livelihood and as more legitimate establishments follow suit. although i don't condone illegal businesses. i should be able to operate my legitimate business. it's discriminatory and wrong. i asked the small business commission's assistance to protect my livelihood and my community for what i have worked so hard to work. i ask for the grandfathered program for established businesses. >> thank you.

>> good evening commission. i stand before you today to say my piece about the current ordinance being discussed and how i feel it will affect the massage profession. currently i'm a student at the institute. i'm also a u.s. veteran who served in the marine corp for the past 8 years and looking for another career. i have a strong passion for this career and for medicinal purposes is more evident and it will be seen in the rank with other businesses in the future. i don't see a significance and established massage therapy businesses in maintaining a

business. most students wishing to start a business have to come out of pocket and who already have an accumulation debt to their name and now for the amount of time the puc will take the process to be used for entrepreneurship caused by those that cheat the system already not to only generate the profit that they can take aside from massage parlors. believes the problem well intact. this is an aside to prostitution rings. please don't add hardship to becoming or becoming successful in this career. i asked that the process, excuse me, i ask in the process of creating this ordinance that you take into

consideration the effects on those in the practice, those that are beginning their practice and last but not least, those that last but not least consider the effects on the future of massage therapy. >> thank you, awesome by the way. that's two great public comments. you both have scripts even when you tripped you got back on track. way to go. next up. >> hello, my name is amanda. you may remember me from the last commission i spoke as well. i don't have an exact script because this is the first time we've heard the amendments that have been proposed on these two legislations. i will do my best to stay on point with you. i really appreciate hearing that there have been

some exemptions that the planning commission and supervisor tang's office and the health commission everybody is taking into account especially the sole provider exemption from the cup process that allows someone in my position a small business to be able to continue practicing. i don't think that the legislation as proposed is ready for approval yet. there is still certain things that really prohibit legitimate businesses from being able to practice. one i appreciate that there are still four providers allowed to be exempt from the cup process. however if each one has to go through solo establishment permit process that is actually a really large process in and of itself. i know that because i have

gotten my building inspection permit recently and it took over 5 months, it took a lot of money and it took providing architectural drawings, inspection, so many different minutia. 13 different visits. if each person of those four have to go through that process, that's causing the city a lot of excess work and it's causing each practitioner access work. so i really propose that the four people could actually share a solo establishment permit to cut down on just excess labor and excess inefficiency. as well i think it's important to consider that not everybody knew that they had to

have this piece of paper signed for camtc exemption. it's not clear. if you have a certification you do not have to get extra permitting. people didn't get their businesses signed off on. we need to take that into account and how do we actually define an existing establishment that we really need to broaden that definition. so i really thank you for considering all of these points and considering that the cup process is not a way to wheed out actors in the beginning. >> all right the next set of speakers is beverly may, stacy degoir and london louis. >> i will try not to repeat.

i'm beverly may from the massage therapy council. i will try no the to repeat my prior comments. i'm pleased to see the on going conversations regarding this ordinance and at least with the few massage therapist and business owners who are aware that this is even going on. most massage therapist and business owners in the city, i have a feeling are not even aware that anything is being considered. i was involved when sb 731 was passed and most of all anger and humiliation rebellion at the anger and humiliation of being subject to regulations they were only

drafted for the sex industry, not for professional massage which much was made during the sunset hearings last year of our law that unintended consequences of the law. yet the bill authors in both business and professional communities were aware of respected consequences of onerous regulations and fees putting certified massage therapist and most sole proprietors for know more than 4-5 clients a day and fierce competition. there is little room in san francisco for businesses and establishments for conditional use permit. los angeles county is amending their ordinance and afc next year will require

certification of anyone practicing massage. their planning department decided they don't want conditional use permits. the city attorney for modesto has referred to a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. i think that's true for a san francisco demand. a bill drafted into the bill with stakeholders work together to being mindful to the needs of the profession and business owners especially the sole providers. i hope san francisco considers this especially i have only seen two sole providers engage in this process. thank you. >> thank you, beverly.

>> good evening commissioners and everyone. i'm stacy degoir, a small business owner as a sole provider in the city. i was very happy and thank you supervisor tang for that layout of the different establishments. part of what's been mentioned is this is a very complex issue. i had a handout describing the four different establishments. the first one being general, the second one is this category of declaration of exemption group and then we have the sole fix or out call establishment and out call only establishment. this currently exist in the code right now. what i would like to propose so that this regulation will not just address human

trafficking but will address compliance of massage therapist who are being treated as professionals. this category the declaration exemption group become certified establishment category. they will be zoned as medical and only for those that are camtc owners and providers. this is what other cities are doing and it creates that, takes care of some of the zoning issues, a lot of what impedes massage professionals from wanting to step forward. right now the group of people that are willing to step forward and speak at these meetings is shrinking because everybody is afraid if they stick their head out they are going to get slammed with a puc which is like a moratorium because it takes

from 6 months to a year to get this. as you heard from amanda, has to cross many desks. on the provider part that currently gpa is general practitioner permit is only 100 -hour criteria and advanced is 200 -hour criteria. right now the bar is very low in san francisco. perhaps that's part of the problem why we've had a proliferation problem. the san francisco council of certificate holders are considered division two health care providers and should be treated as such. thank you very much. >> you have 23 more seconds. >> okay, so i really look forward to more collaboration where the supervisors offices can work

with the massage industry to improve this legislation so that we can support it. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> take a deep breath. >> hi, i'm london alice. thanks for having us here today. i want to touch on a touch things i heard today. people are terrified. they are walking away. their plan is not to come forward and not to tell anyone what they are doing. that's really sad because i would like to see everyone coming forward and to support our businesses and be recognized by the city. so, i have e-mails coming through our group continuously, we are not coming forward, we are not signing letters. we want nothing to do with this.

keep that in mind. the second thing is a volunteer exemption. i didn't send for an exemption for cmtc for my skin care business because it said it was volunteer. it did not say anywhere in the website that i had to. you are going to have people with that problem. under what supervisor tang is saying to us today is great she's going to have a grandfather but it doesn't apply to anyone like myself because we didn't sent in that paperwork. it was voluntary. i say conditional use permit is really awesome if someone is already busted for something. it would be great for an environment for the public to say yes, we would like these bad actors out of our neighborhood. forcing people through them is making them hide and second, people are not going to

get through it. my building won't. not just me, but i have three other small businesses that don't go through conditional use but will be hit by department of building inspectors because we are all under one roof with the same landlord. if you are a business, how many businesses would you like to get hit with fines and/or who else has to send in more architectural maps. this is not going to affect one small business under one roof. my landlord doesn't want to renew my lease now. i have been in business for 10 years. i have contractors working for me, not even employees. single women trying to survive in this city. what about them? i don't think it applies to the small businesses trying to make it here. i just don't think

that the cup, i think it going to decimate us especially if building is involved. i appreciate you asking if we can go through a fire inspection. i think it's onerous and not realistic and it's going to decimate us. people are running scared already. the legislation needs a lot of work still. that's my opinion. thanks, you guys. >> thank you. >> do we have more public comment? is there anyone else that would like to provide public comment who hasn't submitted a card? seeing none, public comment is closed thank you all. i appreciate it. you are the leaders of your community so thank you for being here. all right. so, commissioner riley? >> yes, i want to mention that --

[inaudible] the petition on this establishment. [inaudible] >> >> can i put up a diagram to show you the process? i just want to clarify that before sb 731 went in place and before people went through the dph process they all went through this process. this is something we've been doing since the health

department took over since the police department. basically what happens when you come in to get an application from the department of public health and there are certain conditions you need to meet. you need to have a business license and then we ask you for referrals. you can see the referrals are going to the planning department for a referral and that will determine making sure the location that if you open your business that it abides by the zoning code and if you need to go through a different process. the building department would have to fill out a referral form and they go in and do an inspection to look at making sure the electricity and plumbing and structure of the building is safe. this is not unique to massage businesses, this is every business. i don't want people to think this is a punitive measure. this is supposed to be a protective measure for our residents and our visitors and

businesses. likewise, the fire department comes in to look at ingres and regress and safety and spring sprinklers. we go through and verify it and check it and make sure you have no additional outstanding health violations of your business or any other business. if everything looks well, the permit would be issued. you know, from what i have been told, it's usually about a 60-day process. you know, if paperwork is not filled out correctly or if there is different things going on, i understand it could be a longer process. right now there is a couple of things we are doing to change this. we understand all of these buildings are in different places. i understand you have to go to the building and health department. we are opening up a coordinated

permit center in 2017 in 1 van ness. we are working toward this process to make it easy eefrment it will be a one stop shop. we are going to get there. >> okay. commissioner dooley? >> i wanted to say that i appreciate supervisor tang's agreement to increase to 500 hours. i think that's very important and i wanted to clarify that will apply to general establishment also? >> the 500 hours applies to the practitioner license, not to the business. so when the department of public health like cmtc issues licenses for practitioners, we will have one practitioner license for cmtc and 500 hours in addition we require a test that are offered in multiple languages. you have to have 500 hours and

pass a proficiency test and then you will be issued a practitioner license. anyone can own a business. they don't have to be a certified massage practitioner. just those certified practitioners do. >> i'm still concerned about this kind of lumping everyone together and i inside that's just to make it a set thing. but i do hear what everyone is saying and i think we are lumping true health care providers in with perhaps some more questionable people, and i do feel that they need more consideration. >> is this division 2 classification which applies to health care providers does that apply to san francisco? >> that's a state code, a state

business profession code. >> so if there was a move to include a class of massage practitioners in this division to classification that would have to be done at the state level? >> correct. >> that's another complication. does the city have any authority to designate a division to classification independent of the state? >> we do not. >> traditionally for most of our environmental health programs we can make more specific classifications but we don't have the ability to preempt. >> you can restrict but not extend oovment i just wanted to clarify understate division code, massage therapy is under there but cmat

is underneath that. >> i don't understand the distinction of that. so cmtc was created underneath the division too? >> that's from our understanding. >> i don't know what that means. division two is a classification. >> the cmtc corporation is under the division code, but it's massage therapist isn't recognized as a helts care worker. it list out health care workers specific to medical doctors and acupuncturist and the division 2 establishes the cmtc as being able to provide voluntary practitioner license. >> so they empowered the cmtc but they did not empower them to ordain

the people who pass their certification as division 2 practitioners? >> that's correct. >> understood. okay. i never thought i would know this much. commissioner riley? >> yes, when does the speaker have for the practitioner to have the same permit. if they operate under the same premises can it be done? >> first of all it's incredibly difficult not only on the permitting side. we had to convince the planning to let us have this permit for people sharing the permit. for the actual implementation is very difficult. >> that's too bad.

>> commissioners, any other questions? >> i have a question. >> commissioner sarkissian? >> i wanted to go back to the amnesty program and it's a little bit fuzzy in my mind. could we talk a little bit about what's going to take whether hospital or massage practitioners are going to be able to continue operating while they are complying and how much time are you proposing to give them. >> so sf govtv if i can just put the document on screen again. at the bottom you can see we are going to require that practitioner submit an application to dph permitting process within 90 days of the effective date of the ordinance. so you only have to submit it within 90 days. if we can complete

the process, hopefully you can complete it as soon as possible but we are not going to penalize someone for not completing it within the 90 days. you just have to show a good faith effort. and we will allow those to continue in operation while on going this process. our goal is to not put people out of business. >> much of the process depends on the responsiveness of these other agencies, correct? >> correct. we understand that. >> as long as the application is in within 90 days, the practitioner can continue his or her trade? >> exactly. yes. >> and of course if they meet these requirements as i spelled out. >> right. >> commissioner cartagena? >> i want to thank both sides actually. i like to see thorough engagement from

both sides. supervisor tang, amazing outreach and the massage community. you are out here and i really appreciate it. i as a small business owner think also criminal will be criminals. that's their business and more regulations is not going to stop them. that's what they do as a profession. i'm saddened to see that the massage industry has to go through burdensome bureaucracy that is not going to have an impact on the illegal businesses. no one wants them trafficking in the city. where is the police involvement. i know they do a background check, but what involvement do they have on the enforcement side as an on going part of this? >> we do not address the police department on this legislation. as you know back in 2000 the jurisdiction of enforcement was transferred

from sf p.d. to dph. that was a decision made by the supervisor on the board at that time. the police involvement now has to do with the task force inspections. they are sometimes consisting of dph inspector, police, sometimes city attorney, sometimes planning. so that is their involvement now. it's miniscule compared to what it was before when it was under the enforcement of the police department. >> surely law enforcement is engaged and responsible for the enforcement of prostitution and antihuman trafficking laws. that can't be -- to the department of laws. >> the transfers of jurisdiction occurred in the first place because we heard from the community that they did not want to criminalize the massage industry. so hence dph is now

enforcing but they are only given a set of tools as highlighted so hence there are other tools that we are now trying to give to our departments because it is no longer under sf p.d.. there are limited ways we can now regulate and we are in constant communication with the mayor's task force against human trafficking where the police department, d. a. and non-profit providers are all continuously engaged for how we provide the back end support for potential victims, how it is we really address some of the cases that do arise. again, dph is only given a set of tools to work with. >> if i can add, i know the process of getting a permit and i'm all for going through permitting process if that's in line with the similar industries in the profession. the only thing we all know that small business conditional

use is a killer. >> what is that called? >> cb 3p. >> if that qualifies for the expedited conditional use process. for me that would be the biggest thing. the fee is part of the cost of doing business special fully san francisco. but with cu and the rents rising and the landlords having the opportunity to rent to so many people, the c u is a place for business. i know supervisor tang you have done an amazing job on your outreach. i wonder if we can explore that further. >>