appointments that you made for us last month, all three of those commissioners are already well established and part panting, doing good for the exhibitioner all three of them showed up for a reception last monday at the mayor's conference room with the mayor there and project hope director bevin duffy hosting a program that had to do with finding apartments and homes for homeless veterans and they're already involver in that, so thank you for those appointments. i'm here today to speak for someone and advocate for sam pandey would spoke before you last month, he's away up in davis, he's unable to get here today. he's involved with a program under the coral fellowship he's working with right now and that's already a tremendous

qualification. i don't know if many of you know how hard it is to become a coral fellow, what you have to go through. there are graduate school transcripts that are necessary, there are writing of essays and letters of recommendation. my point is that he has passed all these with flying colors, he didn't raise a lot of that when he spoke for himself, however, the qualifications are tremendous and the alumni of the coral fellowship goes back to senator fine stein and other people who have been through that program, so he's already working on that and another reason that bewant him on the commission is that he's already serving this commission, he's been on our agenda for the past two month and is he's already present today the commission as a guest on a couple of different subject and is we expect him to present again on a program that wraps up for the

coral fellowship involving a recap of all of the programs that are available. >> thank you very much. thank you for serving as well. any other member of the public would would like to comment, please come forward, and seeing none, we'll close public comment. >> you've already spoken. thank you. public comment is now closed on this item, there will be future items to comment on. kloeg, we have this live before us, just based on mr. pandey's presentation in the past and we also had mr. caldera who's here today and mr. koppel, thank you for being here as well, again, we have people who have experience with the commission, people who definitely have great understanding and knowledge of issues affecting veterans, i'm open to the various people supporting mr. cal deersinger ra i would like to be able to do i also thought mr. pandey had a strong presentation and his experience is really great as well, he has

an active relationship with the commission, so i want to hear your thoughts. supervisor tang? >> thank you to the applicants who came out again in such a short period of time. i know we've also struggled with our decision last time given the number of seats we had and were constrained to. i know that at our last meeting as well that all of us expressed a lot of interest in mr. pandey, there were not enough seats, so i really liked his presentation last time, he brings a perspective which he is someone who is freshly has this experience and i think brings a younger voice to the commission, so i would abing hull like to see him appointed to this. >> thank you, so i would like to make a motion to support mr. pandey for the appointment to seat number 3. >> okay. seconded by supervisor tang and colleague, we can take that without objection.

and thank you, everyone else, for coming here today as well. next item, please. >> item number 5 is a hearing to consider appointing two members, term ending february 23, 2017 to the citizen's committee on community development, there are two seat and is 4 applicants. >> two seats and 4 applicants and the first one is -- the first person is not here, mr. loftman who's interested, we'll go on to mr. stafford, if you could please come forward. thank you. >> hello, i apologize in advance if my comments are off the mark. this is my first experience with this type of hearing. i'm both excited and nervous. a quick background about myself, my name is william staff ford, i work at wells fargo advisors of san francisco, i help individuals, corporations create action nabl and comprehensive financial plans in order for them to

achieve their financial objectives. i have lived in san francisco since 2007 and i currently reside just across the plaza at larkin and mcallister, i studied financial economics for college, my favorite organization to volunteer at are friends to have urban forest [inaudible] san francisco is an incredible phase of its development, the tremendous growth our city's experiencing can be seen by the multitudes of crane, new businesses and tremendous tax revenue being collected. of course the growth that is happening is not distributed equally. there is a large contingent that needs to support both public and private entities,, a strong citizens community on community development is essential to the well being of our city in order to help identify and address the needs of san francisco's most vulnerable residents. i believe imd make a tremendous addition as my skills are

aligned with the objectives of the committee in san francisco as a whole. i do not have an extensive background dealing with public policy and urban development my spear tease is in strategic planning, qualitive anl analysis and planning. my responsibility is to man an incredible amount of time researching first rewards scenarios and managing expectations using all floppers of communication. my greatest strength as it pertain tos this open seat on the cc cd is my uncompromising will to some day raise a family in san francisco, in order for that dream to become a reality, we have to create a great societal foundation. there will always be people who have problems finding ends meet, the tangible difference

we can make with a committee working in sync with family officials is to go from people living on the fringe to secure a long time residence. my compassion coupled with my experience makes me a great addition to the cc cd. i very much appreciate the time you have taken to consider my application for the citizens committee on community development. >> thank you very much and thank you for your interest. this is a very obscure committee but it's also one that you're applying for based because you have a real interest and advancing community development efforts, your role at wells fargo seems to be doing that as well, what are some of the things you want to see accomplished with your tenure on the committee? >> i think the most important part of the committee is

identifying where help is most needed and where help can make the most difference. i know reading over the minutes and going to a couple of the meetings, there's so much -- so many proposals for help that it's hard to address each one individually so i think -- i think the biggest difference we can make is if we really focus on transitional housing. i know that an obvious one, if we spend more time on that, it would make a difference. just getting more information out there, i think lots of -- everybody needs help, i just don't think they're asking in the right place, so i think more information in general from the committee and maybe communication between the community and the city officials. >> that's great. so, one of the things when i first came on the board of supervise source at that time, we were facing a major deficit and there was a lot of money that was being cut from

community programs and there was a move to reduce or cutback on community development efforts in san francisco and looking at -- focusing community development efforts just on commercial corridors and now we're looking at it in terms of business, and some work my office had done with some of the former member of this committee was to try and push back and broaden the idea of making sure we could have a broad focus about what community development looks like, how we look at asset ins the city, how we build leadership between communities where leadership isn't taking place or new leaders do emerge, and that experiment has been going on in district 11 in my district, we have two major neighborhoods that have developed housing and workforce development, also business work, business development as well, and creating new networks

of people would work with each other and something that -- that's why i say it's a relatively obscure committee because a lot of people don't know the work that it's been doing, i want to make sure if you're involved that you can help to make sure that the efforts that are happening in district 11 and other places, that they're happening in san francisco that they're growing the community development is growing, we're seeing cuts from the federal government where community development is not being invested in like it was previously and these are effort that is are happening at the local level that are carrying the idea of that work. i wanted to throw that in there as you're here before you. >> thank you. >> any reactions though? >> on what you just said? well i live in district 6, it's just -- there's so much going on. there is less funding and i think what you're saying is -- and what i also believer, you

can make a tangible difference having organizations like this committee just doing not basic outreach but organizing and out reaching that doesn't maybe require a lot of funding because there's less but there just needs to be better communication i think in general and i think a committee for community development would really help that. i mean, you have people who are living on the streets in front of brand new bakeries and restaurants and where i live, and it's really disappointing that as san francisco with a lot of well to do and hardworking individuals that we can't make reach out and target who needs the help and how we can get them information and maybe push them along, but give them a stance or just an opportunity to help themselves and then that one by one domino

effect would better serve the community in san francisco as a whole. i think that's what you were saying and i definitely reflect that idea. >> great, thank you. >> thank you. >> so, we'll go to our next candidates, patrina hall. ms. hall? >> good afternoon, chair avalos, vice chair tang and supervisor cohen. i'm a little nervous. i would like to say that i'm a san francisco native and i have a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, i have a pine nor in urban studies and planning and also i live in district 6. i'm also a member of the low-income community, low-income and disabled

community, and i've worked on -- served on several board of director, social service, non-profit organizations, focusing on and addressing is use and concerns that affect low-income and homeless populations. my expertise is in grant and program administration, particularly oversight and disbursement of funding, funding appropriated for programs and services around the mckinney vental act such as homelessness, job creation, transitional housing. i don't see none of that really affecting my community. i don't see any of it really helping us, you know. i see there is a few non-profit organizations who are building transitional housing, there's a couple of shelter programs. there's families and children sleeping on the streets. i've come to know a lot of

these people, i've interviewed them. i've started a non-profit organization to address some of the needs and concerns that are affecting the low-income and homeless population. what i would like to see is how the funding that the federal government -- the funding that the federal government is appropriate tog the state and local government, how is it being disbursed among the people in my population n the community i live in, 46% of the homeless population are african american males. they're sleeping on the streets, they're in doorways, the shelters are full, there's no shelters. my vision is to see, you know, to work on opportunities and transitional housing, shelter, job training, child care and also to help the disadvantaged and non-profit social service organizations, to help them so they can start helping the

homeless and low-income as well because there's been a lot of discrimination and grant appropriations to the non-profits to disadvantaged non-profits, so that is my vision and i just hope, you know, i hope that i could serve on this committee because i see there ao assist lot of business interest on this committee and it's a citizen, so there should be some citizen involvement. i am a community representative of district 6 and i know the issues, i'm involved with community housing partnership, tndc, i know all the local non-profits, you know, i ao*e been working with them and they feel the same thing, you know, they feel that it should be more done and that the funding isn't reaching the people it should be reaching, it's not reaching them. i would also like to say i am a graduate student, i will be

graduating next spring, from there, i will be entering into the jd program and possibly completing a phd afterwards. >> that's great. >> so, you mentioned interest in how mckinney vento federal funds are allocate and had the committee also -- the community block program as well as and reviews those and forwards them on to the mayor's office of community development to decide. in your experience, have you seen that -- the grants change from year to year in a significant way and why and why not? >> yes, i've seen it change where there's been less disbursement to the non-profits, there's been certain none profits who have been denied. they have to go out and raise funding, you know, privately to get money because they've been

turned down. they're socially and economically disadvantaged organizations and i would like the see more work witching the non-profit environment as opposed to working with the small business community, there's some private and non-profit organizations, they collect this money under the mckinney veto act and provide transitional housing but they're only obligated to provide it for 12 years and then they can go private and turn it into a condominium so they're telling their presidents to get on the public housing waiting list because they want to convert. then you have some that's just trying to say they want to get out of the contract before 12 years so they say all the residents are not paying rent so they can get out of the contract before 12 years and it's not helping with the homeless crisis. i know a lot of people, i've even been in a shelt e my son's father chasers vase me, i

was a property manager, he harassed me simply because he wanted -- his girlfriend wanted my position as manager or something and he had gangs to chase me, i was in a homeless shelter, i went through connecting point, i met the directors there, we talked and right now, i'm with community housing partnership, so it's just -- i would like to see more done for my community as a constituent of the low-income, like i said, disabled and homeless community. i would like to see, i need some transparency, where is this funding going, how is it being disbursed because i don't see it affecting us, we barely have child care, the lack of employment is just outrageous, there should be more done. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> i appreciate that. supervisor cohen?

>> so, it's interesting because you come here and you're making a presentation, a very good one, you shouldn't be nervous, very well spoken about you would like to see more things done but yet you rattle off a whole host of organizations doing things, everything from job and workforce training, we are ironically going to be deal witching first five commissions so we're working on getting more preschool and more preschool for all, so from your presentation, i didn't have any questions until the end, i started to think about, what exactly more would you like to see? i mean, you've got a competent city, officials and non-profit leaders that are moving the agenda forward looking and continuing to decrease unemployment. the citywide unemployment is at an all time low, a little over 3% and it's an all time low within the african american community, particularly the

baby community that i represent, it's historic lows, still high compare today the citywide, but in comparison from where bayview has been in years past, we are trending in the right direction, what specifically more are you looking to see? >> i would like to see more job training programs because there are a lot of homeless people who have given up looking for employment because they're turned away so they are not calculated into the -- >> how do we begin to address that when there's a homeless population many of whom are veterans but are suffering from just post traumatic stress or mental illness or substance abuse. how do we help a segment of our community that has been unresponsive to the hundreds of millions of dollars that we've been putting in to our homeless outreach services? >> well, i feel that job

training, counseling, more housing opportunities, just child care, you know, if you would just, you know, walk around district 6 and you see these people that, you know, the parents, they don't have child care for their kids and they're on the waiting list. they're looking for employment, no one calls them, they're trying to get into some kind of program and they can't get into the program. it's just outrageous. i don't know why the help isn't there, but i know -- but i went in a different direction, i went to the university and college, i didn't wait around for programs to open up for me or more child care to open up for my kids. >> so, then tell me, what gave you the inner strength to rise above the circumstances growing up in oc, growing up in san francisco, in and out of shelters, i think you mentioned single mother.

>> yes. >> so, what is the secret sauce? >> okay, well, the secret was welfare reform, bill clinton. i knew it was time that, you know, i needed to really get my skills going because myself, i applied for several jobs and i've never been called. i've never been called back so i figured i needed more skills, so i enrolled in city college and i majored in nursing, real estate, a lot of different majors, and then i transferred to san francisco state and transferred to golden gate university sxit's just that people that i know, i grew up with that i see every day, they're completely lost. they're homeless, they don't have a job, their kids are not in after school programs, it's just a whole host of things going on and i felt that they always come to me because they know i've been in school for a

long time and they say, can you help us, and i say, yeah, i can, i'm familiar with the non-profit field and i said, i can, so i started a non-profit organization which is very, very new and i do a lot of advocacy, so i just realized that was a key to success was education. >> so, maybe you can talk to me about how do we begin to did a better job of connecting people to the services that already exist because truth be hold, we have a plethora of services here in the city and county, both on the non-profit and just under the city agencies that we contract and what we put out there, yet things go unclaimed. we've got 7 thousand summer youth jobs this summer, 5 thousand last summer, and last summer not all of them were claimed. another example, you talked

about homeless services, there are beds that go unclaimed. and, you know, for item number 6 for the folk that is are looking for reappointment to the first five exhibitioner you can incorporate this in your remarks, the preschool. i agree with you, nrs a lack of preschool and we need to move in a more thoughtful and forward direction but our challenge is often not here in san francisco county level, there's a commitment here, it's really on funding on a state level, supervisor yaoe, supervisor avalos, supervisor tang, we all supported a measure last year and began to move in that direction so there's more preschool opportunity levels, that i agree, we don't have enough of that but i still see a lot of waste that's happening with services out there. so i wanted to hear, how do we do our job better, how do we begin to connect with people, if not you, then your friends or your neighbors or other family members, folks who are

also nay tit san franciscans as i am myself that are unaware, what are we doing wrong and how do we do it better. >> i think it needs to be a committee compromised of a targeted population that these funds are appropriated to. i don't feel that business interests should have a total hold on making decisions on how the funding is appropriated. i feel people in the community need to be -- there needs to be some transparency to see where the funding is going, how could the service better meet our needs, you know, what opportunities are available to us. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> thank you. >> so, our next applicant is mr. peter cohen. who is actually reapplying.

>> thank you, i guess good afternoon now, supervisors, peter cohen, and thanks for your consideration on my reappointment. just on a personal note because i want to stay there, it takes time for all of us who serve on these mitt taoe, i have two kids and i'm active in my own community, and i take to this particular committee, it's not a policy committee, you're trying to connect with people. we're hearing people's stories and it's important for us to think about that through our own personal lens. i was first appointed in 2011 to essentially replace a jenlts man called renne who passed away the year prior who is a housing advocate and it wasn't possible to fill his shoes but the role i've tried to play on this committee is being kind of a housing expert and

understanding the array of housing programs and the housing that we have in the city and picking up on that perspective renne brought and it continue tos come back when we have community meetings, what's the number one issue everyone's struggling with, extremely low new mexico, moderate low-income, it's housing afford nlt, our committee and our grant program spends a lot of time of how those housing and services are being met, so i try to bring that expertise, if you will, to the group. and it's really a blend. you have people, both your board of appointees who have different experience, you're connecting housing with economic development with straight counseling and it's a more mixed discussion of issues that i find in the soloed work we do out there so that's a rich experience and i learn a lot from my colleagues on the

committee as well as what i bring. i just wanted to offer a few thoughts on the committee i guess since i have a little bit of veteran experience, one is -- i think we do community development in san francisco completely different than most cities in this country and using cdbg dollars, a lot of them take it from the federal government and spend it on their agencies and much of the program and is services are department driven waxer we have done here is spread m*es of that money out to our non-profit service providers who are working on the ground level and i think that's a good model. i think that's one of the things that makes san francisco unique, we have deeper and local relationship, you have local knowledge, it's a community empowerment model. it also makes it really complicated because you have in any one grant year, 50, 60 different organizations receiving grants but that's the way we do it and i think that kind of patch quilt is a good

thing in san francisco and that covers a whole lot of work in housing for example, there is tenant counseling, there's first time home ownership, it's done a lot to support the housing programs, the hope sf x the envisioning program, we have small business assistance, we have child care services, so it's supporting a lot of different organize sashes doing different work and i hear some of the previous speakers, it's hard to know what's doing what but i would argue it gets there better when you do it through this model of a dissevered decentralized funding rather than when you put it into centralized agencies. my second point is on the role of the citizen's committee, i think a lot of us would see us as more a policy body, we're setting economic development policy for this city. it's not really a pod si body, we don't make decisions, we're not in a position of authority,

it would be a peer feedback group to staff and i think they get a lot out of that, we converse with each other and we bring professional and community experience to the table, they bring staff and technical experience and that's the role we help them set policy and programs and hopefully it's influential at some level. we have made a lot of emphasis on community listening meetings, so at minimum, every grant year, we have two, sometimes three community outreach meetings in different parts of the city and staff has been intentional about scattering those around over the years and having opportunities to hear what folks are experiencing, what's working, what's not, and then the other thing as a role is we have to deal with the fact the federal government continues to cut money. we're at a time here in san francisco, we're talking about economic progress, the coffers