>> they should have said in their exemption, it specifically applies, and provide evidence for why the decision to stop enforcing metered parking on sundays helped meet operating expenses. >> what -- should it have been an e-i-r, negative declaration, [speaker not understood], what are you arguing they should have issued, what kind of document? >> i'm not argument that they couldn't have somehow done this within their resolution in the documents that they provided. that would depend on what they find and what the substantial evidence was provided there. but they would have had to make a decision. they would have had to look at what was being done and explained the rationale for doing so. >> i think whatever was listed in the attachment, for example, they made a decision which one can agree with or disagree with. you're saying the statutory exemption could apply? >> if they had made the correct findings and they had correctly identified what it was applying to. >> and would you agree that a

statutory exemption, unlike a categorical exemption -- statutory exemption, if something fits into that exemption, then it's exempt regardtionv of potential environmental impacts? >> yes, absolutely. >> c-e-q-a itself, the state legislature determines or the guidelines determine that it -- that there are certain decisions that are simply statutorily exempt from c-e-q-a? >> that's correct, i would agree. >> okay. now, you've relied at least in part on -- you argued this statutory exemption cannot apply in part because it is a reduction in revenue, not an increase. as i read the statutory exemption, i read it differently. it talks about modifications, restructurings. so, i know the mta and planning take the position that if you look at the overall fees and all the different tickets and fees and other annoyances people deal with on a regular

basis, that they have to look at all of that. but even if you look individually, the exemption does report on modifications and restructurings. i guess another question would be if mta were to lower fares, we're going to lower fares by 25 or 50 cents or as they've done, decide that a low-income use, senior, disabled are going to get free fares because of their economic circumstances, can those decisions rely on the statutory exemption? because that is also reducing fares, reducing revenue for -- obviously for other policy goals that the mta has. and, so, under your argument, wouldn't that also not be able to rely on the statutory exemption? >> i think you had two questions there. the first one was statutory

interpretation of the exemption. and i believe what you were asking is whether modification of revenues has to be increases or helping, a ~ assisting the operating expenses. all the case law that deals with the statutory exemption deals with situations where there are increases in revenue to the agencies revoking it. so, i do think that that's a narrow interpretation of that statute ~ and following c-e-q-a's mandates interpret thing as favorable as possible for the environment, that would be the correct interpretation. with regard to your second question, which was can this exemption ever apply to lower fees, i think that ties into it. but that would be a different case and you would have to look at what sort of other exemptions might apply. i think there's 33 categorical exemptions and newer statutory exemptions under c-e-q-a. so, it may not be what the fares and rates exemption is the best one to use instead of

other exam ifsv -- >> is it your position then if the mta decides to lower fares for everyone or for some people that that decision could not rely on this particular statutory exemption? >> i think i'd have to look at the specific circumstances, but i do think in this case that the decision to revoke sunday metered parking is clear need for a purpose that is not operating expenses. >> okay. >> so, just to add to that, the reason behind this decision was to appease drivers, because drivers complain it's because the mayor was not happy with this policy. that was a driving force and i think that's a nonexempt purpose. >> there are a lot of voters for different policy matters we can love or hate, but i ask this because the mta and other agencies are raising and lowering fees all the time. eliminating fees, creating, raising, lowering, changing, and it strikes me that your

argument, whatever it is on the public policy side of it, could create a precedent that could make it impossible to do that, relying on this particular exemption, which i believe the city relies on all the time. >> i think it would be important for the city to look at fares and rates exemption and decide whether there are others more apt to the situations. my sense is the adoption of fare changes and reduction does not adopt what we're seeing here [speaker not understood]. i'm sorry, i think that would be my answer. and then those two reasons, one of the reasons for this appeal is because they didn't identify it specifically. >> and the one final question. would an increase in muni fares be able to utilize the statutory exemption? when you increase muni fares, you're presumably going to reduce, potentially reduce rider ship and push more people into their cars and create more greenhouse gases. so, if muni increases its

fares, can they rely on the statutory exemption? >> yes, i believe so. that's what the purpose of this exemption is for, was when agencies had to get revenue in order to help meet operating expenses. >> so, even though that might be a negative environmental impact? >> that's right. a typical case, other cases dealing with thing like bus fare hikes, [speaker not understood] because it what designed -- the he courts have said this increases revenue for operating expenses so we're going to uphold -- >> why don't they make a joint increase it we're going to increase if for some people, decrease it for others, it's a net wash, but there is some lowering. are you saying they can only use -- the one decision, they can only use the statutory exemption for the increase but they have to find some other exemption or [speaker not understood]? >> [speaker not understood] to

appease drivers i think there would be a stronger argument. >> [speaker not understood]. >> no, appeasing drivers would not be an appropriate reason to invoke the exemption. >> a lot of decisions are made to appease different groups and that strikes me as a challenging basis to say the exemption doesn't apply. >> yeah, i mean, i think in combination of the entire scenario having the revenues go down, having the evidence that drivers are disgruntled and the mayor saying that nobody likes sunday metered parking and therefore the mayor wants to get rid of it, i think that shows strong evidence that the driving force behind this was not to meet the budget. >> thank you. and i say all of this as someone who has been very frustrated with some of the decisions that have been made, that of reduced transit funding. so, but, again, i think i'm very focused on what c-e-q-a

requires and doesn't require. thank you. >> thank you. >> counsel has three minutes left. good afternoon, [speaker not understood]. i speak to you on behalf of the san francisco drivers union which represents thousands of riders in the city. it is the same riders who will be paying for free sunday parking meters this year. that is what the planning department and sfmta says when they justify using the c-e-q-a exemption. they also claim a precedent the hastily added provision to the budget cannot be separated from the budget. don't fall for that trap. we are only appealing the repeal sunday meters, not the entire budget. please treat this as a no exemption for the sunday parking meter decision. the use of the statutory exemption violates the spirit and the letter of c-e-q-a. it was designed to allow muni to avoid bankruptcy by raising more revenue in time of need.

instead it is used for the express purpose to make it cheaper to drive in the city. you all know this. do not fall for the mayor's bait and switch just like the vehicle license fee. this is not an affordable [speaker not understood] measure. [speaker not understood] raising muni fares, making muni crowd and had less reliable, increasing congestion, making our streets less safe and hurting small businesses. as sfmta's own analysis shows. we urge you to uphold this exemption and let muni use the money to provide more and better service to more people. it is the right thing to do for the city. the environment [speaker not understood] right thing under the law. this is precisely what c-e-q-a was designed for. on the last note, i've spoken to my attorney and we specifically spoke about the free muni for youth issue. some [speaker not understood] support that. there are many other ways to provide affordable

transportation and he described to me many other exemptions they could have been using, including negative declaration. so, we do not think that this issue would apply to those actions. thank you. >> colleagues, any questions to the appellants? all right. at this time why don't we hear from members of the public that support the appellants. you have up to two minutes each. please step up. good afternoon, supervisors. i'm peter straus and i'm here with the transit riders union. i think supervisor wiener raised a number of interesting points which i hadn't thought about, but i think a key issue here is whether, in fact, there is balance in the budget achieved or whether there is still a long-term deficit that

needs to be addressed. i think one of the issues here, it's been alleged the suspension of sunday metering from c-e-q-a and substituting additional funds, there is no net impact. i think there's still sort of analogous to how you look at global warming. if we look at the over warming in 2015, while there's no massive flooding in 2015, but you can't allege that global warming does not have environmental effects because there is a long-term problem that has not been addressed and the issue here is that this represents the sunday metering represents a significant funding stream of particular importance that goes spot general fund, operating fund for long-term issues that have not been addressed. i think you all realize there is a huge remaining deficit in

long-term funding for muni, which has not been addressed just because 2015 happens to be a good budget year, you know. and substituting funds that are available this year does not solve a long-term issue. because of these long-term issues, i'll ask that you support the appeal. and i know that you're doing everything you can to support transit funding. i think that's something that needs to continue, but particularly in this year that we have moved away from the vehicle license fee. there are significant long-term impacts of removing this $12 million budget a year [speaker not understood]. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. cynthia cruz here with the league of pissed off voters. it was an april fools joke of a vote that the sfmta rolled back sunday meters. they prematurely voted to

repeal sunday meters by the future bond money and not invoke the november 2014 ballot measure funds. it is responsible to depend on funding that may or may not be available [speaker not understood]. it is disappointing after the give away the mayor has dropped his support for [speaker not understood]. there are [speaker not understood], and it's time to stop playing chicken with public safety. it's not just the league and other transit advocates that show the environmental and traffic benefits to san francisco. sfmta's own data proves that enforcing metered parking on sunday was good for the city. and sfmta studied published in december 2013 that after sunday metering, drivers were able to find a parking spot twice as fast as before. the sfmta is trying to use loophole in the environmental quality act to try to avoid the legal requirement to analyze the environmental impacts of

repealing sunday meters. they claim it is part of the entire budget and it is necessary to balance the books. but how does the sfmta give away $11 million and balance their budget. they can't hold sunday meters hostage by saying the entire budget is dependent on it. this is a clear abuse of the exemption c-e-q-a allows for cases when agencies need to raise fees and meet their operating expenses. a c-e-q-a budget exemption should not be used to mask political decisions. the league of pissed off voters ask that you revoke metered parking -- i'm sorry, revoke meters parking -- the decision to revoke metered parking on sundays. and if the board of supervisors gets in on this, maybe it's time to delete transit first from the city charter. thank you. good afternoon, tom [speaker not understood] executive director of livable city.

i guess one of the questions you might be asking yourself is why does sfmta manage parking in the city? why do they have meters at all and why do they enforce meters? if you have listened to sfmta over the past decade as to why they manage parking, why we need variable pricing, why we need meters and so on, they say it's not about revenue. it is about intelligent management of parking. it's about reducing and cusping departments of neighborhood. all the traffic that results from that. [speaker not understood]. they say it's about sub poderthing neighborhood businesses and a thriving retail economy in neighborhoods. to give you an example, chicago when sunday meters were revoked, the merchants had been lobbying to get it back. so, they said it's essential to preserving neighborhood vitality, making sure [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood].

people distracted, people making lots of right turns has implications for collisions and for traffic conflicts in our neighborhoods. but double parking and bike lanes and bus stops, et cetera, reduces safety, causes congestion that impacts muni and so on and so on. they have made the case over the years, there is a whole body of evidence that says there is reasons to do parking management. now sfmta is saying, no, this is purely [speaker not understood]. the only impact is budgetary and none of those environmental impacts exist. we say that's not true, there are huge environmental implications for how we manage parking in our city. yanking out an entire parking program unfunded has an environmental indication that was shown up as mr. brooklyn talked about. [speaker not understood]. you will see they found all of these environmental benefits from managing parking in this way, doesn't that mean those environmental benefits go away.

no, it does ferment [speaker not understood]. thank you. >> next speaker. hi, there, my name is [speaker not understood], and i'm the interim chair of the san francisco transit riders union, and i'm here to ask you to bring back sunday parking meters. and i'm doing that to you specifically because you are an elected body. we had a situation where i was part of the san francisco transit -- the mayor's transportation task force and we all voted to have the bls happen and also the bond. unfortunately the mayor decided this wasn't a good time to have vlf and that was against the wishes of the people he put together that were not elected to have the vlf come on board for 2014. the sfmta board voted to repeat sunday parking meters and they voted to repeal it because they not elected. they are appointed by the

mayor. so, they're in a situation by the mayor. a lot of them were in a difficult matter which they knew almost every sfmta board member that i spoke with was thery think, certainly for congestion and pollution and for better transit and even for better -- for small businesses and for safety was to have the sunday parking meters. but they could not -- a board that was appointed by the mayor against [speaker not understood] wishes. so, we come to you today [speaker not understood] as folk who have not been appointed but elected by the people of san francisco to make the right choice, and the right choice is to bring back sunday parking meters, to take the one-third of time that people spend circling looking for parking out of the equation on sunday [speaker not understood] equation on monday through

saturday and to make a better san francisco for all of us. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is nicole snyder and i'm here with walk san francisco. i'm here to talk about the support the sunday parking meters appeal for two main reasons. the first is around funding and the fact that this $11 million wasn't -- didn't go through -- didn't go through the proper c-e-q-a channels and sunday is critically needed right now for safety projects, for the mta budget, the blf movement to fund over $13 million in vision zero projects over the next two years and unfortunately as other speakers have mentioned, that has been pulled. we are hoping that they will be supplemental [speaker not understood]. there is no guarantee of that. so, pulling out additional funding from an already

stretched budget makes implementing your [speaker not understood] commitments very challenging. [speaker not understood] from what i understand this was not adequately reviewed through c-e-q-a. the second reason that i'm here today is because when cars are circling looking for parking without a metered system that reads two pedestrian injuries that leads to collisions t the more traffic we have circling, the more likelihood there is for collision and frustration on behalf of drivers as well. we want to create a system, inherently safer for everyone and not looking at the environment and the health and injury impacts of removing these meters is something that needs to be discussed and something that we need to further investigate. so, thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. hi, my name is henry penn.

i'd like to implore you guys to support the appeal of the c-e-q-a appeal for removing sunday meters, but the city keep sunday meters [speaker not understood]. it reduces pollution saleslady in neighborhoods like the low-income communities. especially since they don't have adequate access to transit. one example of how funding [speaker not understood] has helped, the black i live on today on fund days, usually there are no cars at all parked outside my house. historically when sunday meters have not been in effect, there is not a single space outside my house at all. my family, we own a car, but we don't drive a lot. and when we do, it's taken us a very long time, three hours to find a parking spot. so, sunday meters will definitely help all the drivers, will help all the

transit riders, [speaker not understood], it's actually more safe for them. thank you. >> thank you. are there any other members of the public that wish to speak in this portion of public comment? okay. at this time why don't we now turn over to the city departments who will have 10 minutes to describe the grounds for their determination that this project is exempt from environmental review. mr. reiskin. >> good afternoon, president chiu, members of the board. i'm [speaker not understood] reiskin, [speaker not understood] of the mta. i'd like to start by saying the mta took a very deliberative process over the last two months to develop its operating and two-year capital budget. it's one like every other budget that's developed in the city and elsewhere, really reflects a lot of different decisions and a lot of different trade-offs, but one that i believe in sum is a very strong budget in terms of

advancing the city's transportation, environmental, and safety goals. some of the highlights of the budget include a 10% increase in muni transit service. increased funding [speaker not understood] to help muni work better in the streets, implementation dollars for vision zero, bike and pedestrian safety improvements as well as other improvements in the right-of-way. the continuation and really making permanent the free muni for low and moderate income youth program as well as funding to initiate free muni for seniors and people with disabilities program. so, i do believe it's a very strong budget. i appreciate that there's frustrations over numerous provisions in the budget particularly one regarding sunday meter enforcement. i do believe the appropriate c-e-q-a analysis and the determination was made and i do believe on balance it is a very strong budget that will advance

the transportation safety and environmental goals of the city. and with regard to the c-e-q-a determination, i'll ask my planning colleagues to elaborate on that point. but we are eager to implement this budget, so, i encourage you to direct this appeal so we can do so. >> thank you. let's hear from planning. >> good afternoon, president chiu, board of supervisors. joan [speaker not understood] of planning staff and c-e-q-a exemption coordinator. the california environmental quality act public resources code or c-e-q-a provides a number of exemptions where c-e-q-a review is not required. there are two kinds of exemptions. a statutory exemption and a categorical exemption. statutory exemption has an absolute quality not shared by [speaker not understood] exemptions. [speaker not understood] is not subject to c-e-q-a even if it has the potential to

significantly affect the environment. statutory exemptions [speaker not understood] specified classes of projects. statutory exemptions are used for many city department budgets. that include adjustments to rates, fees, or other charges. california public resources code section 2 108 b8 and c-e-q-a state guidelines section [speaker not understood] total fares and charges provides the statutory exemption from environmental review for the establishment, modification, structuring, restructuring, approval of rates, tolls, fares and other charges by public agencies, which the public agency finds are for the purpose of meeting operating expenses or obtains funds to maintain service within the existing areas. mta supposed fiscal year

2015-2016 capital budget includes other items, changes to other mta fares, fines, rates and charges. mr. reiskin touched on other thing that the budget included as well as the elimination of parking meter enforcement on sundays. there was no discretev action taken by the mta board to eliminate fund meter inspections. this decision was made as part of the overall agency budget as outlined by the nta. the mta [speaker not understood] under public resources code [speaker not understood] and c-e-q-a guidelines 15.on march 27 and the plaid concurs with that decision. mta approved the agency's budget april 15, and on may 13 we got an appeal of the statutory exemption. planning department prepared a

written response dated june 9th which you have before you and a supplemental letter which was received yesterday [speaker not understood] to our responses to the appeal letter and our supplemental letter. >> thanks, joy. good afternoon, president chiu, members of the board. andrea contarter as planning department staff. [speaker not understood] the supplemental letter submitted yesterday late in the afternoon. first, the appellants claim parking meter enforcement on sundays does not qualify for an exemption under c-e-q-a. as summarized in the department's response the project that is subject to an overview under c-e-q-a is mta's approval of their operating and capital budget. any change in revenue from the meters is a part of mta's budget. mta issued a statutory exemption for the approval of their budget.

many enterprise agencies in our city use this exemption for their budgets as well. the statutory exemption applied here was rates, tolls, fares and charges which joy explained, and that, again, covers the modification, restructuring and approval of these charges by public agencies that are for the purpose of meeting operating expenses, obtain funds for capital projects. mta's budget identified sources of revenue for the agency expenditures and determined how decreased revenue from eliminating programs like sunday meters would be offset by increases in other revenue sources. the restructuring appropriately fits within the statutory exemption. therefore, mta's budget approval meets [speaker not understood]. the appellate rate -- that the board consider the appeal as

applicable to only sunday meters, and should not apply to [speaker not understood] because it reduces revenue and that is why it can't be necessary for meeting capital and operating expenses. however, c-e-q-a does not allow for such segmentation. the department has addressed this in a written response, the elimination of sunday meter fees was approved by the mta board within the overall budget consideration. the rates, tolls, fares and [speaker not understood] is not limited to individuals and itemized charges. it allows for restructuring of charges in general. secondly, the appellants [speaker not understood]. the department responded to this concern in our submittal. mta adopted a resolution with written findings that fees, fares, rates and charges in attachment a are necessary to meet mta operating expenses including employee wages and

benefits, or to purchase and lease essential supplies and material. the supplemental letter contends it is not specific enough to clearly indicate that the elimination of sunday meters was part of the budget. mta addressed this in a written response to the appeal and to reiterate, these findings satisfy the requirements for findings under c-e-q-a. the third concern, it does not itemize elimination of sunday parking and is thus inadequate. the department's response to this concern is that the findings made apply to the entire 2015-2016 operating and capital budget. attachment a, the revenue sources only. for sunday parking will not be listed, but with revenue sources because clearly no revenue is generated from the parking. even though sunday parking results in