[speaker not understood] mark buell made a large donation to gavin newsom and became head of rec and park and suddenly rec and park's budget was cut dramatically and got rid of all of their rec and park employees. what they did, they started to hire 6-figure employees who they gave bonuses to, to find people who would donate to rec and park to help rec and park and all of a sudden rec and park stopped serving the people in the city and started serving people with money. and what you have seen over the last five years with privatization is there is more emphasis on people with money than there are with people in the community that pay for the

you ballot measures that rec and park has been paying for. so i want to thank the people in the mission for pointing this out. it's going all through town and as affected -- they are trying to keep the fields open much longer to collect as much money as possible. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> elizabeth. >> hi. i lived right across from mission playground since 1992 until 2005 when i ended up having to move out because of this displacement basically. somebody who had more money basically forced me out of my home. i had to move to potrero hill.

i feel like we are incredibly lucky to have such youth that we have in the mission district, who are able to express themselves in such an honorable way and basically just tell the guys, hey, why don't we play together? these guys basically slapped them in the face, and now i hear that one of them actually kicked one of them in the back. so what are you going to do about it? what i mean is that we really need to learn a little bit of cultural appropriateness here. first of all the signs are in english and community standards are basically what we have to be all about. my son, i used to be able to rent the building for birthday parties, but even the birthday kid had to wait his turn. it was pickup. that field has always been a pickup. and it seems to me that this issue was not only about the

parks. it's about the whole damn city. and back in 1994 i remember tom ammiano presented a plan of progressive tax meaning that those who had more in the city, like the corporations and stuff should be paying their fair share. okay? that never got through. we're still back to zero. we're still back to zero. when are you guys going to understand or when is the politicians of the city going to understand that we -- that you guys don't work for them. you guys work for us. and the children who are now 16, 17, 18, the 18 years old are going to vote. >> thank you. >> they are going to vote. [ applause ] >> alfred massia and valerie tulier. >> hello commission. i would like to thank you for

giving us this time for public comment. my name is alfie massas and have been an at-risk teacher 12 years with the mission -- 7 years with youth art exchange formerly out of sight and five years with sf jazz. my work in san francisco has been specifically with our youth and i'm here today because the youth have inspired me or reminded me what it is to be a san franciscan. what it is to be a civil individual, to step forward and live in the city where the people have the voice. this is a working-class city bottle by working-class people and not by twitter and not by facebook and not by air b&b. everything that they want, we built. and the commission needs to look at that. where mayor ed lee has

championed his tech tuesdays and what happeneded to public schools wednesday? what happened to non-profit thursdays? what happened to san francisco families fridays? i'm sorry i'm getting a little emotional, but these youth have reminded what it is to be here and be a san franciscan and i ask that you stop all privatization of public seats that belong to -- for the people, by the people that built them. this is a matter that is much greater than just mission playground, but a matter affecting the city and needs a deep looking into. where is the mayor today is what i ask the commission? thank you. [ applause ] >> good morning commissioners. my name is valerie tulier the facilitator the mission peace collaborative. first i want to high pressure our youth here for their strength to speak up for themselves, and for our community. [ applause ]

and i also want to honor the ancestors that worked that ground where mission playground is, the ohlone people. and what i would like to -- [ applause ]. >> and what i would like to acknowledge the youth, their respectful way, their cultural attitude about sharing common ground and playing together. however, rec and park's behavior supports the gentrification. you kick out mission community-based organizations and now you are kicking out latinos from their park. neighborhoods should have culturally appropriate policies that support their neighborhood parks. instead, i want you to understand the historically pattern of colonizing. these gent rifiers come with their attitudes saying that we are here and we bought you out with our resources and money. we have played by the rules that are established by

institutions like rec and park that support our entitlement to this land grab. that is how they feel. that they are entitled to take your land. while i appreciate the meetings mr. ginsburg and efforts at damage-control, i'm more concerned about the ideology that frames your policies. keep our parks for our youth. thank you. [ applause ]. >> thank you. [speaker not understood] she talks about how in the soviet union the bureaucracy of the soviet union came to feel that the state was private

property. that is a natural tendency of bureaucracies as they think they own thing. rec and park doesn't own the open spaces of san francisco. [ applause ] >> they are there to administer that open space, but they do not own it. it's not theirs to sell or give away. the other thing that is true of the bureaucracy of the soviet union they felt it was their job to decide what was best for the people. it was their job to decide how people should live their lives and use their open space and everything. it's not the job of rec and park or the commission, but their job to facilitate what the people decide is best for themselves. this system isn't working. it isn't working. it's broken down. we should not be coming here,

pleading our cause to ask you for stuff. the open space of san francisco needs to be controlled by the neighborhoods, period. it should not be controlled by bureaucracy. it should not be controlled by a commission appointed at-large. i do not blame anybody personally. the system doesn't work. the open space should be controlled on a district by district basis. there should by district commissions that control the use of the open space and should not be -- it should not be controlled by a bunch of air technocrats. [ reading speakers' names ]

marilyn durrand -- i think the video really speaks volumes about what is happening here in san francisco. we have spaces where we feel like we can't go anymore and i think this is one giant example and it's not going to end here. i think this is just the spark of what has been happening here in the city and i think if it weren't for this video, nobody would know about it and we won wouldn't be here today. i don't know who said it -- [speaker not understood] if you don't have to pay, maybe to set up an app -- and there really should be someone there to regulate and make sures that things happen. these kids were being bullied

and we should have somebody on-site to make sure these kids are not kicked in the back, even if it's just an accident and to ensure conversation about what is happening in our city. we all know gentrification is happening and we're having the privatization of these lands. and you know, there are people who have helped to create parks in our city, who have provided the -- this is a metaphor, the buns and meat -- , et cetera and the city puts the mayonnaise on it and says you have to pay to eat it. we need to ensure our youth have places to go. nobody wants kids to be selling drugs or basically having nowhere to go and being depressed. these kids are active and these kids will grow up to be great people and the parks will help and very to make sure that parks and recreation ensures that. [ applause ]. >> thank you. >> i do understand that some

people may be downstair and i'm going to call names again. julianne ball, oscar grande, gregory dillon, john murphy, denise dory, guillermo, kay walker, nancy mcnerney, terry almaguire. tony kelly. >> my name is greg dillon. i was taking my daughter to this park since she was in diapers. she is 22 now and we benefited greatly from the free programming that they had in the park. she played t-ball. she played volleyball. she played soccer there, and particularly she played in the tennis program and ended up getting a scholarship and winning national championships. one of the schools that has a lot of tech people and this

here is a plaque that i received back in august 28th of 1997. it is from the mission playground soccer tournament 2 for outstanding service to the community. so i know a lot about what has gone on in the park. i know when vidrio brought the goals over there. he was an employee who had a degree in recreation from usf and he was a giant that i take my hat off to for. we had luiz running the programs and it's so important to have bilingual staff because the distance between mission playground and the permit place is not 52 minutes on the 33 bus you, but it's a chasm, because they don't have anybody in the park to say what do the people think? they wouldn't have made this mistake if they had directors

there in the parks and oh, who likes this and who doesn't? let's also speak about the lights. recently they have been turning the lights early and told we're turning off the lights because if the park is not permitted we'll turn it off. i spoke with michele minor and it's all loged in there on saturdays and fridays turning it off, because the park is not performed. permitted. that is not correct. parks are for the community >> you heard about the guy who was killed -- things like people getting killed would not happen if we had staffing at park to keep people safe. thank you. >> [ applause ]. >> thank you. julian ball, oscar grande, john

murphy. >> thank you for the time. my name is john murphy, fourth-generation san franciscan. i grew up -- actually i wanted to say my grandfathers with a gardener and planted trees at lake merced. i am very grateful for the parks i grew up in -- signature and grove to the south, golden gate park to the north and how lucky i was to have all of these parks free. recently my father is dan murphy, a bird-watcher and has been educating me proposition i and proposition h and says hi, phil. and then i saw this video, and i also feel -- somebody said they felt ashamed that they hadn't learned about the privatization of our parks until the video came out and i feel the same way. i did the research and looked on the internet and looked

about the fields foundation and fisher and running our parks than what i experienced in growing up. i'm in solidarity with these kids. i'm so impressed by these kids and inspired by them and committed to stopping the privatization of our parks. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. katherine howard. catana galvan,rds or [ [ reading speakers' names ]. >> akia, my family has been living in san francisco for 90 years. we have all gone to public school here. we have all gone to san francisco state university. we all grew up going to parks,

playing all over the city, not just mission playground. i didn't even grow up playing in mission playground, but i know what it's like to have a place that this is your space, and that is something that should never be violated. i feel when we have the privatization that is not even -- you guys don't even have the courtesy of trying to hide it and it's very blatant that you don't care about the people who go to the parks. you guys disgrace the name of san francisco, that my family helped to build and that the families that are sitting in this room and sitting downstairs and couldn't be here because they are out working to make san francisco and maintain what it is. what this board does is not that. it spits on the name. it spits on the history that we have created here in the mission district and also in the city. this is a problem that is beyond your grasp, i feel, rec and park is just one finger of a hand of a body that is acting

against us. i would just like to voice a concern and express the sense of urgency that we have here in the community that we need to find a solution here between communities -- between the ones that have been here and the ones that are coming because the fact that we all live here and we all use the parks. the parks are just as much for the new people, in the tech industry as for the people that have been here and what we need to do is bridge the gap and i don't feel that you all understand the gravity of the situation and how important that is to maintaining the culture that we have here in san francisco that has created the beautiful place that we know as home. thank you [ applause ]. >> thank you. >> good morning commissioners. good morning general manager. my name is oscar grande.

i am an organizer with people organizing through environmental economic rights. i'm a resident of the excelsior and father of four and grew up in the city and love my parks. everybody here loves our parks and growing up in dense neighborhoods and growing up as working-class, low-income families, my pop was a janitor and mom was a seamtress. our park were our safety nets and our open space and plaza is where we rest and socialize and recreate and these youth are creating life-long bonds. my experience has been aquiring new lands. and thank you for your work for

the new park coming online at 17th and folsom. those are all community efforts and we go to hotspot neighborhoods, neighbors that are hit first and worst with poverty and environmental degradation and lack of access and opportunities and we make sure that we get parks and open space there. so we're looking forward -- there is a disputed turf in mcclaren park, in dispute between your department and puc. and also want to applaud these young folks. these are our latino rosa parks who forced a citywide equity issue around access to parks and i want to give them props. what we have been hearing from all the speakers is the issues of equity and access. those communities especially in the southeast, is it equitable in terms of the spaces, in terms of access to parks? you will hear from several speakers around the demands because there are demands because we don't want this to go away. we want a follow-up meeting.

this is an iterative process and we need you to commit to a next meeting next week. thank you [ applause ]. >> thank you. >> really quickly, julian ball, denise dory- apologize if i'm mispronounce [ reading speakers' names ]

>> i would like to see some of them in writing and in terms of overall, what has happened to parks and rec is terrible and goes way back. my kids i took to the museum for nothing and hall of sciences that was free to the japanese tea garden. it was free and now that you are attacking the parks with fees, i am totally against that as a san franciscan. we have all paid taxes for

these parks. we are paying for the bonds, $195 million. [ applause ] you know, i think it was two years ago it was on the ballot. all of these parks should be free and if you want to organize it, do it with someone on-site as it used to be. maybe i don't remember, but i do. they had sign-up sheets and a person there and sometimes there were disputes and that person should be there all the time when teenagers or anybody is there to use the park and the schedule should we do fairly. no money, no money for the arboretum. first you come for our houses, our pensions and now the parks. [ applause ]. >> thank you. >> before we have the next speaker, we need everyone to move away from the door, so

either move to one side or the other, if you are going to speak. if you are not speaking if you could take a seat, please. thank you. >> thank you. i actually have something to present and first and foremost, i'm going to tell you all something that my mother told me a long time ago, where is that you are going to be later that is not more important than where you are now? i would appreciate those who are checking your emails and texting to stop -- i'm watching. >> we have electronic pads for the schedule. >> he is checking his email, with that said let's move on. i'm here as a san francisco resident and also i'm here to bring you to task on a point of the language access ordinance and the violation completely of this ordinance and the lack of the parks and recreation of ever even thinking that they are going to do anything to

accommodate this ordinance. every report that i have read regarding the language access ordinance has blatantly shown that rec and park -- they don't intend to allot any funds and they don't have the staff. multi-lingual staff, by law, anything that has to do with rights and privileges has to be in a language that people understand. in san francisco, any population of over 10,000, that means chinese, spanish, and the mayor just added tagalog. have i the screen shots of those reports where you can see there is no intention of rec and park being part of the

community that is the fabric of san francisco. you have to as commissioners start talking to task and taking the seriousness that we are not an english-speaking mono lingual society here, all right? [ applause ] . >> thank you. >> good morning commissioners. thank you for hearing the community today. my name is gabriel medina and i'm the president of the san francisco latino democratic club when we saw and heard about this injustice to the youth, we knew they were leading and we are here to get their back. we're here for them. they have composed a variety of demands that they composed with mission-based agencies. and we would like to you respect those demands. we appreciate general manager

ginsburg and being swift to reach out to us, to try to address these youth, as well as our commissioners. we thank you. but we want to make sure that we don't end here. because it's great that they got the lights, but they know that they have been out of touch for many years. this has been happening to them since the summer. and no one was there to reach out to them. no one was there to help them and ensure their safety. so they have a variety of demands and we would ask for to you follow-up on a commitment to work with us, and the community, to make sure that these demands that the youth created get heard. they need to be implemented, and we're open to work with you and set up a meeting as soon as possible to make sure that these youth are heard. some of the follow-up items that they want to have is identify the violations of language access. the language is frankly a language violation in english. it is so undiscernible that i don't know when we can play

with our loved ones as well. so please listen to their youth demands, this is driven by them and everyone is here for them. they are leading this charge and we're here for them. i thank you commission for hearing us >> [ applause ]. >> thank you very much >> next speaker. >> hi, my name is juan and a resident of district 2 and also running for supervisor there coincidentally and i'm also a member of the latino democratic party. i would like to first thank you for listening. it's really important. thank you for acting, and of course, thanks to these kids for being so brave in expressing themselves so clearly. i would like to first express my support to the request that the committee has made from a slightly different perspective, slightly different district because i think this is systematic of the bigger picture what is happening with the city, where we just need to learn to work together to

address what is obviously a very big issue. it is a symbol of it. there is great disparity between how the private sector is exploding and the progress we have in public sector. some is just normal and the fact of life, but the disparity given that we are in the center of the world's innovation, we might want to take a look at our problem and solve them in an innovative manner. so i would like to add a couple of items other than supporting what the community has been asking for. saying that the infrastructure that much of city hall, but definitely the parks area seems to be behind the times and i think as was already mentioned transparency comes when the system actually works and adopts itself and clearly there was an issue with communication. it's extremely unclear, who and when is the parks reserved, across the city and not just in

the mission. there would be a very positive impact of having the infrastructure to reserve these parks and who has them at what time and adopted in realtime. youth is extremely tech-savvy. so innovative solutions i think will help here in addition, to the demands made and innovative business models. i'm very supportive of the fact -- let's just think outside of the box and not charge the folks who have the least revenue. >> thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> before you go, just a few more times one more time. julian ball, denise dory. gurm