the people to stop talking in the audience. okay roll call. director brinkman. lee present director ram on director ram on the scene director please be

advised that director heinicke will be absence during today's meeting. please be advised that the ringing of cell phones and pagers are prohibited. anyone responsible for one going off may be asked to leave the rom so please turn your cell phones off because if you turn them on to vibrate it may cause microphone interference. thank you. the regular meeting. approved? seconded. >> any further discussion. they are approved. thank you. >> item 10.2 e regarding california street had been removed from the agenda at the request of staff. item 6 introduction of new or un finished business by board

members. >> no new business. congratulations to everybody on b and l that was a big day. thank you. >> item 7 directors report. >> good afternoon members of the staff and public. a couple of things to just touch on today i think you just referenced one i was going to reference that as well obviously we had a pretty strong support from the voters on prop a well over 70 percent that will give us 500 $500 million to invest and approve muni and to make our streets safer so pretty significant step you will recall it was a first of a set of recommendations that came from the mayor's transportation task force so very grateful to the task force and planning department public works transportation authority who worked with us in that process and particularly grateful to

the mayor and the entire board of supervisors for their strong and unanimous support for prop a i think it will be a game changer for us and for safety on the streets and prop b which will send more general fund to muni the formula will be also triggered by population growth so we'll use those funds for fleet expansion we can't use bond funds for fleet so general funds will allow us to do fleet expansion as well as further advance bike and pedestrian safety and then also on the ballot the voters pretty strongly rejected prop l which i think we can see that rejection of prop l as an affirmation by the voters and having all 3 of those line up

on the ballot and all go the way they did is i think strong support for the work that we're doing here. it's not to say that there aren't and won't continue to be concerns with how we're trying to improve transportation in san francisco and for all the people who voted against a and b and for l i think we want to reach out to and work with them as well because we need to deliver transportation for the whole city but that said obviously now the ball is in our court to deliver on what the voters authorized us to do and we've been prepared for that and certainly willing to do so and other good news you may recall recently the board approved i think it's our third revenue bond sale and in advance of the sale as we always do we go out to the credit rating agencies so that that they can assess

the agency and the bond sale and very happy to report that both moodies and standard and poors upgraded us moodies from an aa 3 to aa aa 2 and standard and poors from an aa minus to an aa and as a result we have the highest rated bonds of any transit agency in the country so pretty strong achievement again an affirmation of some of what we're doing and the report that was issued long with the comments and study trend of positive results and the level of autonomy we have and budging and rate setting the board adopted financial policies particularly the operating reserve and how much the city depends on the transportation and the strength of the region

economies and the diversities of our mandates and revenues the board policy being a strong one and indexing one as being a strong part of what led them to create that upgrade. they did mention the continuing charge challenging of rising fixed cost to employee benefits as well as the significant capital needs that we've identified for the transportation system obviously what happened on election day helped us start to address some of that need but that need remains the report said that our financial performance has been strong which reflects sound management of the sfmta's budging and rate setting and that with that autonomy demonstrated continued positive fiscal performance and we've gotten 3 upgrades in the past 3 years it not only makes us feel good but gets us lower

borrowing rates making cheaper for us to go to go to the market and yesterday we sold those 75 $75 million worth of bonds the sale went well they were 30-year bonds and the all in cost under 4 percent -- 3.81 percent so very very low cost of capital which makes this a good time to be going to the markets to bring in the in in the capital in the capital that he we need and another piece of good news -- i guess continuing on on the good news from a financial perspective yesterday the controller's office released their audit of the cost accounting and cost reporting practices you may recall that there was a whistle-blower complaint concerns raised for cost accounting for the central

subway -- but what the audit found and actually it was a result of those that we brought into the controller's office as as an, external body and they brought in an accounting firm to review all of the practices of the central subway to make sure that things were as they should be and they found that the predictions say will not exceed budget and on time and on budget and the schedule and costs performance expectations compared to industry practices the remaining significant costs are adequately accounted for and contingency levels closely monitored and several levels of review and approval with entities before expenses are paid and the city's accounting

system serves as the basis of reporting to the fta so that's the famous system of record what is the basis for those reports that the cost reporting tool that we're using is functional and that errors that were identified in the past have been corrected and have been accepted by the fta and i can tell you from our last meeting with the fta and the project management oversight consultant they also confirm that they are pleased with the progress that the project is making. the audit did recommend that we continue to improve the cost management and have written procedures updated which we'll have done by the end of the year and that we meet with the controller's office to close all of the codes that we're that we're no that we're no longer using so the consulting company who they

hired to do this validated what we believe is that to the extent there are any problems we're addressing them and the project is measuring its cost accurately and it's on schedule and budget as we've been telling you it is and then lastly we talked a number of meetings ago about the new light rail vehicle procurement so a little update from the survey from october 17th to november 4th we fielded a survey on the design of the new vehicles particularly the seating design but also a couple of other features got very good response nearly 9 thousand respondents representing every zip code within the the city we got that level of participation because of outreach that we did with our city partner agencies with community partners stakeholder groups and even

going out doing things online being out in person on vehicles we were out at muni heritage at the weekend and also solicited our own employees for this input and also had multilingual ambassadors at key locations across the city and also had direct meetings with some particular stakeholders including our own citizen's advisory council and our own accessibility advisory council and advocacy groups and we're in the process of reviewing those results and should have them to share with you within the next few weeks. other than that the procurement process for those vehicles is going well since it was approved here it was subsequently approved by the board of supervisors and

we're well underway and that concludes my report. >> what's the process on that one? you are analyzing the results now? >> we're gathering results from the public i'd welcome the board's feedback and share with you maybe this week getting input from the transit operations staff and from there i basically need to decide that we can lockdown the design because as you recall, we got a very favorable price and aggressive timeline and to the extent that we delay that decision-making we jeopardy ize those elements of the procurement. >> i wish we had the time to to do that as well but i trust the lessons learned will be incorporated. >> they will be absolutely and we made particular attention during this process to reach

out particularly to the disability community not just our own but we met with independent living resource center and other groups because i think that's really kind of a key stakeholder group that we want to make sure that their voice was captured and talked to the bart folks about their process and tried to learn whatever lessons we could to make sure we'd have strong support for whatever design we move forward with. >> i'm glad to hear that. that's extremely high value for the agency and i want to make sure it shows up in the design of these cars so caltrain is about to do the same thing so hopefully it will be all right. >> the survey results it's great to have so many people sharing their opinion on that. will that about a staff decision or board policy decision i'm thinking in particular the longitudinal

versus the -- you may not know yet. >> i guess it's really your call my feeling is it's more of an operational decision and not a policy decision unless you want me me to bring that to you for a board vote i was planning to make that decision based on public feedback internal feedback and board feedback. . >> from what i've heard the survey is breaking down 50/50 so no matter what you decide there are going to be some people that are unhappy. >> seems to me if you send the analysis around to the board members let us know what it's going to be. >> we'll do it that way. >> okay. thank you. >> so i appreciate the efforts going into making sure the

disability community is included in the design i can't stress enough how important i think that is and if it's possible and i'm not trying to create more work -- but if we could get a basic plan in terms of how that's going to go how the committee will will be informed or included in the feedback process in that loop i don't know if there's time by our next meeting to have -- >> we've actually already done that so in the report that we'll provide and i think we may have it ready this week. yes, i think we'll have it this week and we'll be very clear on not just the over all results but the specific other outreach efforts who we talked to and what they said it will all be laid out there because i want the board to the the benefit of understanding all of the information what the transit staff think what the feedback

was lrc and cac all those folks. >> thank you so much. >> we all appreciate that. >> members of the public wish to address? >> these are items that will be discussed only items mentioned by director as i say by by by director reiskin. >> mr. weiner? >> mta achieved the victories from proposition ad and l l to the l to the long-term detriment of the public sadly mta doesn't show the same abilities in managing its daily operations. . this was

underlined make others and myself wait more than a half hour for the bus and perhaps muni is flexing its muscle over it's passengers. despite the the triumph longer distances to the buses perhaps the greatest beneficiary will be the bicyclists with greater political power and for this reason it should not be transit first but bicyclists first making the mta a more honest agency and exercised every day and no service no apologies no shame. >> next speaker please. >> last speaker lance ca r.n. es. >> good afternoon mr. ca r.n.

es. >> i wanted to comment on the director's report on the controller's report on the central subway finances and reporting. i had a chance to look at that last night and seems to me there's also a set of reports called pomc reports which is the federal transit administration hires a contract or to manage the subway project and they did this because they have granted sfmta 942 million $942 million and they are very concerned that this project be successful so issued these reports monthly and give direction to the project on things that can that can rectified so when i read the report last night there were at least 2 or more major items in

conflict with the pomc reports that's also a company that does financial analysis and reporting. the first issue that struck me was that the controller's report gave the central subway a pass on using excel for cost controls excel is a pc-based program and doesn't have that audit trail you can actually go in and make things look whatever way you want and the august report strongly indicated central subway must begin using the cost control software as soon as possible and the second item that the report indicated was that the project is on schedule and on budget and the latest reports from august and september indicate the central subway is not on schedule and not on budget. thank you.

>> anyone else care to address the board? >> randall block. >> good afternoon. >> hi board i just wanted to say about the mac i'm the vice chair currently of the mac and we and our executive committee started the conversation to have a subcommittee on on the lrv's and so our meeting is on thursday and we plan to go forward i think as a committee to vote and probably try and get an lrv subcommittee established to talk about some some of the issues i heard on your report so if that happens i'm sure we'll circle back with you and start working with staff and with your concerns. >> thank you i look forward to your report. >> the citizen's council report i don't see mr. weaver here

today and public comment within the jurisdiction but not on today's calendar. mr. chairman you have quite a few people who wish to discuss with you today certain matters. those are the first three speakers. >> i wish to commend miss atkinson a whistle-blower she exposed the complicated fiscal magic and actual expenditures. this cooking the books also occurred with the falsification of statistics and arrival times and she faces potential

retaliation. mta should protect and reward her for her public service. if i had my way i'd appoint her to a seat on the mta board and please commend her for her courageous act. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon mr. chairperson. my name is joyce calegas and i'm representing senior disability action and a member of the san francisco organizing project and i'm also currently active with the san francisco inter-faith council and the california a alliance for retired americans and i see some of my people here from the senior disability action. i

know i told people before from sda that we were first working with the youth to get their free pass and i told them -- they had free lunches i think but and you can get there by bus but some people might not have money to get on the 54 bus but thankfully we had the youth pass it's free for a whole bunch of young people and now it's the turn foreseen i for, seniors and i meant to go online i know when i went down for a funeral for one of my relatives, i believe long beach had free public transportation and for myself being a senior i'm thinking this year starting july 1st all my utilities went up and i'm thinking of that $23

to be able to pay for the increase and everything else so please pass free muni and congratulations on the aa standard rating standard poors rating and support us too. >> thank you. >> next speaker please? >> good afternoon. charles minster first i want to give a shout out and salute to the union members of muni who keep the system running and it's nice that the report of the director that muni sounds flush. it always sounds poor when it comes to contract negotiations. when it comes to free muni foreseen i for, seniors we were always told that the budget constraints

were the problem and we couldn't have it i think it amounted to 7 to $7 million per year and meanwhile you spend money useless ly for these shake down artists and you can save lives on the street which is a priority i believe of the mta and you have got apple and google 45 to 55 miles a way now basically them and the rest of the tech industry is running this town. and it's about time getting the money from them you got twitter here riding free there's plenty of money in this town obviously as you get your credit ratings boosted and there's no reason whatsoever that we don't have free muni for, seniors considering all the hits we

seniors are taking in this town due to all the cut backs. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon sir. i am a senior and the increase in population and of course we ask to muni for us to transport. thank you. please please consider it. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon miss torrez. >> good afternoon. i am a disabled i have impaired vision and i have a broken left arm so i have so many appointments going to the hospital so i

think i i need the support of this government for free muni and also for our owe [inaudible]. >> thank you so much. >> next speaker please? >> good afternoon mr. torres. >> i hope and pray -- i am i am a disabled i have a disabled wife so i hope and pray you will approve the free transportation for all the seniors and disabled because we have so many appointments in the hospital. thank you very much. >> next speaker please.

>> good afternoon mr. heal y. >> good afternoon. i'd like to discuss the proposed cancellation of other forms of innovative insurance by you guys i guess this actually makes no sense. well, am vest doesn't give ratings until a company has been in business for several years i would like to point out this was setup a couple of months ago with the help of mta and director hiashi and this has been a low cost method of getting insurance in a sky rocketing insurance market it actually makes no sense to get rid of this because this actually is an a rated insurance company it simply hasn't been rated

because it hasn't been in business long enough further more you are precluding the possibility of anybody else coming here with an innovative solution and we've been besieged besieged by uber and everyone else and actually this is the uninsured -- san francisco has become the uninsured vehicle capital of the world thanks to the innovation of 20 or 30 thousand of these people i think you should be supporting the taxi business rather than undermining it. >> thank you next speaker please. >> good afternoon everybody.

my name is cecilia-i represent the seniors. i've been going there now for the last 33 years we have a lot of seniors who are happened handicapped and sometimes they have not enough money because their ssi is very low and we would beg for you to approve a free muni because we go we go to the hospital a lot of times and for us some of them are really handicapped and financially not supported and they can not supervisor themselves support themselves so many i would appreciate if you could approve that and god bless all of you. i'm glad we can express what we feel about it. thank you. >> next