park? yes come on up. wasn't sure if you were going to be here. >> good afternoon supervisors. i'm the recreation business manager for the recreation and parks department i'd like to say a couple of things i'm very excited about the kiosk and vmi i've never heard of that so i'm going to look into that when i get back to the office so recreation and parks part of our mission is to provide healthy recreational opportunities for people in san francisco for everybody in san francisco as well as parks so essentially every single employee that works for our department provides direct service to the public. we have over a thousand employees ranging from program coordinators and soccer coaches

to garden ers and park patrol officers so we are all day every day interacting with the public in various ways. currently this year our budget for translation and interpretation was set at $40,000 of which so far we spent close to 30 thousand compared to last year at 15 thousand so doubled the amount of language translation services we provided. >> was that deliberate that you started to translate more materials? >> yes. one of the largest barriers that i think we've had a great leap in is providing scholarship applications so we

now have the scholarship application available in chinese spanish russian and vietnamese and tagal will be coming towards the end of the summer now that that's on board there so along with the application for scholarship we're also providing some written e-mail communication we've been translating to be able to communicate with our scholarship clients to remind them to renew or remind them that they are signed up for a particular program so we've done a lot of work in trying to stay connected on that in that respect. we also have been providing information on major family events in multiple

languages so we started translating some of the promotional materials particularly when we had a recreational center opening obviously the materials were translated as well as palago recreation center so we also provide multiple languages on our documentation for community meeting notices as well as providing interpretation if necessary for the community meetings so we've obviously had an increased interaction over the last year with our lep individuals and what we'd like to do in the future is work towards providing more translation and obviously i'm not in charge of the language access for the department, but

i do manage a large part of our population that we serve so i think i don't have what our written policy is as far as language translation and interpretation is concerned and i'd like to work with our public information office to make sure that we have something that's robust and really covers all the aspects of recreation and parks and i think we'd also like to one way way we can do that, too, is to expand, create a standard language on our written materials that offers and informs the public that we have the ability to have interpretation and translating materials so that people can request that. the other thing that i would like to move towards is actually promoting the importance of translated materials to field staff and share with them our ability for

interpretation. so right now we have a few recreation centers who have facilitate coordinators contacted us saying i really need access for my community and i think it's really reaching out to the 25 or 26 recreation centers making sure all the staff there are aware that it exists and that they can use it and we currently track our language line usage and at that point we would be able to track by community center so we'd have a much better idea from rec center to rec center and park to park. >> you say there's no department policy around this. >> i'm not sure if there's not a departmental policy i just haven't see it.

>> so i'd like to ask if you can work with ocea and obviously there's an enormous demand on families for your services thank you. >> thank you very much. >> colleagues what i'd love to do at this moment is to move to public comment. i have a number of public comment cards: and if anyone else wants to speak in public comment if you would like to line up on this side and if there are translation needs available we actually have staff here today who can help.

>> i would like to introduce myself i live in the visitacion valley. >> i'm happy to receive this letter letting me know i can attend this meeting today. >> speaking chinese. . >> translator -- this english is in english. >> this is very difficult for us to read this english letter. >> speaking chinese. .

>> translator: i am 77 years old i am a long time resident in the visitacion valley so i'm so concerned of things in my neighborhood. >> speaking chinese. >> translator: i have so many friends it's really important to provide bilingual services to our residents. >> speaking chinese. >> translate or: besides this letter i think this kind of meeting should be provided in different languages. >> speaking in chinese.

>> translator: so that we know what's going on in these meetings and we can express ourselves freely in this meeting. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: not only for this meeting but -- and the meetings in the future. that's it thank you very much. >> thank you very much. i think that exactly points out the need for what we're doing here. next speaker. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: good morning. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i'm so happy to get this letter but it's really bad i don't read english so i don't know what it is talking

about so i ask the people about it. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: and somebody told me that this letter is about information for the meeting today. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i thought the meeting today was about the low income apartment but i found out i'm wrong. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: so i think the letter should be provided in chinese so that i that i can go to the right place. thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> speaking in chinese.

>> translator: good morning everyone. my name is [inaudible]. >> i move to the united states from china. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i am a u.s. citizen. i would like to contribute to my society more. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: because of my limited english sometimes i would like to do more but i couldn't. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i know so many residents in the city have shared the same problem with

me. they would like to contribute more to the society but they couldn't because of the language barrier. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i would like to recommend our city to provide more bilingual service in the future. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: so that more people can get involved in the society and help the society. thank you so much. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: good morning supervisors. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: in san francisco we have so many new immigrants.

>> speaking in chinese. >> translator: we work so hard to learn english but at the same time we have to work so that we can support our family. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i concerned our society is very much regarding the school our family issues but in terms of the language, because we can't speak very well so we can not contribute to this issue very much. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: the interpreter

just clarifying the issue that i just mentioned -- regarding this morning i attended a meeting but i don't understand the contents so i really cannot understand the content very well so i don't think i can contribute. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: i hope our city can do a little bit better in this area to provide more

bilingual service so we can contribute and listen from the city thank you very much. >> one thing i just want to mention to all of the folks who just came is with our meetings here there are requests that can be made for language interpreters before the meeting so if anyone wants to have a language interpreter before the meeting please contact the board of supervisors and we can help get an interpreter before the meeting starts. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: thank you the information is about written

translation for the letters brochures to our residents. >> absolutely and this is why we're having this hearing so we can figure out how to expand the services appropriately. >> speaking in chinese. >> translator: good afternoon supervisors i'm multilingual and spokes man of the visitacion valley alliance two terms to the immigrant rights commission and i'm also happy that tagala is recently added to the ordinance. i ask why

several members that you have just heard didn't offer their input. they show me this notice which is only in english. how could it be when you have a community that is looking forward to the projects of the last 15 years and everything is only done in english back and front there's no way they could so i know that they can call in but they could understand the content of this notice how can they call in? it just doesn't make sense. >> speaking of a resident in my community the demographics in visitacion valley is about 60 percent asian pacific islanders and therefore the city must make better efforts to outreach

the residents in their appropriate language in different ways other than online one way is to have the ambassadors program to have direct access to our residents and community groups most of all please make sure that all these plans are done with the communities and not planned for us so that is the most effective way to outreach us as many of the people have been calling me i even have my phone number posted so that they can contact me i shouldn't be the only person doing that. thank you. >> hi my name is grace lee i just want to quickly thank supervisor chiu he has been a long time champion of this issue and we know this is slow going and it takes a lot of collaboration so these hearings

are very important for us we appreciate this committee has been holding these hearings. we have been meeting with them on a quarterly basis but we're happy to have all stakeholders at the table to hear their struggles and bring the community needs to them. we're in the second year of our work some of our colleague are also here. representing the arabic speaking and french and a whole host of african immigrants and the community does not know about the language ordinance and don't know that they have the right to receive critical forms in language so our key role is to get the information out there and helping them with

direct assistance and help them file complaints and just document their needs so we can bring it back to the supervisors and city departments so we're here to continue working on this and happy to support the supervisors and please reach out to us if we can be of assistance. thank you. >> good afternoon chairperson and president chiu and supervisor breed. i'm the executive director of the be rna l heights neighborhood. our organizations work closely with agencies and often we do end up playing the role of

translators and interpreters just an example alone providing hundreds of hours of translation and as a native filipino speaker myself i'm an immigrant as well and it's important that the language access ordinance continues to get enforced and as a member of the language access network and we and the other organizations who are doing the day-to-day on the ground work are committed to work closely with ocea and city agencies to make sure that the city is able to provide the highest quality services and accessible services as possible. i know we're talking about language right now but as someone who is an immigrant there is cultural context so i was a little bit dismayed to

hear the chief talk about google translate i understand the inadequacies of that program. requires human connection to properly address community members who just want to access city services so thank you all for your support. >> good afternoon supervisors i am the language access coordinator we are part of the language access network as well and even though we have different reasons 75 to 80 percent of our members --

services are sometimes the key to breaking the cycle of violence and they can even be life or death and death. death. [inaudible]. >> but at that point lack of language services for housing are unnecessary obstacles for the survivor even though there

have been many improvements in terms of language services there's still a lot more to be done as well as lowering wait times which are still significantly higher than wait times in english. >> thank you very much. if there are any other members of the public who wish to speak please step up. >> good morning supervisors i'm the program director of the african advocacy network a program of community services and we are dedicated to providing immigrant legal services to all africans across the continent so all the way from north africans all the way down to south africa and i believe with diversity we are

speaking about and also the san franciscan population and i want to thank you for the fact that you know we have been included most of the time we classify ourselves as the face less and voiceless and a community in the making and the fact that with the assistance of oci and you know to include the africans this tells a whole lot about the city of san francisco but sometimes at our network meetings we also tried to look at the situation not from the standpoint of our -- also you know and we always give the example of someone who is suffering from a contagious disease and who by a language

barrier -- and we understand it's going to be a process that year after year i saw here the police chief talking about the language access but at the same time that should go along with the work of education how do you convince the new immigrants that are traumatized -- and again you know we like to thank you and then you know and we like to continue supporting counting on your support so that this becomes -- [inaudible] thank you again. >> just a second. well i was going to say if there are any

other members of the public who wish to speak -- i want to thank you for your work and staff i don't know if you have any final comments based on what you have heard i want to take a moment and thank all the members of the public who have been working and fighting for more language access in our city. this was one of the very first ordinances that i worked on in my first months in office and also with ocea and our city departments i think we've come a long way but i think it's fair to say we have a long way to go and we still have a lot of conversations to improvements in the ordinance and enforcement there are many ways in which departments are

trying to comply and as a city we're investing in language capabilities i think is something that's very important and i also want to say as a city we've been a beacon to the rest of the world and i think the way we really become a national model of diversity in large part rests in how we as a city government interact with our residents in their full diversity and i do think and hope that we can get there but i know there is a lot of work to be done so i look forward to the partnerships that all of us and the board and with that supervisor tang has some comments but i would like to table this item this is a yearly update and i know i look forward to working with folks

supervisor tang and others. >> okay a motion to table this item so without objection. >> without objection. oh i apologize. president chiu, before we take any further action, you will need to rescind the vote to excuse me from the meeting. >> happy to make that motion. >> okay without objection that motion passes. >> oh yes. >> i just wanted to make a few comments. growing up with immigrant parents i served as their interpreter so this issue is very near and dear to me as well and we try to make sure we incorporate dual language capabilities so for example we work to translate our newsletters and notices to

community members in chinese as well and i would say the professional work they do to help us better reach our community so i know that there have been a number of recommendations that have been made those are all things that our office is very interested in continuing to work on with supervisor chiu and put in a request for budget analyst report and improvements that we can make so i'll be calling another hearing at another time to further discuss that and again in partnership with supervisor chiu and i would say translation is different from interpretation we have to understand the cultural differences why some communities don't participate in