city [speaker not understood]. thank you. >> okay. >> any questions? >> great. again, just for all the reappoint ease, wanted to ask your thoughts about operating within the parameters of the sunshine task force in terms of your role in conjunction with the city attorney and confines of operating within the city charter. >> absolutely, the city attorney was invaluable. like said before, he or she does provide us with [speaker not understood] in the cases. and he we would like to continue to have a city attorney. we would like maybe a slightly bigger budget so that they could sit with us for the last hour. usually 9 o'clock is when they're cut off. so, it's not something we can push forward. we'd certainly appreciate it. and as mentioned also, it would also be quite helpful to have them in our committees. given a choice, yes, in the full task force, if that's all we can budget [speaker not

understood], if there is a -- maybe an up and coming junior attorney that could use some more exposure, we would love to have them on the committee because we have similar issues come up and we could use that guidance there as well. that would be my thoughts on that. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you very much, supervisors. >> next person, bruce wolfe. >> good afternoon, chair yee, supervisor tang. appreciate your time. my name is bruce wolfe. i served on the sunshine ordinance task force from 2005, summer of 2005 to 2012. and over the past two years i have listened to a number of

the meetings as they were recorded and made available to the public online. in all those seven years, the work that i've done has been, from what i've been told, very well done, honest, unbiased and impeccable. my contributions for me were always honest and caring and with civic volunteers. i enjoy serving my community. i know not many people are able to do that for various reasons, but i try to make my time to contribute what i can. and those ears do speak for themselves. as you know, i'm no stranger to many hearing rooms and to offices here at city hall. and it's probably not necessary at this juncture for me to do a full introduction of myself. you do have my full resume and cv in front of you.

we all care about transparency at sunshine, for it to be about truth and justice and integrity. and with your appointment and approval, the public and staff will have the same bounds and unbiased service offered in all those previous years, including to many people who are new that are coming up and to those asking for reappointment. but as i promised you twice before, i will not mess with certain procedures that may be controversial. what i will do is if i find anomalies or questions that are not being answered or that have no answer, i will certainly address them within the proper structure within the sunshine ordinance task force. [speaker not understood]. one more review. that is probably the mistake i

made a couple of years ago. it may -- the issue may not have been without merit, but maybe the approach on how it what implemented was. you have my word on this. there are a number of areas, as you've been asking, supervisor tang, about what can be done to help streamline or make better or make more effective and the sunshine task force. one, i'd like to say regarding the city attorney, deputy city attorney that sits with the task force is that i really appreciate that they keep an ethical wall. that is really important because, frankly, like the ethics commission, the sunshine task force has that same aspect

and jurisdiction to be a watchdog, to be looking at everything that happens within the city. and i do think it's important -- when i first came on the task force there were the deputy city attorney did sit on almost all the committees. all the ones like compliance and amendments and rules and the ones that actually needed the help during those times. i do think that new appointees who are not familiar with the sunshine ordinance, that they take a certain amount of training before actually serving so that there be a period of time, that could be a number of weeks, a couple of months or what have you, but like everybody else in the city who must go through the -- kind of the exam of understanding what sunshine ordinance is, i think it's important even more for the task force members to understand what the process is and what they're there to be doing. and many time over the years i

found certain appointees not being familiar enough and that learning curve being too high for them to under the legalities of what we're dealing with. some of it is common sense and many of us who are astute to that are able to make presentations that are comprehensive enough to be understood, especially to the general public. but i think it's really important that the members themselves have a little more focused training. i think that's really important. as far as too many complaints are concerned, in my own personal experience, i found that the work that i do, we files requests all the time. i haven't had too many problems and i know for a fact that based upon some studies that were done a number of years ago that of all the sunshine requests that are made in the city, it's a very small percentage, it actually make it as complaints to the sunshine task force or that are actually made as complaints to the sunshine task force. i'm not using that as any kind

of excuse. there is, you know, we all have work to do and it's a lot of time that we spend on these things. but i do think that the concept of allowing the administrator to try and expedite -- not necessarily mediate, but expedite what they can in a complaint is important. this is something that i requested of the administrator prior to the current one when we had no administrator prior to that for a long time. there was no administrator. so, none of this was happening. so, that was really an important factor that we reinstitute that because if i'm having a simple problem i could walk in and talk to the administrator, they could pick up the phone and say, hey, so and so is here. they seem to need this or that, can you help? and it's not a big legal matter and it happens, that helps save us a lot of time.

jurisdiction is always determined at the beginning of every hearing. it has to be or else we would be flanked with way too much stuff. so, and it's important because the deputy city attorney provides ample advice as to whether each case is in writing before the meeting, whether each case is within the jurisdiction of the task force. so, we do that due diligence. every task force does do it. so, i want you to know that for sure. time factors, why do meetings take so long? i think mentioning for mr. hyland and some others about maybe altering how things work. it's hard. we're trying to accommodate the public at a time when they can show up. at the same time, staff is -- it's beyond -- the day is over for staff. so, it makes it very, very difficult. and i think this has to be some

real discussion about how that should work. i don't necessarily have any real ideas except maybe to start the day out a little earlier and find out which complaints can show up earlier. that may be a way to do it. i do agree that sometimes you have to have special meetings to take up the slack, especially if you're behind. there may be times where you can combine some cases, but i also think that having somebody to help expedite and be very active about it will probably solve a lot of those problems. the tech committee is my final comment on this. the tech committee was something that was created during my time on the task force. i what the tech guru for the task force at the time. i brought in a number of experts over the years to speak to the task force and help educate them about certain things, like meta data in pdfs, how they are scanned and

whatnot. i have had a lot of ideas and served -- not served, but attended many of the committee nit meetings around getting as much of the information, public information online as possible. that will solve -- if it's done correctly, that will solve a ton of complaints because the information that people are looking for that they may not be getting will be readily available for them without any human interaction. and that's really kind of the way it should work. so, in closing, i feel that my number of years, my experience, my level of institutional history, my understanding of parliamentary procedure and some alternatives like roberta's rules of order which helps to expand on better discussion. i think i could lend a hand.

plus i'm a person with a disability. and i know there isn't an applicant today who has registered themselves as with a disability. and i know that the person that currently serves as the -- as the person with disability has not reapplied. and i think it's really important that we -- as i testified before the mayor's disability council, that it's important that especially for people with, with abilities that require a little more attention, that we make sure that there are not vacancies and that people -- if there are people that have applied that are ready and willing to fill the spot, that we should not let other people continue to serve when they choose not to. i'm doing this because there isn't anybody and i think it's important and i have the skills and the knowledge and the understanding. and i do understand your

concerns about me and my history in this, but frankly that particular one point does not overshadow all the other good work i brought and the contributions have brought to the sunshine task force. so, i'll stop there. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next up. looks like todd david. >> good afternoon, commissioners yee and tang. my name is todd david and i am reapplying to be on the sunshine ordinance task force. i want to start by kind of reiterating a couple things that member hyland said. i don't think there is anyone more disappointed that chair grant is not continuing on as i am. it's really been a pleasure working with chair grant and i'm really going to miss her. i think she's been really great and also -- i also want to say

member nee has been an amazing guide and his institutional knowledge and memory for the task force has been just phenomenal. i can't say i'm always in agreement with him, but i find his knowledge and being able to reference, you know, specific areas of the sunshine ordinance has really been -- it's going to be a big loss to the task force to not have him there. so, i wanted to start with those two things. i think one of the things that i feel that i bring to the task force that maybe is different than other people is that i'm a parent of three young children and it's a different point of view than a lot of other members have. i'm not sure how many of the other task force members have children of elementary school age and of kindergarten age. so, a lot of times when issues come before the task force, i can think of things specifically around rec and park where there is issues around the appropriate

disclosure or what personal information should be redacted or not. you know, i was kind of wondering, well, if my child find out before i sign my child up for rec and park summer camp, is that information -- should that be clarified, sign up for rec and park summer camp, does that information mean it should be to the public? and -- it should be made available to the public? this is an issue i think speaks to something that supervisor tang has been asking about, about how does the city attorney's advice and how do i feel about the city attorney's advice. the city attorney has made it, to my mind, fairly clear that the brown act calls for that it is okay to redact public information, private information that is sent to our supervisors. the sunshine ordinance seems to maybe say something other that is not necessarily in

compliance. and i think i should skip to one of the big issues we as a task force struggle with and tackle all the time is that how does the public, how do supervisors, how do department heads deal with different advice that they're getting from the city attorney, from the sunshine ordinance task force, from ethics. and i think that it would really be of value to the public and to our -- and to our supervisors and to our department heads if there is a way we can resolve these conflicts because i think that there's an expectation of certain things from members of the public and then there's expectations of supervisors and the advice that those are getting can be in conflict with each other. so, how do we resolve that so that everyone knows what it is that we should be able to access as public information? so, i think that that's, you

know, an issue that i'm very interested in trying to continue to tackle as a member of the task force. as i did mention, i do have three young children and i know that some questions have come up around certainly a couple more meeting i [speaker not understood] i missed. i want to address that up front. one meeting i missed, i was actually hospitalized for surgery. another meeting i was out of town on business, which was very unusual. and then as i'm sure supervisor yee can attest to, when you do have young children, they do get sick from time to time. and i do co-parent with my wife and i do not feel that the responsibility that if a child is sick should absolutely have to fall to my wife. and, so, hopefully going forward i would like to do a better job of attending more regularly [speaker not understood]. that being said, if a child is sick, i am not going to -- i do

prioritize my family. and, so, but i do -- i think both of you know that i take my responsibilities of the work that i do and especially of the volunteer work i do in the community very, very seriously and i'm a very hard worker and i do not take absentees to the task force readily. i don't do that lightly. so, i'm happy to answer any questions if you have any. >> yeah, so, yeah, i did have a question about your attendance. i appreciate you being a parent of children and i know they get sick a lot. i guess as you move forward -- i'm sorry, how old are your kid now? >> 12, 9 and 6. >> and i assume usually when they're younger they get sick a lot more. >> um-hm. >> so, do you anticipate, i

guess, as you move forward that the number of times that you have to take off because of those situations would be, again, a little bit less -- >> yes. i also want to say that at the beginning -- when the task force, we didn't meet for a couple months. then we kind of were shifting around dates. there were dates we would take votes. could people make that meeting, could we not. it wasn't an easy predictability when regular meetings would be scheduled. as every member said, sometimes we met twice a month. on top of that you have your subcommittee meetings. so, there were some months where i was at three meetings a month in a row, then i might have had to miss a regularly scheduled task force meeting that was actually changed from its regular scheduled date to another date because people said, i'm going to be out of town that week and that that --

the week that was changed to happened to be a date that i wasn't able to make it. so, there's been some shifting of dates and there hasn't been able to be as predictable also. it is certainly my 100% intention to be at every task force meeting, you know. with that, that is 100% my intention. can i predict what the future is going to bring? no, but that is something that i will absolutely -- will make a much -- i mean, i'll make a strong effort to be at as many meetings as possible. >> okay. my questioning wasn't about your intentions. it was more, you know, all of us have things we deal with and if it's something we have to deal with, that's predictable you have to deal with. you might have to make a decision whether, you know, you're going to be able to be fully participating or not. so, that was really all --

>> i plan to fully participate. i think one of the other things is that if you look at a lot of events that i'm at, a lot of times i'm the one -- i'm the independent thinker on the task force. i'm the one dissenting vote. i think in a lot of ways it's easy to be a member of the task force and you kind of -- or i'm sure you experience it as a member of the board of supervisors. you get in this kind of group think and as an independent, i really try to think independently about how each individual case, you know -- the merits of it. and, so, i am committed to the task force. i apologize for it. i wish i had a better attendance record than i did. i fully admit that has not been ideal. and going forward i will make a stronger effort. i don't feel it was a lack of effort. it happened to be a set of odd circumstances this past year

that [speaker not understood]. >> okay, thank you. anything else? >> thank you. >> sure. >> last applicant, rodman joseph martin. >> i'm the last one. good afternoon, supervisors. ~ yee and tang. thanks for having me here. my name is rodman martin. a little bit about myself. i'm thankful to participate in this and considering me. i've lived in san francisco now for about four years. i grew up in the bay area, went to cal poly for undergrad and to santa clara law school. i've now been practicing workers' compensation for five years. we represent the injured worker. they get hurt, they're having difficulty obtaining benefits, we get a court hearing to solve that. i [speaker not understood] san francisco and oakland. i volunteer at the asian law

caucus on columbus and jackson and member of the san francisco bar and bar of oakland. i've been wanting to get involved in participating in local government for sometime. i think it would be rewarding and i think a lot of people who come up here, my practical skills as a lawyer might [speaker not understood] in a good way on this task force. [speaker not understood] i meet with individual clients, individual people who feel a grieved, who feel like no one is listening to them, who feel like people aren't giving them the time of day and i get them through that. so, from what i understand, and this has been great listening to everyone come up here and discuss the task force, it's a crash course for it. that might be one of the issues that's going on when people file, you know, multiple task force actions and consolidation, a one person said, might be a way to do

that. we also are involved in document production at our law firm, [speaker not understood] records as the first person said. i think that would help. my knowledge about that might help as well. i do believe that transparency in government is important. i know the purpose of the task force. i know that the meeting hours can be long. one of the first things i looked at were the meeting hours and i said, oh, must go like 7:00 or 8:00, 11:30. i'm single. i'm fortunate enough to have a job where i can say i'm leaving for the day and no one asks me any questions. so, if i tell them i have a meeting for the task force, i'm out. i'm out of the office, and i'm here. so, that will not be an issue for me. i think it sounds like the nuts and bolts of getting the task

force to work efficiently and wading through what the actual issue is is important. i think, again, myself as a lawyer, i think you need explain things to people in a non-legalese bureaucratic government code way and they might under a little better about what's going on. mediation sounds like a great way to kind of take care of thing before they're a huge problem. i think that could help out a lot of people here have said already. the backlog i think is the biggest, it sound like, again, this is just from hearing what people talked about today. sounds like a huge issue. once that's cleared, it should be a priority, would be immensely helpful. and that's it. >> okay. okay, thank you very much. okay, public comments. i have a number of cards here.

first person is tom [speaker not understood]. if there are other public commentses, go ahead and line up over here. hello, supervisors tang and yee. tom timprano, [speaker not understood] harvey milk lgbt democratic club. [speaker not understood] myself sent on behalf of lee hepner in support of his appointment to the sunshine task force. so, expounding the harvey milk club 40 years ago, the club has advocated to have lgbt representation at all levels of city government from the board of supervisors to city commissions and task forces, task forces, excuse me. lee's outstanding leadership at our club's executive board for the past two years has demonstrated exactly the sort of leadership and outgoingness

that this task force needs from lgbt voices. during his multiple terms, he has showed commitment to public process, routinely redthving the club at board meetings and commission hearings. he's also demonstrated a soundness of judgment and ability to listen to all side of an argument which are traits that some would say are a rarity. [speaker not understood]. i hope eula point lee to the sunshine task force so he can be as much of an asset to this task force as he has been to our club. ~ you'll appoint efficient i would also like to encourage you to appoint lee wolf. two years ago we wrote a letter requesting that he be appoint and had he we hope now you will follow-up on that request of ours and many other member of the community. thank you. good afternoon, chair yee

and member tang. i'm patrick [speaker not understood]. here on my own time. i'm speaking in support of bruce wolfe who appears to be the only disabled applicant again, just as he was in 2012. mr. wolf's attendance record was spotless the entire time he served on the task force. i am here to speak against todd david. as you can see from the handout, mr. david has missed 46% of absences from the last 13 meetings and as david campos said, we are considering reappointment and evaluating incumbents. the question is are they doing their job? mr. david is not. he's been absent nearly 50% of the time. with all due respect to supervisor tang, [speaker not understood] as a lawyer,