out to

many of our sponsors. she shared our streetscape. big cheer for manuela. thank you. people are out and enjoying it. i see kids enjoying it. it's wonderful. thanks to all the volunteers and especially our mayor ed lee and thanks to all, i really appreciate all of your sponsor ship to make this happen. in addition to this pop up pedestrian plaza we are calling it, we are also featuring every night at 5:00 a fabulous light show at the macy's store. it's on a loop every night for the next month. it's designed by the google doodle

folks. the ones that bring you the google doodle. jack frost is taking you through a tour of san francisco. so please enjoy it tonight or come back and enjoy it every night here after. and we also have off the grid here as you can see. they will be here throughout the month. so come and enjoy bites. for a full list, go to our website. it's now my distinct pleasure to introduce our mayor ed lee with the city and county of san francisco. about a month ago we went to your office to ask you to bring relief to the merchants who have dealt with so much construction. we are grateful. mayor edwin m. lee: thank you for all of your great work at the bid

as well. happy holidays! before it rains, i want to make sure you know this, i told you the world series will end the drought. so it's happening. congratulations, everyone. welcome to our pedestrian pop up place right here at union square. i want to begin by saying thank you to the union square merchants, the bid for working so closely with us but a very special thanks to manuela king whose vision and idea here really sparked this and you spent countless volunteer hours just visualizing how this could happen. i'm going to say just a special thank you because it's people like you in this business that really care about what happens down here, what happens with our shops and will is -- also the experience

that people should have as they shop here during the holidays. we have one of the most important transportation projects in the city's history and certainly in this modern history and this is our subway. i know all of you here have had a high level of tolerance when you have seen these gigantic cranes and hammers and that high degree of tolerance has been because they support the ultimate aim of the central subway project. it is our city's future, but also, in spite of that high tolerance as well, there has been some economic impact to greater degree on many of the small businesses but all businesses around union square. so, instead of just

saying sorry, sorry, sorry, i think the central subway team and bid and all of our partners that karen just named by seven by seven and grants for the arts as well as others came together and said, why don't we meet up with this challenge. why don't we do something about it. so of course a moratorium, do you hear any pounding? no. this should be sleighs and kids and coins, you know. that's the sound that we want to hear during these holidays is people having fun, listening to each other, greet each other, give each other warm holiday welcomes right here in union square. the moratorium is in effect for the next month. it is a pause. it's been buttoned up. this

is a time where we should be celebrating each other and uniting during these holidays with our families and our friends. part of this was to do that to announce the pause and the moratorium on this, the other was to create to kind of use this creative space that manuela had so dearly spent so much time visiting and i spent some time here last week and i was jumping up and down and we spent some serious dollars in our local stores. but we wanted to enjoy it ourselves before we announced it to get a feel for this. it's incredible with the lighting here and the open space. i think all of the stores recognized there was some ilo -- love to be paid back with the construction. hopefully this is the

part of it. the other part is that to really in vigor this entire city of ours with the enthusiastic initiative that we launched last week, shop and dine in the 49. that's why i got started early because i wanted to start to spend some money for my family and eating here. we are doing this because of the construction impact and another thing is to honor the stores and local businesses in san francisco. this is where you should spend that money, this is where that money will come back at you in return with a lot of jobs and local residents with having those jobs and people being happy to make some extra bucks to afford this big ve expensive city. i'm going to be building a lot more and a lot of the

affordability agenda is reflected in this transportation project. transportation is affordable in this city. it allows people in an affordable way to get around this entire city. so does more housing, so does parks and open space and so does working together with all of our small businesses and local businesses to ensure they have the economic foundation to pay the higher salaries that we are asking them and now legally requiring them to do within the next 3 years. with all of that i wanted to say with a great great deep thanks to all of the partners at the bid, the central subway team, the sf mta, our police department that is here to continue to have a high level of safety for everyone. to my friends at dpw who i asked to pick up

the extra trash cans here because people were having a lot of fun and didn't know where to put the the trash. we know where to put the trash. dpw, ed, muhammad. these holidays and what we are creating here is very significant for san francisco. people are coming from all over the world over the holidays as well as from chinatown, north beach, from taravel and sunset to have good reasons to be here. have a safe successful warm holidays. remember, rain is good. it's about prosperity to everyone, it's about world series too and to say again, whenever you come to this place, i just wanted you to know that the people who created this space had in mind to bring lots more people together and thank and support all of

our local businesses here in union square. we meet challenges, not with sad stories. in san francisco, just as they did 100 years ago when they did the panama pacific world fair exposition. we celebrate by meeting these challenges by innovation. is this park innovation? you got to say yes, it is. this spirit which i think will dominate all of our holidays. thank you. have a great holiday. thank you, everybody, for working together. [ applause ] >> as i have often said, two eds are better than one. here is the other ed working very hard. today we were together at the new improved san francisco mta's traffic management center where we are trying to decongest our city and we are doing

better and better with it as we get more data flowing through the city. ed reiskin and the head of the central subway project. [ applause ] >> thank you, mr. mayor. happy holidays! as the mayor said, first of all we are so delighted to be able to be a part of this. for anyone standing here just a few weeks ago, that stockton street could look this way is so unimaginable. central subway is such an incredible project for our city, for union square, a tremendous benefit it will bring but mainly the whole city, but we get there is disruption that doing a project of this magnitude is going to create with this city with such vibrancy. what the union square president said, we understand the pain is worth the gain, but we get

nonetheless that there is pain. we are very grateful for the partnership that we have with the union square bid and karen and her board and her staff. they do a great job in advocating for the needs of union square, making sure we are doing what we need to do to make the project as least disruptive as we can and about assured that she is quick to hold us to account anytime we are not. we'll continue to do that but this opportunity that the holiday moratorium presented with us to transform stockton street, not just back to how it was, but i would argue better than it was during this holiday period to really attract and invite people to come down here toen jo i -- enjoy the holidays with their family and friends and spend money and be very happy to be a part of.

we will continue to support the businesses of san francisco. they are a lot of what brings the character of san francisco to our great city . in the transportation we want to do everything we can do and more with the mayor's direction to make sure people can get around with ease and safely. this year we are bringing the mission garages and put our transit only lanes around market and third so you can get to and from union square more easily and we have flywheel with all of our taxis and generally working for those who want to shop and dine. i do 100 percent of of my shopping and

dining here in san francisco. the last thing i will say is we want this holiday season to be a safe one. last year in december, we had a lot of people lose their lives just trying to get around the city of san francisco. the city has embraced a concept vision zero to achieve zero fatalities in the city. as we are out and about enjoying our great city and shopping and dining with the great businesses in san francisco, i encourage everyone to be safe. everybody, take your time and put your electronic devices down and particularly when you are behind the wheel so we can all enjoy this great season. i would like to acknowledge john and his team who worked really

hard with karen and her team. every time he would show me the rendering of this, he was giddy with excited as a school kid as exciting as those pile drivers that the mayor talked about which is an opportunity for us to transform such as important part of our city with great space. it's really a wonderful opportunity. we are grateful for it. i want to encourage everyone to keep coming out and keep spending your money and have a great holiday season. thank you. [ applause ] >> so, thank you again and so much and to your team, really for believing in us and buttoning up our streets in the last couple of weeks and presenting the wintering walk and and mayor lee, thank you again for being here this evening for your kind words

and for your support for this project. we really appreciate that. to all of our sponsors, thank you for your support and thank you for coming and with that we invite you to enjoy the rest of the season. we have food trucks. please enjoy the different options and please enjoy the lights here and if you join us at the hotel, that will begin in a short time. have a great holiday season. >> >>

>> finance committee, i'm commissioner cohen, the chair of the committee. to high left is tang, and to my right, wiener and farrell. i would like to think, charles and jesse for their help in presenting this committee hearing. the clerk of the committee is steve staymous. and mr. clerk, call item number 2. >> item 1 roll call. [ calling roll ]>> item a. >> we have a quorum. >> okay. thank you, could you please call item number 2? >> consent calendar.