supervisors, but if not, also with the voters of san francisco. the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor farrell. supervisor kim. ~ >> thank you. a few weeks ago i had expressed frustration with actually the department of health contracts with [speaker not understood] s-r-o buildings that we rent to homeless on our streets and we use taxpayer dollars to house folks. and also noting that a number of those buildings have numerous building violations and health violations that aren't a trust yet we continue to contract with those buildings. last week on may 12 the city did file a lawsuit against one of the families that owns a number of these hotels, 15-s r.o.s, over 880 room. the families have a history of health safety and building code violationses and unlawful conduct over the past couple of years. the city continues to pay the

family using taxpayer dollars for providing housing even though they have outstanding violations and continue to deny residents health, safety and tenancy rights, including participating in on a legal policy of rotating tenants out of their room so they cannot achieve their tenancy and therefore the eligible rights to that unit. i am introducing a resolution today to urge dph to divest all city resources, investments, and financial contracts related to the substandard s-r-o hotel owned or operated by the family and to also catalog all the s-r-o hotels that have a history of health, safety and building code violations and to establish a plan to similarly divest city resources and to develop and implement a plan to relocate all tenants who are still living in these substandard residential rooms in s-r-o hotels named in the city attorney's civil action. i look forward to working with the department of public health on this issue. i think it's incredibly important that when we fund

housing, particularly for our most vulnerable residents that we are providing them safe and adequate housing here in san francisco and rewarding property owners who are accountable and responsible to our residents. second, i'm also introducing a charter amendment today which i hope will finally culminate or consolidate with three he other charter amendments regarding our children and our youth. that is the children's fund, the public education enrichment fund and our children on city council. this is a proposal to voters to amend what supervisor tom ammiano, then supervisor tom ammiano worked to create the city rainy day reserve. this would bifurcate those fund so there would be one for the city and one for our public schools and would actually change the discretion in terms of how those dollars could be approved for the school district. just wanted to thank our controller's office and also

young lee, our deputy superintendent who worked on crafting this compromise and look forward to our continued conversation at rules committee and the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor kim. supervisor mar. >> thank you. colleagues, today i'm proud to be carrying legislation championed by our san francisco youth commission, the youth commission has asked our help as the board of supervisors to achieve their charter mandate, especially promoting a stronger youth base in our board of supervisors meetings and committee hearings. but with so much of our business happening during the middle of the day, youth who are required to be in school are effectively barred from regularly participating. what i am proposing today along with my co-sponsor supervisor david campos is a simple and very practical change to the board rules. the rule simply allows the youth commission to submit a formal request for a hearing on an item that has been referred to them to be held at a youth friendly time and that just means the time when they're not

barred from at least paying attention and coming to speak before us. and this requires the committee chair to reply to the commission prior to calendaring the matter. and i know my office and i have to coordinate closely with our clerk and our clerk's office as well, but we think that this common sense measure simply formalizes a process that has been an occasional challenge in the past. while many supervisors worked well with the youth commission, this hasn't always been the case. in the commission's nearly two decades of operation, hearings about the city budget, juvenile hall residents -- juvenile hall rebuild, youth services and muni cares have occurred with hardly any youth attendance. this is simply a question whether we honor young people and whether we can better facilitate their engagement in our work and deliberations. i'm also introducing a sister resolution that urges other youth serving boards and commissions to also develop

their own policy to encourage youth participation. i look forward to passing this relatively simple measure and urge my colleagues to accommodate young people and youth voice as often as possible and i will consider -- and i will consider an even stronger measure in the future if we are as a body unable to create this space for our young people. also tomorrow i'll be hosting a transportation town hall meeting in the richmond district, it's part of the mta's efforts around the city to promote our transportation or t-2030 recommendation. and over the past year in the richmond district, i'm proud that we've implemented a transit first agenda from establishing a 5 fulton limited line to advancing the geary rapid timeline from 2020 to 2018. more info is available at go geary.com. new painted lanes for the 38 geary line and the events improve arguello boulevard, one

of the vast corridors that can [speaker not understood] with golden gate park. it's also one of the key bicycle corridors in our city. t-2030 is really important and for all this work to continue i think supporting transportation 2030 recommendation are critical. and i urge all of us and the mayor not to back down from restoring the vehicle license fee or vlf to pre-governor schwarzenegger level. we have too much work to do and we need the funding to accomplish it. i'm prepared to go to bat this november like i know many of us are for this funding. and our town hall in the richmond district will also begin on wednesday, from 6:00 to 7:30 on 18th avenue and clement. it's also supported by a group of transit riders in the richmond district called go geary and they're providing food and drinks at the meeting. so, please come and join us. i think the food is from

angelina's. i hope everyone will attend the meeting and join the conversation. thank you and the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor mar. supervisor tang. >> thank you. today i have an in memoriam for someone who was a huge member of our sunset community and was really respected and well loved by all of her fellow animal lovers. jennifer jamison is someone who has served on our animal welfare commission and actually as the, i believe the vice-chair in this past year. and, so, ashley from my office sfgov-tv will allow me, we do have a few photos showing jennifer. she did pass away unexpectedly and we are just so devastated to hear about her loss. she started a [speaker not understood] rescue in 2010. they are dedicated to rescue and re-homing black and dark coated companion animals from shelters. believe it or not, they are actually disproportionately euthanized for their color. black cats are often associated

with superstition while black dogses are the last to be adopted from shelters and are often the first to be euthanized for their color. so jennifer was actually dedicated to making sure those animals found their forever home. lou guru rescue partnered with many shelters and agencies including animal care and control here in san francisco. our spca, san jose animal shelter, sacramento, contra costa, kern county, merced and many others. in addition to running lou guru, jennifer was an active volunteer with many other rescue groups. is like we said she worked with spca with [speaker not understood]. shelter cat rescue and housed and cared for foster cats until they found a permanent placement. she organized volunteers for walk a dog regular queue where she grew the workforce and coordinated staff adoption events. and she was very, very engaged with our office and many of the community efforts that he we had. she was often seen in the

community such as our movies and the coffee free movie nights where she would work with us and animal care control to share various animal with the community. and, so, again we're just so shocked by her passing and really want to wish her family all the best as they deal with this difficult time. and would like to ask that we adjourn in her memory today. >> thank you, supervisor tang. supervisor wiener. >> thank you, madam clerk. today i am introducing a charter amendment that ties the mta's baseline to population grove so that a population increase he he in our city, mta funding increases, the additional funding would be dedicated to primarily to improving muni's frequency capacity, reliability and state of good repair with the smaller amount being dedicated to street safety improvements. colleague, i'll be honest that i did not want to introduce this amendment.

i would prefer that we proceed with the vehicle license fee and i agree with supervisor mar in that respect. i believe that would provide long-term dedicated sustainable funding for road resurfacing, for cap pal improvementses to make muni run better and improve the safety of our streets. and i'm hoping that we will be able to move the vlf forward. however, if the vlf doesn't move forward, then i would intend to ask the board to place this charter amendment on the ballot which will help us keep our commitment to having a great public transportation system for our city. we know that the population of san francisco is growing and will continue to grow. our population has grown by 85,000 people since 2003. we're project today grow by another 150,000 by 20 40. we cannot have a situation in san francisco where people feel that they need to drive in term

of the new population coming here, we cannot have another 50 or 100,000 cars on our streets. it doesn't work. it will lead to perpetual gridlock. it's bad for drivers. it's bad for pedestrians. it's bad for muni. it's bad for [speaker not understood]. it's bad for everyone. what we need to do is make sure 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.