>> >> >> july 14, 2014, >> city of san francisco >> small business commission meeting >> please stand by... >> >>

>>a >> >> it is 5:37 we are calling the meeting to order. first item on the agenda is roll call. commissioner steve adams, here, commissioner kathleen dooley, here,

commissioner mark dwight, here. commissioner or at tiz is absent. commissioner monetta white, here, commissioner paul tour sarkissian, and commissioner reilly will be joining us in a moment. mr. president, we have a quorum. >> thank you. next item, please. >> next item is item no. 2, general public comment. this allows members of the public to comment generally on matters within the commission's purview and suggest new agenda items for the commission for future consideration. >> do we have any members of the public who would like to make any general public comment on items that are not on today's agenda? welcome. >> good afternoon, scott houkey from insurance and volunteers in medicine. an announcement. we've just decided to open up our

clinic. we are currently in four zip codes, excelsior and portola and we'll take all residents of san francisco. it's a free clinic. they have to be making less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. but because of the aca, affordable care act, we need to expand our numbers. as a result we are opening up to the whole city. >> great. >> i pass that on and if you know people that are in that income level and interested in really quality health insurance, we encourage them to visit our clinic and register. >> great. thank you. any other members of the public? seeing none. next item, please. >> city clerk: next item is 3, approval of the june 23,

2014, regular meeting minutes. >> move to approve. >> second. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> next item. >> item 4, discussion and possible action to make recommendations of board of supervisors no. 140687 administrative code minimum wage wage. a motion ordering an ordinance amending the administrative code to increase minimum wage wage for san francisco to $12.25 per hour to with annual increases reaching $15 per hour with annual cost-of-living increases. this is a possible action as well as action item. >> we have mayor lee here to

speak with us. welcome. >> good afternoon. from the mayor's office. jason elliot. i'm here to present the mayor and board of supervisors minimum wage wage proposal for the november ballot. it's a relative straight forward proposal in terms of the actual policy. the most important detail, i will put this on the overhead is the wage scale itself. i don't want to necessarily take up too much time talking about the in and out of the proposal because i'm happy to do this in question. the weight scale, what happened? in december of previous year, the mayor said, it's about time we era it's the minimum wage in this city. the minimum wage goes up every year by consumer price index and when he got notification that the minimum wage is going to increase to $10.74 for this calendar year he said it's

time to do more for the people of the economic run of the ladder. let's raise the minimum wage. in december he reiterated that policy goal in his january state address to the city and we came up with a number of stakeholder groups, advocates, impacted businesses, workers, non-profits, labor units and advocates and had a number of group meetings, worked with some of the commissioners individually and we eventually came to one ballot proposal. that one ballot proposal was submitted by 10 board of supervisors and the mayor supported by a broad coalition of the city of the people. it basically does this. beginning may 1 #shgs 2015, the minimum wage would increase to $12.25 per hour and then on july 1,

2016, in accrues to $13 and july to $14 and then to $15. subsequent to that. the minimum wage would increase by api, same mechanism as it does now. there are very limited exceptions to this minimum wage for subsidized youth mroilt -- employment after school and certain government subsidized programs for seniors in the city. very limited exemptions. you have a proposal here that it does have a phased in approach. there were a number of proposals before the mayor put this forward that would have had the minimum wage increase much more rapidly and would have had other policy stipulation about when the minimum wage could increase. we are here, this is the proposal that the city elected leaders of coalesced around

and we hope that we can ask for your support of this ballot measure as it moves across the legislative process. this will be in rules committee on thursday for a hearing and then it will move to the board of supervisors for a vote by the full board. there is one amendment which mr. -- asked know -- me to share with you. i will leave this with you for the file. there are a few technical changes and others redefining olsc. the substantive amendment is one paragraph and i will read it into the record. it's adding section 1207. subsection a it is the policy and city and county of san san francisco that all

employees be compensated fairly. towards that end the mayor and board of supervisors shall study and review the feasibility of enacting conditional measures consistent with state law to enhance the agency enforcement tools to combat wage thefts and will take steps to ensure collaboration among all agencies and departments to enforce this chapter. this is the voters urging the mayor and board to consider future legislation not creating any new rules in this ballot measure which would then not be changeable by the board of supervisors in the future but to put the voters on record if this is going to pass, to put this on to prevent wage theft. this is the language proposed boo i the mayor and supervisor kim. other than that, sort of a non-binding policy and there are no other policies amendment that the mayor and

kim are considering at this time. the partnership and leadership in this effort, the mayor did make the announcement back in december as i mentioned that he wanted to see the minimum wage increase and when he convened larger group meetings. supervisor jane kim stepped up in helping us work through various policy issues that arose and so mayor expresses his appreciation for supervisor kim for her help throughout the process. he'll be guiding through this legislative process. i'm happy to answer any questions about the policy sz itself and why we an arrived at this conclusion. >> commissioner white? >> yes. was there anything that was discussed in regards to, i know there was between tipped employees and non-tipped regarding the minimum wage. was that a consideration?

>> thank you. we certainly discussed the issue that restaurants brought up early and often. so for the purpose of discussion to make clear the difference between the tip credit. the tip credit is prohibited by tiff rules means paying an employee less than minimum wage and accrediting tips to make that equal. we are prohibited from enacting anything like that local by the state. the idea proposed by the restaurant industry was to provide a different wage structure for employees who make tips. differentiate wage for tip employees is how it's referred to. that was proposed and considered. the mayor decided not to include that in the proposal that he forwarded working with the various parties that we worked with to get to the final ballot measure. we wanted to have

the minimum wage be as simple as we possibly could. you see other cities in the country or other states that are looking at doing their own minimum wage increases and perhaps they have four categories of business size, perhaps they have a health care expenditure credit because they don't have choso as we do in the city. perhaps there is other categories or rubrics or stair steps. what we really want to do is make a simple minimum wage rubric as we could and have it phased in. there were proposals that would have had the minimum wage increase much more quickly than what you are seeing now. the mayor felt we should in accrues the minimum wage -- increase the minimum wage in the city for the people who pay it and the minimum wage increase where it is phased in. we ended up

with a four 4-year phase in but to do it as quickly as possible so do not have different categories for different workers. the more carve outs, categories, stair steps, rubrics you have, the more chance there is for interpretations and accidental non-compliance or bad behavior, illegal behavior. we of course want to pursue and prosecute wage theft violators as aggressively as possible no matter what new policy we have but for the people who don't want to do the wrong thing but want to give the employees the pay they deserve. we are seeing issues around hours and how hours are apportioned because of obamacare and prevent the accidental wage

theft that would occur and the less you have for those unintended consequences . we ended up not including it in the final proposal. >> did that include workers in training? >> the workers in training are a much more constrained population. it will have a separate wage. the separate wage for those two groups of people, they will take the increase on may 1, for $12.25. they won't take the july 17th, july 27, th, they will be indexed to inflation immediately after they take the jump . there will be after government subsidized young workers much narrower.

>> commissioner dooley? >> we are of course anticipating to have quite a bit of reaction in the small business world. i wonder what plans do you have for tracking what the results are going to be during the next 10 -year period? >> thank you for the question, commissioner. it's an important point to track the impact of the policy. the mayor has agreed at the suggestion of the small business community to implement a reporting mechanism about collecting the data and then analyzing it and presenting it in a timely fashion and in a regular fashion. so i can't say that we worked out exactly what the report would look like. we want to collect the kind of data that you think we need to be collecting. the extend that this commission has input on how these reports are structured, we are very interested in structuring the

reports the way you would like. things we'll be studying, employment effects sector bisect or. what kind of job loss are we seeing, what kind of deferred growth are we seeing. given the industry in growth in 10 years how much will it grow and the impact. wage impact on raises are are there other non-monetary benefits limited by the minimum wage increase. we are doing a robust data gathering exercise in helping this commission crafting the way we ask questions and the way we aggregate the data and we are very open and eager to get suggestions from this commission. >> great. any other commissioner questions? commissioner reilly? >> hi. i know some of the --

crops they charge the meal. that money does not go to the servers. if we want to tip in addition to that, then that goes to the server. so, is that legal? can they do that? >> commissioner, i'm not equipped to answer the question about the legality of various service charges. sorry. i don't have that expertise. >> i'm just wondering if that's an option to charge the charge to cover the higher minimum wages. >> when we administered the ordinance back in 2011 we passed laws that if a restaurant specifically or anyone puts a service charge on a bill for healthy san

francisco and says as such on a receipt that there are certain resumes -- rules how that would apply, that certain rules would apply around a minimum wage. quite frankly we have not discussed the legality of that with restaurant owners. it's an interesting thought, thank you. >> any other comments before we go into public comment? okay. let's open this up right now. don't go away. we probably have more questions. i would like to open this up for public comment. do we have any members of the public who would like to make a comment on item no. 4? welcome. >> thank you, again. scott houkey insurance. we were disappointed that the

commission's recommendation study was not included in the final outcome of the ballot measure, but the mayor has given us indication and jason just gave us indication that the mayor is supportive in looking at various factors in determining the impact of the increase in the minimum wage law. i also want to thank the commission and especially executive director we have been working with them and we appreciate you putting together the list of factors to be considered. there is one that i think needs to be looked at and i think in an e-mail that the executive director sent out to all of you, she said to look at the impact of wages at 115 percent of minimum wage and with the

increase and i would strongly recommend that number be increased. that was a number i believe it was developed by ken jacobs with all do respect to mr. jacobs. that's a number that is certainly suspect expect. if you look at the brookings institution, they are not a conservative think tank if you will. i would hope you look at numbers over 115 percent. some number higher than 115. thank you. >> great. thank you. next? >> welcome. >> thank you. steven cornell with small businesses network. we talked about the $15 an hour. i think you should keep in mind it's not $15 an hour. in san francisco there is requirement of sick leave,

health care, benefits and what was payroll tax going into gross receipts tax. when we have to pay employees, it's going to end up being more in the $17-18 an hour required thing. that's how we should be looking at it. looking at how much oakland has to pay, san mateo and marin county. a lot of businesses have to compete on that. wages factor in a lot of businesses. it's something to look at. batting around $15 we should say what it really is. a much higher wage. thank you. >> great. thank you. any other members of the public? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners? do we have any other comments or questions? commissioner dwight? >> just one comment, i do want to, having been very involved in this process myself, i

want to thank the mayor and you jason and the other members of your team who worked very hard on this over the last several months. this is a tough issue and i think that for all the discussion that's on going and will continue, i think it should be recognized that the mayor's office worked very hard to get a better solution than was on the table. so with the sciu proposal. the fact that we reached a negotiated proposal, a single proposal on the ballot and one favor able to the one that had been proposed is a victory if even a small victory for small business. so i appreciate everything that you have done, jason. >> any other commissioner comments? motions, suggestions?

>> this is a tough one to make a motion on frankly. >> we don't to have do anything. >> i think we should stay neutral on this one. >> okay. >> yup. >> with no recommendation? >> no recommendation. yeah. do we need to vote on that? >> i do need to, you do need to tell me specifically if the commission chose not to take action or to move forward with no recommendation. i need something. >> the commission is not taking any action on this item. >> i agree with that. >> you do need to take, since it is agenda ized discussion on the possible action, you need to vote that the commission is taking no action. >> do we have a vote that we are taking no action. >> i move that we are not

taking action. >> roll call? >> commissioner adams, dooley, white, absent commissioner reilly, commissioner sarkissian, and commissioner white? aye. >> and so that is 6-0 to take no action. >> great. thank you. thank you, jason. thank you again for your leadership on this. this wasn't easy especially dealing when with what you had to deal with. i have a lot of admiration for you and what you did and how you handled this. i want to personally thank you for it. next item, please. >> we are now on item no. 5,

discussion and possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors file 140643 administrative code energy efficiency coordinating committee. this is an ordinance amending the administrative code to rename the energy efficiency steering committee as the energy efficiency coordinating committee to authorize the committee for 1 year unless further extended by the board of supervisors to change the qualifications for membership on the committee and to revise the committee's powers and duties. we have peter from supervisor mar's office to provide a presentation. >> good evening, commissioners. i appreciate it. hopefully a little bit of an easier item that you have been dealing with months and mosses -- months of minimum wage. i have a copy provided to you. this is straight forward. this is bringing back a task force that was

established when supervisor mar took office. the goal was stimulate funds for the federal office into communities that needed those resources the most. the stimulus is obviously well expired at this point, but we were approached by an anybody -- number of environmental activist regarding energy efficiency. this wha this legislation now aims to do is we have private sector programs such as pg & e and local and utilities commission, programs on energy efficiencies. there is all sorts of programs out there and they are not accessible to homeowners who should be taking advantage of this great program that will help you get

a new loan for all these types of programs. we wanted to pull together smart people to advise the city on how to communicate and how to simplify the process to getting those programs and make it that much more accessible. it's a seat from the small business commission. we would like to ask for your recommendation who should be sitting on this maybe someone in food retail and someone that would know the kinds of problems and issues they face. i used to work at the food store and the gentlemen has the same issues. these programs are so scattered. so that's a very quick introduction. i will leave it to questions to save on time this evening. >> do we have any questions? commissioner sarkissian? >> hi. i just want to ask you about the sunset provision.

what was the logic behind having this sunset provision. unless the board of supervisors extends the term, then the last day of the month which the inaugural meeting of the committee is held, this committee is dissolved? >> yes. commissioner. this you for that. the idea is there is a specific project at hand. we want to get this information simplify it and communicate it. the belief is rather than having this indefinite committee do it 12 months so they do they work efficiently and then we can go back to the board of supervisors to ask for it. the idea was to get the target date and get the work done so it doesn't go so long. >> initial efficiency savings wouldn't this committee be helpful in being a permitting committee? >> i think there is trend