal, and also looking at trying to grow our tree population, spending a little more time in giving some care to the trees. tree basin, sidewalk crackses and landscaping. in terms of public safety, the

steering committee would like to do a program similar to fisherman's wharf where there is not a security ambassador, also includes social service outreach. we have a lot of people in need in lower polk in term of social services. ambassadors will be trained in outreach, city referrals and training in those different areas. also provide pedestrian safety, merchant outreach, [speaker not understood] greening for visitors and also a dispatch service for merchants so they can call in for the cbd to have someone dispatched out. in term of he economic development we're looking at business attraction, retention, technical support, advocacy working with existing city hall programs, leasing assistants, working with people like urban solutions, to provide nonprofit leasing assistants and identify and fill vacancies on a monthly basis. manage resources day to day management of operations, advocacy at city hall, grant writing for specific grants the neighborhood would be able to

get, fund-raising efforts utilizing the cbd as a fiscal agent for other local nonprofit groups that might want to put together a local event. of course, administration. proposed lower polk cbd market identity branding create logo, design, identity, neighborhood banners, continue our neighborhood events, activate public spaces or repurpose public spaces and also looking at streetscape improvements. and just a quick record, just a quick quip from our mayor talking about how the cb really helps the he economic vitality of our city also the different neighborhoods. as i said previously we have over 14 successful cbs in san francisco and i think they made a huge difference in terms of our local neighborhood. i'm here for any questions and i think we have some members of the steering committee also that would like to speak on behalf of their cbd as well.

>> any questions? >> no. >> if we could go to public comment. i want to again thank you for your presentation and for all the work from the entire committee on this. >> thank you. ~ entire community on this >> why don't we hear from our first speaker. good afternoon, i'm jamie fontaine, [speaker not understood]. we formulated to help the lower polk neighborhood. we formulated to help people who were dying in the neighborhood. for the past six years i've been sending crews out doing graffiti abatement, doing cleaning up the areas, picking up [speaker not understood]. i see this as a logical way of -- i've been on the committee since the inception, strong supporter of it and i hope you can move forward with it. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. chris shulman, chairman of the steering committee. i'll be very brief. i think cheryl thomas and [speaker not understood] covered everything very thoroughly.

i just want to lend my support to the cbd and thank you for your consideration. good morning, supervisors. my name is lauren martin. i also believe everything ha been covered, but i am a small business owner located on polk between pine and california. and i believe the cbd will allow business to flourish a little more fully. i am present in maiello indication from 9:30 in the morning till 2:30 in the morning. so, i have a coffee business during the day and then i have a bar in the evening. so, i am eyes and ears on the street for most of the day. and this is what i feel would be beneficial for a small business. if we he could get the vulnerable population in our neighborhood the help that they need, i think the average resident would feel a bit safer

coming out on polk street at night and during the day. i think if it's cleaner, that would also be beneficial and it would take some pressure off small businesses to be the ones that are always calling the nonemergency number and cleaning the sidewalk. i think it's difficult for small businesses, but we have restaurants. we have bars. we'd love to have some retail in our end of the street. and i think the cbd and all of the things that our cbd hopes to encompass would encourage more commerce. thank you for your time. >> thank you. any other members of the public who wish to speak? seeing none, public comment is now closed. [gavel] >> supervisor chiu, any closing comments? >> at this time, again, just want to thank everyone for their efforts. i'm real excited about moving this forward and, supervisor, if we can move this forward with full recommendation to the board. >> i know it takes a lot of work to form cbds. i want to thank the community and more ~ merchants and

community who want to participate for lower polk. with that i'm happy to support this item and forward it to the full board with recommendation. without objection, so moved. [gavel] >> all right. madam clerk, if you can call the next item, please, item 5. although i know that we are also waiting for supervisor cohen to attend this hearing. >> item number 5 is a hearing on the impact of chronic diseases in san francisco's low-income and minority communities. >> i think maybe -- >> we can start with a presentation from staff. >> all right. i think first up we have dr. [speaker not understood] from dph. is that correct? >> good afternoon, supervisors.

my name is dr. tomas aragon. >> i think i heard supervisor cohen rushing into the room. [laughter] >> you just got here right in time. >> thank you. all right. >> all right, supervisor cohen. >> [speaker not understood]. hello. thank you for bearing with us and committee and colleagues, thank you for hearing this item. good afternoon. now, the last few months there have been a lot of robust conversations about the impact of sugar sweetened beverages on, on our community here in san francisco. and we've learned a lot about the broad impacts. but today i called for this hearing so we can get to the nitty-gritty, kind of get down into the details. i'm looking for specific information about how san francisco's minority community, low-income community are

directly affected, especially paying close attention to the disparities and the chronic diseases related to the consumption of these sugary beverages. i've also requested that today we receive more specific information about dental and oral health impacts on these communities. this is an issue that we really haven't had very much conversation around. so, i want to use this as an opportunity to address, to address framework thinking about chronic diseases as it's related to the consumption of sugary sweetened beverages so i'm looking forward to this hearing today. thank you for the wonderful public comment that has turned out. i will tush it over to our first presenter, dr. tomas aragon. thank you for being here with us, dr. aragon. he is with the department of public health. he he will be followed up by dr. jody stokey also from the department of public health, dr.

ashjay [speaker not understood] from ucsf, dr. kay lin brown from [speaker not understood], and dr. [speaker not understood] who is also from ucsf. ~ carolyn so, dr. aragon, please take it away. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is dr. tomas aragon the [speaker not understood] at the san francisco department of public health. i want to just say that i was born and raised in san francisco, grew up in the mission. my family immigrated from nicaragua and i married a filipino woman of chinese descent and that will come in later when you talk about ethnic disparities. and i'm raising three children ages 13, 16 and 17. so, this issue matters to me. okay, i do have a slide presentation. i'm going to just move over to the first slide. i'm going to cover a little bit of background information and then i'm going to cover a little bit about sugar and then talk about some of the disease

in san francisco and set up some summary slides. one thing i do want to point out here, if you look at the slide here, the evolution of man, as a community we are on the right side. part of the challenge we have with sugary drinks is that we did not evolve with sugary drinks. and a lot of what we see now is really, really the fact that the ball of chemistry of sugary drinks doesn't really match who we are as human beings. just this week on may 19th in 2014 the food experts for the united nations is urging global regulatory -- regulatory interventions around what they are describing as artery clogging junk food. "unhealthy diets are now a greater threat to global health than tobacco. just as the world came to regulate the risk of tobacco, a bold framework is required so that we have a healthy diet."

and the u.n. recommendations from 2012 are there on the right-hand side. what i want to point out is that in san francisco we have been working on this issue for a long time and, in fact, we started in 2008 and we'll be here from speakers from shape up san francisco, and we've had campaigns here including soda free summer, drink water says the otter. we think your drink, et cetera. what i want to point out is that the board of supervisors have been really strong supporters of this campaign. so, having your support, ongoing support has been very positive and critical and we want to thank you as a community for what you've been doing for san francisco. i do want to point out, for example, i may go over the data here, show you a little about some of the stuff that is going on in san francisco. so, if you look here on the background of the slide, you see the availability of sugar

and high fructose corn syrup in the united states. you will see that that curve goes up slightly as you move to the right. but what you'll notice down on the bottom is that you'll notice that high fructose corn syrup, the availability that has gone up dramatically in the united states. that's because it's very cheap. it's easy to put this in foods and the food goes into our soda drinks. and, so, it's easy now, part of the reason why we had much bigger portion sizes. the other thing i want to point out, those triangles represent the increase in sugary drink consumption which has increased dramatically over the past 30 to 40 years. the curve that has the circles through the amount of end stage renal disease primarily from diabetes. we have a huge burden of illness that's associated with the changes in our diet and very specifically around sugary beverage consumption. everything that i'm showing you here is occurring in san

francisco. so, the [speaker not understood] i want to summarize very briefly. sugary drinks are the single largest contributor to added sugar in our diet. and a major contributor to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and metabolic dysfunction. the evidence is very straightforward. we know that portion sizes have increased dramatically and that children and adults are drinking soft drinks more than ever. we know it causes disease and we know that cutting back actually can can make things better. one thing i do want to point out here is some very concrete ethnic differences with the way -- with the epidemic of obesity and sugary drinks. so, for african-americans, what you will see is that they have much higher rates of cardiovascular disease, which includes strokes, hypertension