factors which came out fairly evenly, but the thing that was very striking was the difference in cost which would translate to over $100 million for ratepayers over the lifetime of this contract. so recology was selected by the panel. lawsuits were filed. lawsuits were dismissed and over the course of the next four years the board repeatedly took a look at this contract. you held four hearings, two votes and after the hearings and the votes the board unanimously approve the process and said in fact recology was the qualified bidder for the contract. >> supervisor mar. >> i just wanted to ask you to slow down a minute and on the environmental benefits of the recology contract my recollection is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because of the green rail but with more

miles trucking from tunnel road to oakland and then rail all the way to yuba county but that's changed and i know the sierra club raised some concerns about increase increased greenhouse gas emissions and the department of the environment said they're negligible but the contract was based on greener way of transporting the trucking and then the rail, and that's changed significantly and that is an environmental impact so i would like to know about the analysis but i know it may come up with the report later, but i wanted to say the price was a key thing with the points on the panel as i recall way back then, and the points because of the much lower pricing for the recology contract put the bid of recology way above waste management. >> correct. >> but there were still environmental benefits of the

green rail proposal which has changed now though. >> so in a way when you look back at that original contract they were half the price and they a appeared to have a transportation option that was greener and either way you look at it recology was the best practice. >> i am saying i don't want to gloss over the environmental benefits of the original contract. >> exactly, yes. >> because the pricing was critical in the points but proposed as a green rail project that was much superior to the other one. >> right. and that was incredibly exciting to us to think about the green rail and the contract was we would love to do that and if something happens we have a backup plan and go to a different landfill so any way you cut it it looked like the most protective of the environment and for ratepayers. the green rail option turned

out to be still of interest to us but it's a very long protracted process. it does need more environmental review and agreed with that and yuba county said we need a deeper look at the rail and as that became longer and longer we fell back to the backup landfill which is hey road. and i want you to know that melanie nutter and john avalos and i visited yuba county and livermore as well and the environmental benefits were critical in addition to the pricing you mentioned earlier. >> yeah, fair enough. thank you for bringing that up. this is high level and anything i am glossing over please stop and let's go into detail on, so you bring up the environmental review and the department feels like this new landfill going to hey road is not of significant environmental impact so that

word "significant" is a legal term and the determination of whether a environmental impact is significant takes place with the planning department through the ceqa process and transition to my next slide so what happened under the environmental review so the agreement with hay road versus althat month and the planning department looked at that and transportation and there is a 40-mile difference between taking the waste from our city to hay road for recology versus waste management so the question that needs to be answered from a legal perspective is that significant? does that trigger a full eir? that's the question that the planning department struggled with so we asked them to evaluate it and after nine months they came back and did all of the calculations and

assumed a 50 truck per day and looked at the 40-mile difference and was below the threshold of ceqa and i will come back to that and it's important as the environment doesn't that we understand a legal obligation and moral obligation so that determination was appealed. the planning department unanimously agreed with their staff -- i'm sorry the planning commission agreed with the planning department that negative declaration, the impact of the 40 miles of insignificant and a full eir didn't have to happen. now that's not the end of that discussion. that discussion and decision will come back to you in some time -- i expect in september, to redo and reevaluate so that you can feel comfortable that the city is in fact meeting the legal obligations to project the environment in terms of emissions. that's not what today's hearing is about, and

it's not the end of the story so i want to make that point. >> supervisor tang. >> just a question. i know this is again not the full purpose of the hearing but you or planning staff if you would like to answer this. we did receive some comments from i guess the opposing party there is no ceqa threshold at this time based on the number of vehicle miles traveled and therefore ceqa thresholds are met based on air quality, greenhouse gas or noise impacts resulting from vehicles miles traveled so i am wondering if you or the planning department can respond to that quickly? >> i cannot. >> erin [inaudible] from the department. i'm sorry. i am not prepared to talk about the environmental deration for that. >> okay. perhaps we can follow up when it comes back to the board. >> absolutely. we will make

note of that and that is important point is that this is coming back before the board to take a look at those issues in more detail, so the new agreement, the agreement that was being negotiated was of course the hay road landfill and looking thea a term of 5 million-tons and take about 15 years for us to reach given our efforts of zero waste and given the city's commitment to reducing what allly goes to landfill and our progress. this agreement that is now in your hands is actually reducing the term of the contract down to nine years and 3.4 million tons but allowing an extention and that permission would be heard by you at the time we're approaching the end of the

contract so the reason we shortened the term of the contract we want to honor the competitive bid process for all of the years and meetings and process that is legally defensible. it ensures rate stability because the department has the authority to sign the contract and ensure that a contract is in place before the existing contract ends at the end of the calendar year and honors public review and allows public review because the contract is shortened and allows the board to revisit it at the time of renewal and rather than wait 15 years the board can look at it in nine years. the other change to the contract was seeking about the whole ceqa issue and the environmental issue and the discussion that came up from people that had concerns over the 40-mile difference and what we put into the contract we capped the number of trucks that recology could send to landfill at 50 per day. the reason we did that was

the assumptions in ceqa made a 50 truck assumption but that wasn't set in stone so by doing that we're ensuring that the environmental impacts remain below the threshold and making a statement about the commitment to zero waste that no matter if the population increases, no matter what we will not send more trucks on the road than that number so the two changes to the contract were the term and the trucks. those were the two things that were changed so next steps. the department has the authority to sign such an agreement, and once it is signed that triggers an action that then allows another appeal of ceqa which may come before you. we expect when you come back in september, and then if you're comfortable with that analysis and then we will have this contract in place by january, and all of the benefits that are

part of that contract will be felt by the people of san francisco, so in closing i want to say again as i did in the opening that the contract process has been done with the utmost integrity with the weight of the law and the rules every step of the way front and center. it is protective of the environment. it is very much a strong contract to move us towards zero waste and the most cost effective one we can offer ratepayers at this time and again i have another colleagues here if you would like more detail so thank you very much again for forking us the opportunity to have this discussion yet again. >> okay. colleagues any further comments or questions? okay. could you just real quick i think -- we have been getting a lot of questions and from different people inquiry about 10 years versus -- >> 15 years versus nine years.

>> right. could you talk about that more? >> the original contract had an amount and 5 million tons no how long it took and our calculation said it would take 15 years given the rate of disposal and a 15 year contract. shortening the contract does two things. it allows the department to sign and get the contract moving so we can make the deadline of end of the year and ensure rate stability because we're not hanging out there with not a full contract, and it allows the board to come back and weigh in sooner, so in a 15 year term it's gone. the last one was since 1987 so this way we get before you again after eight years to take a look how are we doing? are we meeting our goals? are we protective of the environment? and any changes we want to make to the term of the

contract so that was the thinking. >> okay. colleagues questions right now? okay. why don't we go to public comment and then we can go to follow up questions. i have a few speaker cards here if people are filling out other ones. [calling speaker names] mr. lazarus was on 16. we have two speaker cards. anyone else wishing to comment please line up against the side of the wall and everyone has two minutes and we can move from here. >> i am kevin carol and director of the [inaudible] hotel san francisco and work in an industry that welcomes people to san francisco and employs 24,000 people the majority that live and work in san francisco. i am in support of recology for the contract. they have been a long-term partner of our industry and hotels. we work

with them daily and part of the sustainability committee and a committee of hotels that work together to share best practices in partnership with the department of the environment and recology and many organizations in the space. that committee is one of the most active committee and recology and their employees are active participants as well. they have hosted us to share best practices and educate our members and their employees on best practices for achieving their zero waste goals. their employees as i mentioned continue to work with us and our teams as well. recology is fully committed collaborative and they partner with the hotels virtually everyday to reach our goals and i just wanted to remind you that we fully support their fulfillment of this agreement that is before you today and i appreciate your time as well. thank you. >> thank you. before the next speaker comes actually i want

to recognize we have the president of the environment commission here. you're welcome to come up and say a few words if you like. >> thank you chair farrell. is it morning still? i am speaking as president of the san francisco commission on the environment and thank you for the opportunity to speak and i wanted to speak in support of the department of the environment, our staff. we had a hearing about this conversation at our last meeting and asked a series of questions and comfortable with the fare and bidding process that resulted in the bids that came in and one being double than the other. what we liked about the contract that's before you and that we support is the ability to lock in a long-term rate that is low, and free us up to do what we want to do which is get to zero waste because that's the solution. we hope this is the last landfill contract we have to sign because getting to zero

means nothing, no more hauling waste,ing in except putting it back in the stream and going to the green and the blue and this contract will give us the ability to do that and we fully support the department. >> thank you. next speaker please come up. >> good morning mr. farrell and committee members. my name is john lynn smith and outside counsel to waste management. honesty i don't know where to begin. there are a lot of statements made that are contrary to the rfp issued but a couple of points i want to make. one is i sent the committee and the full board of supervisors a letter this monday outlining the process that has been conducted since 2008 with the rfq leading up to the proposal to enter into a contract today with recology. i want to make sure that is

part of your record. i hope you have it and if you don't i have a copy and can give it to you. i wanted to bring to your attention a couple of things about the deal. when the rfp was issued it was a 10 year deal or 5 million tons of disposal, whichever comes first. it wasn't a 5 million-ton deal. it was going to be from 2015 to 2016 or 2025 or 2026 or 5 million tons and whichever came first. when the resolution was presented to the board of supervisors on june 1, 2015, this year, the resolution was seeking approval for a 10 year contract, not a nine year contract. the effort to make it nine years not for transparency or the ability to come back to talk about this again. it's basically so anybody can avoid a

referendum, make it an administrative act and not a legislative act. the other point it's not 40 miles difference. it's 2,000 miles difference. 50 trucks times 40. that is what triggers the need for an eir and why the sierra club is fully advocating a full eir is done and by not going to the board for the approval you pushed off the appeal for another couple of months and recology and the department that are engaged in the process can get the contract up and running. >> sir, thank you. your time is up sir. >> [inaudible] (off mic). >> okay. thank you. next

speaker please. >> supervisor tang, supervisor farrell and supervisor mar thank you for having me today. i work for the gate gate golden gate association and (paused) because restaurants produce a large amounts of food waste we have a strong commitment to posting and having affordable ratings makes it possible for all restaurants to do it. we love the fact that farms and wineries use the waste and food comes full circle on the table of the member restaurants. recology has been supportive of the restaurant industry and had a representative for troubleshooting and our needs. this is a strong one to allow

restaurants to implement green practices without breaking the bank and different from members in oakland dealing with waste management and we support recology. >> thank you very much. next speaker please and if anyone else wishes to speak please line up and two minutes each. >> good morning. i am paul pender gas and here to speak on the san francisco small business network and 14 business organizations here in san francisco and chair the golden gate policy for san francisco and i am here to speak on recology and they have been active partners with small business and not just attending events and actually responsive to the needs and the phone calls and emails that small business interact with recology on a daily basis. they are a shining example how a

business can be responsive to the small business community. we only need to look at oakland to see how small business can't work with certain companies and we are in support of recology and the contract moving forward. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good morning. david pillpel speaking as an individual and i have been involved with these issues in the city and area including the rate setting process through the department of public works and the residential refuse collection and rate board and i am familiar with the 1932 ordinance and all the things related to that. i have expressed some concerns about the proposed agreement and a little bit about the process to both department of the environment staff and recology. they have been both responsive and addressed a number of my concerns. however i think at this point and i am sorry i

missed the presentation earlier i think the department of the environment should provide a copy of the agreement to the board if that hasn't been done and allow the public some time -- not a long period of time, but maybe a few days to comment on the latest version of the proposed agreement before signing and entering into it so if there are other concerns particularly about going to the nine and six scheme with the 50 truck limit et cetera that they can be reviewed before any decision to approve the agreement by the department of the environment. any other concerns that i might have i am happy to put in writing again to department of the environment. doe and copy the board. i understand there will be some kind of hearing on tuesday but then not considering the substance of the appeal at this time. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. any other members of the public wish to comment on this item? okay.

seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] colleagues this is simply a hearing item at the moment. we can make a motion to file this item. however if there are questions or comments at this time we can entertain them. okay. supervisor mar. >> just quickly i think i want to say the two elephants in the room are two powerful entities, recology definitely very influential clearly in this hearing today and the proposal that the panel as approved and this board unanimously over time and also a texas based large corporation that has at times "bullied and intimidated oakland city council members and others and ballot measures and lawsuits, so i know this hearing is useful to hear the updates

but my hope is we focus on the environmental benefits as joshua mentioned and ms. raphael proposed and i am hoping that the two elephants in the room don't pull us away from the zero waste goals and the greenhouse gas issues and the truck 20 more miles per trip and we shouldn't gloss over that as well but i am appreciative of this and it's been many years from supervisors before i got on this board, and i think these are big issues but let's focus on the environmental impacts and our very aggressive climate action goals for our city. thank you. >> okay. thank you supervisor mar. okay. with that i know we will continue to be working on this item and throughout this and beyond so with that colleagues i would like to entertain a motion to file item 15. >> all right. i make a motion to file the hearing. >> okay. motion by supervisor tang. we can take that without

objection. madam clerk can you call item 16 please. >> item 16 hearing on the control or's report and for office of economic and workforce development and office of small business, the controller, the planning department, office of building inspection and other city departments involved with the permitting process for . businesses to report. >> thank you. this is sponsored by supervisor tang. so supervisor take it away. >> thank you very much colleagues for entertaining this hearing today in response to a report by the controller's office and took a deep look how the city's permitting process works especially as it rer tains to restaurants so the purpose is identify ways that we can make sure city's permitting process even more efficient for those looking to start or expand restaurants here in san

francisco and hopefully from the lessons that we learn from the collaborative efforts, through the reports and other efforts by city departments that we can apply these lessons to other industries and for us -- at least for me it's about writing a better experience for our customers by the people looking to start or expand a business here in san francisco, and i know there have been efforts in the past to tackle this issue and what is different this time around is that i feel that we have approached this in a more comprehensive manner. for one we have a new online small business portal in san francisco and credit the team for bringing that up online and the controller's office report and is one of the most comprehensive to date and we made investments in the office of economic and workforce development and i have seen first hand how that

customized and personalized support that office has been providing to people has changed over the years. even several years ago when i was looking as a legislative aid and i was the main person trying to facilitate the relationship between the departments so now to have oewd to do that with the merchants is beneficial but of course there is more work to be done. i know there are some small businesses here today and many we encountered in our work that shared horror stories or impediments they experienced while trying to make the way through the permitting process so we want to identify where the kinks are and in the future we can make this a better process, but before we begin i want to highlight some of the positive things that i think have happened in the past, so as i mentioned earlier the small business portal. we have completed phase one and the next step through this hearing we're

going to gather some information that we can hope to move into phase two to bring for example permits that you can fill out online and payments submit online as well. we have in the last budget process thanks to the committee and the mayor's office and funding new client service manager hosted through the office of economic and workforce development and that person would be assigned to facilitate the permitting process across the departments for those looking to expand businesses in san francisco so in the coming years really just looking forward to working with the city departments as we try to move towards a true one stop shop as we co-locate various departments in the site inhabited by the goodwill on van ness and i wanted to layout the process today and i will call up todd from the office of economic and workforce development. secondly i would like to bring

up jane to talk about the business portal and ryan hunter from the controller's office to present their report and the office of small business and we have representatives available to answer questions and the planning department, dbi, department of public health and the tax and treasurer's office and the fire department so with that said let's begin with you. >> thank you so much supervisor tang. i appreciate the leadership on this issue and calling this hearing today. from day one the mayor has been this a priority and between the invested neighborhoods program, loans, targeted customized assistance for small businesses we have lead the effort with the city with great support from the committee and i want to thank you from that but we heard from small businesses, from each of you and from the small business commission that the process

needed to be improved and that's why in 2014 again through with partnership within oewd and office of technology and office of small business we launched a comprehensive business portal as you mentioned supervisor tang and brought that information into one place and most importantly shared that information from the perspective of a business. what it's like for a business to interface with government opposed to how government is structured. as you mentioned jane will be up in a moment to share an update on that but sharing how a process works isn't the same as making a process better and that's where the second half of the initiative is focused and i want to acknowledge the office for the report on business streamlining and ryan hunter will be up here in a moment to do a briefing out of that report. but i think most importantly what comes next? what are those recommendations are going to be implemented to make a real impact for the

small businesses and thanks to the mayor a budget as well as the support of this committee. we're going to be launching a small business accelerating team with a client services manager as you mentioned supervisor tang and regina will be up to talk about the implementation of that initiative as well as a couple of others focused on making these recommendations real. one final point before i hand it over to jane. this initiative is interagency and requires strong collaboration and i haven't seen such collaboration as with this effort and i want to thank and acknowledge the range of departments here today and department of technology and ben the controller, treasurer cisneros, john from planning and dbi and barbara and her team and chief hayes white from the fire

department. it's a team effort. we know the work isn't done and looking forward to present this to the committee today and next steps and questions and with they will bring up jane. >> thank you very much. >> good morning supervisors. thank you so much for having us present to you today. i am going to talk to you about where we were at the state of small businesses. the approach we took to building the san francisco small business portal and share the outcomes from the last eight months and where we're going next and feels like yesterday i was here in front of the budget and finance sub-committee to ask for the funding for the business portal and here we are eight months later so if we could go to the slide please. i like to call this the worse slide ever. the reason is this a representation of what the small businesses have to go through. not only do they have to visit geographically dispersed

departments and dig through websites and oftentimes if they find the information they're looking for and it's boroughed a lot of municipal code we don't understand so the intent was to build a single place to get the information and also get rid of some of the arrows in the process itself. our goal is create the first stop for everything business in san francisco, inn integrated scalable business solution that scales from the inception of a business owner's idea through the entire life cycle. what we did was sort of take an unprecedented approach. for the first time every government website is not just municipal code, maybe clip art and a couple of photos. we conducted user research. our users are internal users and the permitting staff as well as the business owners so we conducted

workshops and brought together nine departments and 20 permitting staff as well as the small business owners who were from the inception of the idea and a business was on the way out and we wanted to capture their experience as well. we looked at hundreds of analogous experiences in the private and public sector. from this research we put together a customer journey map so i have a bigger version if you want to see it up close but it's showing you that both during the consideration and the preparation phase and maintain and go it's more of a linear process but the orange section in the middle -- this is what i call the infin infinity loop of death and they're dealing with the government and they're reaching out to find information on permits, trying to stay compliant on ada requirements and they get cent around to three departments and only to come back to the first one.

>> >> that's the infinity loop of death you called it? >> actually just made that up on the spot so don't call it so the infinity loop is what we're trying to solve and this is a common goal with all of the departments that are here. this is what we're trying to make better. we came up with some design principles and i won't read through everything but they could be applied throughout the entire city to websites and digital services that we deliver. one is treat our constituents as customers and increasing the content and increasing the trust in what we deliver so we went into building the business portal. this is a collaboration with 18 different city departments. again as todd mentioned an unprecedented the effort and pulled information on 400 permits and licenses. we wrote every piece of content in

the business portal and made sure that the language was simple, easy to understand and translatable in spanish, chinese and seven other languages and designed to be responsive so users can access it from the phone, desk top and tablet and at the same time we engage with the business owners and staff to ensure accuracy and [inaudible] prelaunch. we did user testing and it showed that the people described the site as professional, easy, accessible, engaging, beautifully designed and comprehensive. not the usual words that people use to describe government websites. we conducted stress testing. made sure that the site could with stand 200,000 simultaneous hits at once to avoid any healthcare.gov debacles and the soft launch took place in 2014.

the full launch happened and we put together a promotional video and postcards and links and seeing referral traffic from the tax collector's office and sent out emails and staff and a lot of the non-profits that support the businesses and reached out through social media and muni bus ads and i will show you an example. am seeing these postcards in your office and in the city and now the outcomes. this is what i am excited to share with you. we're seeing 10 times as many users as a daily basis compared to the previous city online permitting site so right now seeing 117 users a day compared to 10 users in the past. responses in the give

back feature along with social media mentions have highlighted the portal for this and it's a pleasure to explore, make it easier to do business in san francisco and even in the words of one business owner they're saying we're doing them a solid. city, state federal officials -- even the white house have reached out to learn about the san francisco portal and we share this online and now we're able to use analytics and feedback to inform our decision making as we move forward in expanding and building out further features on the portal. the numbers -- so these are the numbers that we gathered since launch. we are seeing 14,055,000 -- 14,000 views a month and many come from the phones and hopefully that will drive more content through the phone making it easier to see on a mobile

surface. tablet users are 3%. 39% come from san francisco with 8% from the surrounding bay area. i am excited to share that in the third quarter of the previous fiscal year so january through march of 2015 there were 311 reps were able to resolve many cases just using the business portal and in the age break down and supervisor mar you talk about the digital divide quite a bit and it was surprising to me and conventional wisdom that the portal is geared towards a younger audience but the majority are over 35 years old and 61% of total users and that speaks to how we designed a portal that supports and helps every demographic. awards.

recently we were mentioned in a article for fast company and by the governor's office and kennedy from recognized it as a bright innovation and we were a web emmy nominee and this includes second phase features so these are in the works. we're looking at using software as a platform for forms that are submittable. we're using individual users and check lists and data storage and delivery and prefill are some of the other capabilities. portal maintenance is important. we want to make sure it's not another government website left alone and unattended and a year from now or two it's obsolete so

we update the content when legislation changes or important due dates to remind owners about fees that are due. we constantly create new content, new starter kits and adding information about the business registration going online and information about gross receipt taxes et cetera and we audit and fix links on the site and security updates and training manual of what we do to update the portal and i have been saying that technology shouldn't be the only thing that drives change. we also need to look at the process itself which is why in the last six months we had a great collaborative effort with the controller's office to map out the restaurant permit process and why did we choose restaurants? san francisco has the most in the nation and

$30 million in sales tax for the city. it creates 19,000 local jobs and 230 restaurants register each year and they face up to 24 individual permits and deal with many different state and federal and city departments and let's fix the process and add in the technology to make it even more efficient. next steps. portal streamlining once we did the mapping will move over into different sectors and implement all processes into a unified plan and recommend streamlining measurements between and within departments. we would also like to plan for the future integration of online and off line processes with the physical one-stop center as supervisor tang mentioned earlier. with technology we're working with the tax collector,

the assessor's office, county clerk to create a new functionality and integrate all of the forms with electronic and digital subjects as well as electronic payments and make recommendations to integrate city data bases. the portal maintenance continues and we hope to operationalize this maintenance and some of the projects that the team is consulting on is the mayor's housing prortal and with other commissions in the city and working with the creation of the public strategy. our ultimate goal is give san franciscans a single experience across city departments thereby making the government more responsive to citizens and bring government to the people by creating an exemplary service. the possibilitys are endless and as we put up the slide of the

supporters i would like to acknowledge the mayor's office and department of technology and other all the other departments for the collaborative effort. >> thank you for the effort. if you don't know jane worked in the office of small business and did a great job fusing working with the businesses that came through for help and assistance and bringing that to a wonderful online portal. if you haven't taken a look at it i recommend it and it's amazing and i couldn't believe it when i saw it and it was produced by government and i don't know if colleagues have any other questions. if not i will move on to the controller's office and we made strides and now the report will tell us about some of the challenges when people are receiving services in person. >> thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is ryan

hunter from the city performance unit of the controller office with our team and we have been working with the business portal team to map the process of opening a restaurant in san francisco so i will tell you about what we have been doing and what we found, what we're recommending. so this slide -- could we get the powerpoint? thank you. this slide has the journey map that the business portal team put together. really what we have been working on is trying to get into that infin itd loop and untangle that. could we see what is going on in and find ways to make it simpler? so we went through the process of opening a restaurant, find all of the permit processes relevant for a new owner so we mapped 22 restaurant processes across san francisco departments and three state and federal departments. to supplement the work we

interviewed local business owners, different department staff and talked to the acceleration team in new york city. we looked at permitting data from the treasurer and tax collector and a survey from business owners to ask them about the obstacles in the process. this is a look at the different departments that we worked with and mapped and the different areas so for each department we produced a map of that permitting process so this is a sample of one of those here and we really had a specific focus on what does this look like from the customer's perspective and what are the steps in the process for the customer and the back end processes that support that? so in this process you see the top row is always the customer and this particular one it's a lot of touch points for the customer. when we did that for all 22 of the processes we were able to put them together into an overall permit process map

of opening a restaurant and this was able to show us what do you need to do first? what are the permits you need to get before another permit? what's necessary to open your doors versus what can be done later? so what did we learn from all of our mapping? we made eight recommendations and two large groups. the first is about collaboration between departments so what we found was that often in a single department's internal process was relatively efficient and made sense, but those processes often crossed departments and there's not always good structure or good incentive for those departments to work together, and often customer is bounce friday one department to another with. >> >> little communication in between so the first set of recommendations is what can we do to help businesses work better together and departments

work better together and i will highlight a few of these. turn around time is key and when we asked departments how long does it take to get this permit or that permit it was usually a difficult question to answer and the first step in shortening the time span is having the information available and knowing how are we doing now and creating the structures to look at that and look at the turn around time. the second recommendation that we looked at was about how do we combine different permit processes together? we found that there were often groups of permits that shared some characteristics and we could bundle together, so for example often any person who is registering a new business usually also needs to register for business personal property assessment with the assessor's

office and often a fictitious name with the office and we looked at bundling those together and i will skip to number 5 which is about one stop shop and co-locating permits. we found there were so many different physical locations that one restaurant owner would need to visit to open a visit and second and townsend and mission and city hall or fox plaza and a lot of running around and exacerbated if the process is not clear and applicants don't know where to go next and an option was explore co-locating the permitting departments moving towards the one stop shop that several people have talked about. the second group of recommendations are about kind of a focus on the applicant so we found that the best departments thought about their role as not only being about enforcing compliance of the process but about helping the

applicants as customers, so we identified a number of permits that could be submitted online and sort of prioritized those. in general we found that if a permit was able to be submitted by mail that it could be submitted online and we produced a list of likely candidates for that, and we also found that it was often difficult to pay for permits. there were a number of departments that require something like a cashier's check or multiple payments for a single permit and when you multiply that across 22 departments it's onerous so we recommended that departments look at ways to streamline payments and have fewer payments for a single permit and to accept things like credit cards to make that payment process easier so i will leave it there but we are available for questions. >> thank you very much. and next i would like to bring up

regina from the office of small business. >> so thank you supervisor tang -- excuse me, chair farrell, supervisor tang and supervisor mar. so with this information that the controller's office has done through analyzing the permits with the business portal team we took a look at that information and thought all right what could we do with it and what's the best way to help our businesses move through that process? so with director rufo convening

different departments, the office of building inspection and department of public health and creating the small business accelerator team was formed and so i'm going to talk a bit about that as well. in the 2015-16 budget -- thank you supervisor tang for your leadership in establishing and creating the team. this will launch in the fall of 2015. we will be creating a client service manager that will be a part -- that would be the core component of the team and the team just to be clear will be comprised of representative simonson -- liaisons and working with the different departments to either resolve or get questions on how to facilitate a

particular business need. as presented to you there are roughly 230 restaurants that go through the permitting process each year, and the majority of these businesses are going to open one restaurant, maybe two restaurants within their lifetime, and so it's not within their interest to become experts in the permitting process. their core capacity is opening a restaurant, making food, delivering food and providing an excellent customer experience for their customers. the client service manager will own the business experience working with the different departments so starting with evaluating the business needs, taking a look at what will be the zoning requirements. will they need a conditional use? will there need to be a change of use?

what is the current space they're going into? will they need to did a complete build out? what is required for engaging with the office of building inspection? so they're reviewing the past permit applications with the individual business owner and working with the particular departments. they will be coordinating the services and helping to schedule inspections. by involving and having a case manager throughout the process the business owner will have an experienced partner. what we do find at the office of small business that most businesses and our small businesses really don't understand or know how to speak the language that we -- the city government language, so what does a conditional use process mean? what does a change of use process mean? so and what does the application process mean and why do i need to have -- you know, when i file with the department of public health for

my permit to operate that it needs to be routed through zoning, so interpreting all of that for the business owner is important and of course that will be one of the elements to help streamline the process in addition to taking a look at where we can improve the processes. the small business case manager will be co-located at the office of building inspection at 1660 mission street and while this is a position that is part of oewd what we do know is that not all businesses either touch point with the office of economic and workforce development and the invested neighborhood or with our office, the office of small business through the business assistance center, but the one key touch point they have to

touch is the office of building inspection when they go to open their business so it's very important to have this position co-located at the bpd bpd to ensure that -- office of building inspection and every restaurant that opens is able to engage with the client service manager. this will also ensure that we have the client service manager will have the opportunity to then have the access to all the key departments that are located at the dbi on the fifth floor which include the planning department, the public utilities department, dpw, fire, and -- dpw and the fire, so that way the client service manager will be able to engage with those departments if there's questions or needs or things not clear can do that on behalf of the client. this

will ensure that applications move swiftly so that the client service manager if something is bottlenecked will be able to engage with the department in a much more readily achievable fashion, and thus will save time and money for the business, but it will also -- we will begin to learn ways in which we can facilitate the process and the permitting which will also save us time and money as well. so we are working with a case management model so the permitting departments will designate a staff lead to sit on the business accelerator team. we will be including other -- all the departments that are involved in the permitting process to assist us with this. the client service manager is charged with convening the departments and leads and guiding the restaurants through

the entire process so the client service manager will have some authority to convene the departments and work with them and resolve issues, and they will be providing updates to the senior staff of the departments, the department heads, so that we can take this opportunity to learn our best practices and see where we can make improvements. the client service manager will also engage with the office of economic and workforce development, the office of small business, it is job squad and the small business development center. >> >> and touch point places that businesses engage with city agencies that are non regulatory city agencies but work closely with the golden gate student a restaurant association and we have the different groups working with us and mission economic development center and

make sure that those entities know that we have a client service manager for those engaging in the restaurant and food industry. there will be the single point of contact that will help provide increased accountability. the client service manager will start tracking the time that it takes -- the actual time it takes for a business to open in the different scenarios so from a full service high end restaurant to a very small take out service as an example. and i think the one important thing that will -- the timing of this that is taking place with the team coming on board in preparation for the one stop shop that is being developed at mission and south van ness we will have real live experience how the permit

process in real time is routed and what we can do to improve the customer experience and one stop permitting experience prior to opening what we call the project [inaudible] or the one stop location at mission and south van ness. i do want to thank all the departments that have been involved. as supervisor tang as talked about it. also the director that it's really with the departments engaged with the permitting process, working with the controller's office and working with jane kong and recognizing that this is a good means of helping our restaurants get open, so i too want to thank the department heads and especially todd r ruffo and the other

members who were really instrumental in forming the concept of the business accelerator team and determining the need that we need to have a case manager, so thank you. >> thank you very much to everyone for their presentations. and i'm actually going to do things differently because i know we have folks in the audience that would like to speak so before i launch into questions or comments i would like to see through the chair if we can open public comment. i know we have many businesses couldn't be here and they're busy running their shops and we have someone in the audience that runs a business in the neighborhood so i would like to therefore open up public comment first so i have a few speaker cards and come up if you like. [calling speaker names]

any microphone is fine. >> hi. my name is lauren crab. i own andy coffee town roasters in the sunset and katie's office asked me to talk about the experience with the planning department. we got the lease on our location in november of 2013 and it took us until -- oh no november 2012 and took us until march of 2014 to open. that is a year and a half of our lives building it out. a large portion of that was spent in the infinity loop of death i think it was called, and it was extremely frustrating and specifically going between the different departments, kind we felt bombarded by one of the

inspections after we had a preliminary inspection and then another guy came out and made us rebuild a bunch of stuff and it was a frustrating time and it's very good to hear that you guys are working to make it a little bit easier for people like myself, and yeah the online portal looks awesome. i'm kind of jealous that wasn't around when i was building out and i think that having the person at the planning department to help you -- help guide small business owners through the process is going to really help so i hope you continue to prioritize the projects and work on some some more. thank you. >> thank you very much for coming out. next speaker please. >> hi. samantha higgins, golden gate restaurant association. i want to thank the team and the controller's

office and supervisor tang for the leadership and everyone else that worked on it. i want to address the difficultly in the permitting process for restaurants as it's one of the most complicated processes to map out and understand and especially for small business owners as so many restaurants are. i wanted to mention the number of calls and questions we get on a daily basis from restaurants or people trying to open restaurants and particularly owners from other jurisdictions that are confused about the san francisco process and emphasize how important it is and streamlining the process would be for an industry as a whole. just looking through the report i want to suggest beginning with some of the easier things to tackle especially switching more applications to be done online and combining locations and i know we're working towards. linking critical permits to other permits would make a difference and referring

applicants to the planning department in the beginning of the process and i want to talk about the inspections and it could be difficult for businesses. one of the challenges which was brought up there is typically not one inspector assigned so restaurants or businesses will get different inspectors that tell them different things and can be confusing and lead to delays so if we could do that i think that would be helpful for restaurants is thank you everybody for the work on this and i look forward to continuing. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors jim lazarus san francisco chamber of commerce. thank you supervisor tang for your leadership on the issue and the departments involved. long over due. even looking at the portal and go online and look at the portal you wonder whether you take the next step to try to open a restaurant. it's a daunting list of permits, applications, and approvals that you have to go through

depending on what your business model is and where it's located. as i said this is long over due. if i look at los angeles, they have a restaurant and hospitality portal. they call it an express program in the city of los angeles. it's a multi-agency management network that does exactly what we're talking about doing here, and i think portals are great. the internet is great but having a real person through the small business commission staff and other departments working with dbi having one-on-one meetings and really helping assist the applicant through this very difficult process and it will never get that smooth and easy. in this city you won't get down to one internet page where you're able to click on buttons and send in the credit card check and get the permits. it's not going to happen that way and having real people help real applicants is ultimately the way

it will succeed and we appreciate the efforts and we will work with you to make it a success. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon supervisors. supervisor tang thank you for doing this work. it's greatly appreciated. [inaudible] and merchantace association in the mission district and invest in neighborhoods. we have been working with the merchants for the last 17 years on the corridor. some of the biggest issues we heard from the merchants is affordability of the permits and affordability of space and the permit process to open up a business and the process afterwards of maintaining the business around the permits so we do appreciate this work. we seen a lot of proves over the years the. -- improvements over the years. i think what is key is definitely having an individual that is able to guide the process with

a lot of these folks. one of the things that we dealt with is the language barrier which is huge and also the high-tech and low tech. i think we need to have that balance of both so i think this person will be able to do that. i think -- you know, the portal it's awesome and the team is well balanced and i think we need to move in that direction making sure that we cover a lot of different communities and abilities around tech. i think it's important. the one stop shop i think it's very good also. it's been a task for folks to get around for the different permits. also creating a to do list by restaurant type because there are different types of restaurant and fast food, self service, bars and full restaurants and identify the type of restaurant you want to open and then a list of tasks that you have to do in order to

be get them all done because a lot of people don't realize there are so many different types and not aware of one thing they missed and penalizeed in the future so creating that list would be great, and also what we have seen in the past with some they combine the permits on to one statement. if you're allowed to have an option of opting in or opting out and some people would rather pay across the years and others at one time so looking at also. we appreciate the work that you're doing and look forward to the conversation. thank you. >> thank you very much. are there any other members of the public who wish to comment on this hearing? okay. seeing none through the chair if we could close public comment. >> public is closed. [gavel] >> thank you very much to everyone that came out and like i mentioned we heard stories throughout the work as well, so one of the things that the

controllary office made a recommendation through the report is improve turn around time. departments must measure time and targets to drive change and monitor performance so i don't know if there is something to be answered by the controller's office or the other departments here but i want to know which departments -- how many of the city departments are having this as a measurement? because i think it's important to gauge from a customer experience standpoint how much time it takes for people to go through the process? in the report it says on average someone i think went through a process and took four months but we see cases someone went through and waited two years to do a full build out. >> yeah, we didn't find that i recall and my team can speak to this maybe any departments that could readily produce that information. there were some places where you could discern

part of it by digging deep through the data but it wasn't a top line item for any of the departments that we spoke with. >> okay. and second question is based on one of the recommendations as well is to link the low awareness permits and have them packaged together with the critical to open permits so applicants can apply for them simultaneously. there was an example pointed out about the treasure's office, the new business registration with the assessor's new business registration as well as the clerk if i -- fictitious registration and i am wondering if departments are open to how we might collaborate and package the permits together? >> i am from the office of the treasurer and we are looking in great interest how we can package all of the items into

the business registration. one of the challenges with working with the assessor's office the businesses have to do a form called a 571l which is catchy and for ensecured property taxes and that form is state mandated and we're not allowed to change it so we're working with the way that we share data with them so they can get notified of businesses that open that will need to fill out this form and transfer the relevant information over to them so it's a bit easier and then we're doing some advocacy with the state to see if we can carve out our own 571l or at least add the business account number to make it easier for businesses. >> great. thank you for informing us of some of the efforts and in particular about the weights and measures and including that as part of the health inspection process. i don't know if anyone is here

that can answer that. >> good afternoon. richard lee acting director of environmental health. weights and measures is part of our unit but i want to point one thing out is that the registration is not required before a restaurant opens, so just like also for the certified food manager training that is not required so those things can actually happen after a restaurant is open and it's not going to be needed before it's opened. in terms of the inspections -- in terms of the food inspectors doing the weight and measures inspections that's not going to be actually allowed because there is a requirement that you have to be certified to do those weights and measure inspections so we have weights and weights inspectors certified to do that. our food inspectors are not certified to do that but again it will not delay the approval of permits. >> okay. is there any way potentially they could -- i

understand one doesn't have to be done before opening a shop -- i guess a store most likely but the other one, the actual health inspection you need before opening and is there a way to package the inspection -- even if they're two different people and have them occur at the same time or create additional efficiencies in that way. >> we will have to look into it. we would have linkage between the weight and measures and others to make sure it's done but we have to look into that. >> okay thank you. one other recommendations had to do with referring customers to the planning department at the beginning of the process so i wanted to find out -- i don't know if it's through the planning department or someone else that encounters customers first. currently what is going on, maybe why aren't people referred to planning first? how is that happening? i know in

some cases customers know to go to planning first but i wanted a better understanding of that. >> i could make a brief comment about that and if any other department wants to chime in. what is behind this recommendation is that there are plenty of places that the process can be slowed down or become expensive the planning in particular if you're trying to start a business in an area not properly zoned there is not much often that you can do about it and sometimes business owners experience that obstacle down the road when opening a business when they sunk time and money into that and probably despite the best efforts of departments people will come into the process from a lot of angles and are the ways to route people toward the planning department early on no matter where they come in the process? >> okay. and then i don't

know if planning wants to chime in. >> sure. i'm the assistant director of planning. as ryan mentioned we're not always in control of when people reach out to us but when they do reach out to us we have dedicated staff that staff the public counter as well as other planners that cycle through and all of the planners when we encounter folks thinking of opening a business and we tell them don't put money down on a lease or things of that nature until we're confident it can be permitted and try to walk them through the variables and oftentimes we get folks interested in opening a restaurant in a neighborhood but not have addresses in mind and in a neighborhood there could be different zoning districts and that could affect that. we try to work with them to articulate that message and every property

has different rules in san francisco and once we zone in on a address we can steer them to locations where there is an easier path to open the business. we have a preliminary zoning form that i know other agencies use. we will have folks come in with the form filled out and a way to start the conversation and ask the right key questions to give them right information, and we do have one of our small business liaisons is at the public counter and a really good point person working with the new acceleration team quite a bit. a couple of other points. efforts that the planning department has launched i would say in the last six months to a year to help particularly expedite small businesses, not 100% restaurants, but small businesses in general as well as small permits. we have

restructured our staff who are working on what we call -- they're the inner agency referrals and from the health department and the entertainment commission and the alcohol beverage control, police department, those types of referrals. we restructured that so there is a little more oversight and coordination and we have performance measures in place for the turn around time on the zoning referrals. our objective is usually turn them around within 30 days. i ran a query of the last six months and we're beating that measure and turning it around in 15 days and volume of 830 referrals in the past six months so we focused on that. the other we created a small projects team last december to help deal with the influx of small projects, residential and commercial and we have one dedicated person on the team and processing the commercial permits so anything that doesn't need a public hearing and just needs the

notification we are expediting it through that team and we have seen some significant improvements through that. >> thank you. thank you for highlighting the changes that were made and i like working with planning on the issues and something that we hear from the small business community and sure you can make it through a department quickly and maybe planning went quickly and go to another department and there is another backlog that is separate there, so for example i know we have fire department here, dbi, so i would like to bring them up as well if they're here in the audience today, but again we have first hand experience where we got them quickly through other departments so i think that the new person, the client service manager that will be hired soon i hope will help with that facilitation of the process through the multiple departments but from the fire department's perspective if you could talk about your backlog. how is it

that you treat the businesses that you have available? so for example i know that planning department you're making the effort to really move through the cue of businesses that don't have to go through a public hearing or smaller nature but does fire have a similar structure or how does that work? >> good morning supervisors. ron thomas assistant director at the office of building inspection. our colleagues from the fire department have just arrived. >> [inaudible] >> hi good afternoon. i have talked with all my inspectors how we can try to speed up the process of permitting the restaurant business and for the fire department when we look at a restaurant we look at two different occupancies, a b occupancy for less than 49 people and a2 for more than 49 people. that's 50 and above. one of the biggest problem that we find out with business owner

is they go and sign a lease. they put in a lot of money invest in the business and find out that the business they want to run in the building it's not approved for let's a a2 so that means they can't run a business of 50 or more people and have to go through a change of use and that process is pretty long because it has to go through planning and building department if i understand and part of being a2 there are life safety requirements depending how much people are in there. if you have more than 99 people you need sprinklers and more than 199 you need two exists and more than 299 you need a fire alarm system and one of the permits that takes a long time to approve is the people who signed up to rent these spaces are not aware of all the changes they have to do upgrade the business to be code compliant so at the

front desk when someone says i want to start a business in san francisco and we ask them the address and we help them with the research and if we can't find anything supporting them we then ask them to check building department records and i agree with planning up here and before a business starts anything, dumps money into anything and do investment they should find out if the activities they want will be approved in that space. i think that would shorten it a lot and most of the turn around time -- let's say they're established and just a change in ownership of the moment hey say i'm the new owner and we're out there next week and if nothing needs to be maintained or approved we send them straight to the tax corrector and that's the first hurdle the fire department faces and the second

one is we send the paperwork to the tax collector and it's bounced back and says the location is not registered and then we have to call up the business owner and try to explain explain to them and although you have a business certificate to operate in san francisco you didn't find a place when you applied because they don't have the location attached to the certificate so now they have to update that and i have to wait for that before i send the paperwork again and please issue a license so the staff have looked into those two problem exercise if we can get. >> >> those problems resolved working with the department i think with the fire department the process will be much faster. >> thank you for sharing the challenge with us and it's not a linear process along the departments and that makes it more difficult. in terms of the issues that you brought up from planning's perspective when people are for example coming to

you first potentially or actually any other juncture is there some collaboration between the fire department for example to let them know that you should check and you could meet their requirements even before beginning? >> there is typically not a lot of coordination and our code is complicated enough to stay on top and we're not well versed on the other codes and 49 is a trigger for them and not united states since the code simplifications efforts happened and we suggest anytime they're opening a business and a first time person doing this we recommend they go to the office of building inspection and ask answer questions and even if we don't know what the trigger point is we refer them in advance of finishing out their day at 1660. >> okay. i am glad you're all

in the same room and talk with each other and hopefully help with the process moving forward and dbi -- i know folks have spoken about multiple inspections and it might not be just dbi and fire and other things so your perspectives. are there ways that your department can make that process a little easier for people especially if they have to rebuild things or what not? >> starting a new business that is specifically a restaurant we can see already through the control's analysis and presentation it's complicated and daunting task for anyone that wants to take on that endeavor. a small part of it, even though it's a very important part, is the actual construction side of it, but as a prelude to that is the permit process itself. we have begun discussion on the executive team and how we can plan forward and

we have looked at issues how we can deal with immediately within the environment that we control including our website, creating a faq specific to restaurants and full chart of the permit process itself. currently i am the point person for this effort. also for for project chess which is the new building with the new permit center. oftentimes now is termed as the one stop shop. this discussion needs to be more extensive on how we accomplish this goal. it's a very broad goal in one sense to execute it and have staffing from various agencies is something that needs to continue discussion. we do have a core now at the city permit

center at 1660 mission street primarily at the first floor but finishing up on the fifth floor and in a way a one stop service if you have your other ancillary permits and outside of construction type permits in hand and under your own control. we can help definitely with referrals to other departments such as san francisco department of public health and we do make that effort and we try to educate our staff to do that in in the point to point contact on the fifth floor. however when we get to that point it's the design professional we're faced with and not necessarily the owner of the project so we maybe able to fix and address the nuts and bolts issue and provide information about informations in the future once the permit has been approved, but the owner not being present and not necessarily wanting to get into

the technical issues of getting a permit maybe engaged in the future and have more hands on approach with this effort that we're putting together with a number of city agencies, so talking about the multiple inspections that's really coming down to the ability of the contractor, the subcontractor, maybe the project manager if they have one, and other people engaged and involved in the inspection side of it. that one takes on a very different number of individuals who need to be engaged that weren't necessarily engaged on the front end getting the permit itself, so we can separate the two tasks, big tasks, one to get the permit up front, have the permit issued to actually starts the construction side of it. hand off but continue coordination with the staff that's -- professionals

are engaged in constructing the site. i will through our efforts of coordination in our department we have looked at and discussed how we can specific to restaurants but also small businesses in general see how we could have a better interdivisional communication to see that we don't have at the end of a project when it really becomes acutely sensitive to time to the beginning of the payment of rent, things of that nature, and people are trying to at least get the temporary certificate of occupancy and things fall through the crack and prevented from having that opportunity to start in a timely manner or around the time they need to start their business. we're familiar with the fact there is a training period for any restaurant that takes anywhere from one week to upwards to two, three weeks. we have been witness to that process as well, so we know that

even before you have your first customer walk through the door there's a lot of work to be done and more than just getting your certificate of occupancy or temporary one to operate so within our department a more holistic look at the process, discussion between the interdivisional agencies, towards inspection and any subsequent revisions during the course of construction that are needed to be approved in a timely manner we will continue to look at that and engage our own staff and we started that recently and bring in staff and expand it with more staff and both in the inspection and the plan approval side so we can focus on this and make it better, more efficient, and usable customer friendly process. >> all right. thank you. i think that's a great segue to something that i'm going to make a request of from some of the departments here. i realize we can't solve all of the problems

in this hearing and there is much more work to be done, so one of the things i would like to ask of all of the departments and planning, dbi, fire, tax assessor's office and work with jane kong and the staff and further the small business portal so in the next phase we can take applications on-line and take payments and we need the coordination of all of you to bring the portal to a better place of people. secondly i would like to request that the following departments conduct an internal assessment. as the last gentleman there needs to be an internal look how you do your work and some of the challenges you face so i would like to make a formal request so in six

months that all of of the departments conduct a internal assessment of your own processes and keeping in mind with the interactions with other departments that you may interface with and receive a report to the board of supervisors by january 31 and then from there take that information and see what next steps need to be taken given the internal review so some of the things that i hope you think about is eliminating burdens for internal staff and make the processes more efficient. how do you eliminate hurdles for the applicants, the customers we're working with? and identify the needs that your department may need to actually achieve these improved efficiencies? so potentially it's funding, other resources. please think about that as well and lastly if you can in your internal review think about the eight recommendations that were made

through this controller's office report. i think they're very broad yet easy to tackle so i would like to you take the recommendations and see how your department can respond to that so with that colleagues i want to thank you for your time and everyone for being here and the ongoing work and helping the small businesses in san francisco. as we know they're incredibly important to the fabric of our city and neighborhoods so i also want to thank the small businesses that are in san francisco who have dared to open up shop here and hopefully in the future it will be easier if you want to expand or grow your businesses so with that colleagues i don't know if you have questions or comments but i want to thank you for your time and with that look forward to the upcoming information that you will provide to us so with they will make a motion to file the hearing. >> okay. thank you supervisor tang has made a motion and i want to thank you for this

hearing and all of the department heads and staff that came hear. ms. kong it's good to see you again. i remember working on the portal with you and the first month while on the board of supervisors and thanks for the leadership and everyone that makes that happen and means a ton to us but the broader san francisco community so the work is not unnoticed and thank you for your work and for every department here so with that we have a motion by supervisor tang and take that without objection. madam clerk do we have any other business in front of us? >> there is no further business. >> okay. we are adjourned. [gavel]

(clapping.) >> good afternoon, everyone good morning; right? good morning, everyone (laughter) thanks everybody for coming out it is not everyday that we get to no matter a new muni line let

along a rail line on which the historic streetcars will be operating we couldn't be more excited to be out here we have a lot of folks without whom we wounded be here so a special day for muni and special day in the history of transit a great day for the city i'll start by saying a lot of people have to work hard for a long time to make something like that happen but at the top of the lard is the mayor from the time he took office and really the decades in the city supporting infrastructure in supporting good capital planning the kinds of things to have p in place to get to a point like this the mayor is a supporter and couple of years ago we convened a task force that land to a

$500 million bond that was approved last year this week he signed the city budget among many others great things that is bring to the city included service increase which the t line is a part this is the kind of leadership we need to bring the kind of transit service to the city to have it grow in the future please carry on conversations out in the hallway. please join me in welcoming our mayor, mayor ed lee >> (clapping). >> good morning as well thanks east side for our leadership if i can thank you you and the commissioners of the sf transportation agency and our county transportation authority working together with the city and the board of supervisors and really glad to be here today with supervisor christensen, supervisor scott wiener and supervisor jane kim joining us

we're dedicated to improving expanding our public transportation it the best example i god got to ride on the newest edition to the streetcars and ike thank you, again rick from the historic streetcars history he provided that connection we were talking about dolores park all the mayors if feinstein on to that have really led the effort i know that from me, me to art to senator feinstein so many people wanted to link the entire embarcadero well, this morning i'm here to dispel rumors the e line is to be the ed line it is the embarcadero and f is not the fine line but all the alphabet but there are names here i want

to say i know senator wanted to be here and representatives from feinstein and boshgs that have begun fantastic not so many other things that helped our city to be successful i wanted to ride that with senator feinstein i know this is in her heart to get this done she's a great leader in the past and the cable cars and all alternative things that hopefully rick will have a chance to talk about the history this is a remarkable day to exemplify an additional 10 percent of services means in one part we've got extensions of line and in other be neighborhoods of the city but for this embarcadero to have this e line go all the way if at&t park to fisherman's wharf and have an open air approach to

it and then have muni drivers like robert parks and others working for muni since 1997 i think enjoying every year to serve the popping public a whole system mr. their pcos or police department or management or commissioners working with the federal commissioners and board of supervisors and state and local agencies working to improve that's why we have confidence that our muni can have a one billion dollars operation that really cares about getting people around this desire city we can manage and certainly manage all the things to get people around the visitors and people working here friends and families safely and efficiently through the rest of the city this is one of the most enjoyable rides both cars are

historic that car comes from england i won't mess with all the details but i'll say that we say an uncovered vehicle that has a lot of history to it riding along the embarcadero it is fun it is exhilarating and another kind of cable car experience in san francisco and i love the history of the city i'll work and continue to work to make sure those things can happen and that services will increase that we reduce congestion and work hard on that by the way, make sure that vision zero is all part of everything we do this $500 million bond our public passed we're working very hard attorney general make sure those vision zero projects are done and i know that muni is in the lead and other agencies public works and everyone else has to work with high levels but

let's celebrate this new service and line let's link to the history of the car and the fun but all the appreciation that i have thought marries and the leaders and confirmations before us and the supervisors all working together to make sure that is part of the great public transportation system we want to have in our great city making history and celebrating that past but moving forward as the coincide phrase from muni it is all about forward muni how we serve more of the public the pride in the system for everybody works with each other congratulations sfmta and congratulations county transportation thank you, everybody for being here hope you get a ride on this as much as you can thank you (clapping.) >> thank you, mr. mayor

certainly we wouldn't be here without our leadership the leadership at city hall extends to the second floor the board of supervisors has continued to provide the policy and funding leadership to support things like bringing the e like to fruition but the mayor made reference this is a long-standing demand for the people that ring the bell for the embarcadero for this kind of services this provides the connectivity from the caltrans to the ball park all the way up to pier 39 and fisherman's wharf and the northern part of the bayer the supervisors that represent the policies are are here and instead voices for better transportation in san francisco and better transportation service i was called into a meeting three or four years and the institutional

leaders from the corridor demand or expressing the demand for this kind of services and the grassroots leadership that manifest in the supervisors it represents that is part of why we're here first representing the northern half of the e line i want to bring up someone before they got into office was an advocate for the transportation for the northeast part of the san francisco she's been in office and focused among things on transportation issues and saving transportation so ms. marcason district 3 julie christensen (clapping) >> good morning my first thanks are to rick and bruce and the leaders and the volunteers of the market street railroad i was out the advocacy

it is a 20-year project so congratulation to the market street rail way determined effort to make that happen i'm perspective to mayor ed lee and the volkswagen of leaders for dianne feinstein for supporting this crazy idea and tilly chang and others that made that happen i this is a great thing for the city this is going to be a lot fun riding along the waterfront i want to focus an district 3 my district includes some of the density neighborhood in the united states we have a typography a roll call top great most of my constituents don't own cars we're trying to improve the public transportation for district 3 i'm thrilled that soon our district will have the first subway in san francisco

and the first rapid transit in san francisco and i'm delighted to welcome the e line as charming and fun for my constituents this is serious business not only do we have those are o those dense neighborhood but welcomes tens of thousands of shoppers to union square tourist that are visiting fisherman's wharf and chinatown and other places in the district they need to get around and this transportation on the east side is virtually important not only to get people back and forth but to make sure our city runs smoothly we're excited about f this edition in service i've been quoting from of the follower leader of bothering talk the market is a great city not one poor can bribe but when rich people takes massive transit that puts on and

on us on that thank you. >> thank you supervisor christensen and representing the southern end of the e line is supervisor jane kim that's been as most folks know one the leading voices that was behind vision zero to san francisco and vision zero being our goal to eliminate traffic faults by 2024 but representing the folks that have among the lottery levels of car ownership and transit ridership the highest but a voice to improve leadership to pushing up to engage the east side of her district and to think extend and approve transit district for the east side including the. rightone: lynn line please join me in welcoming jane kim. >> thank you. i was going to

that supervisor christensen and i have some things in common absorbing 60 percent of the residential construction in san francisco taking place be here for years your residents have been asking for more public transit lines to make sure we have to the infrastructure to make sure our neighborhood is connected to others i want to recognize our residents that have for years been advocating the chair bruce he couldn't be here he he is going to jury duty heart broken and co-authored from the cracking and dr. many me, me for the foundation that push for the e line to make sure it happened and it makes me proud we're delivering on that today director reiskin not often you have a new line our district has two the 55 which is connecting

the mission neighborhood and bart to mission bay along with the ucsf medical campus and the average office building and the e line it connects fisherman's wharf to the bart and caltrain station transit is critically important as we grow we know that everyone can't continue to drive we have to make our streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists but make sure we have option for the residents not only to get to the do you only core but we're also crisscrossing and connecting neighborhoods this is a huge effort and it is nice to not just talk about is it or promise it but say we're going to be openly it today congratulations to the market street roadway and sfmta and the mayor's office and great to have a line it connects into districts thank you supervisor

christensen. >> thank you, supervisor kim as many of you know the board of supervisors also sits as the trpgs transportation authority the coming transportation authority and i wanted to acknowledge the executive director tilly chang and the da is currently chaired if i supervisor wiener it sits on the metropolitan adrenalin transportation commission a strong voice for the transportation particularly looking at san francisco's needs but locally has been one of the stropth voices for transportation for the advocacy in 2011 for the streets respond up until last year supporting both the geobut bringing prop b that increased the general fund that goes to muni wouldn't have been there without his leadership been a strong

supporter of systems constructive critic i rides it everyday and like us he experiences both the exchanges but seize the opportunities please join me in welcoming from district 8 supervisor and chairman of the transportation authority scott wiener. >> (clapping.) thank you, ed and my district is not including the e like line but the end of the f line one integrated system for the streetcars sometimes in san francisco we have this tension between the city's past and historic where we are moving into the future the e line really in my mind is a perfect blend of the fast and the future it is wonderful to be able to preserve and use those wonderful historic streetcars i want to give all the creditor it in the

word to the market street railway and others for saving those streetcars and saving this system along with the cable cars to make sure as the city changes and grows we don't just jet son some of the treasurers we have as a city but this line is not just about cherishing the past it is b also about moving us to the future as a city we good and talking about the impacts on housing and the costs of housing but the congestion in the city and the wear and tear and strain on our public transportation system as we good by 10 thousand people a year we've not been focusing on enough we're growing in this part of town and need to have more and more more and more parts of city that are connected by transit and particularly the mission bay area supervisor kim

has mentioned is an area that is supervisor breed and didn't have nearly enough transit the fact we have those tracks in the ground and vehicles and have this line and we're not making the best was was a shame to activate this entire ear and utility those vehicles to connect noib to the northern neighborhoods is just tremendous it is only the beginning i know we have more and more transcript h transit systems and the voters have been clearing about the sfaiks to eveningly passing the muni bond last year and passing unanimously the voters get it and city hall gets it we're going to keep doing this i want to note our county transportation authority was administered through the statistics as invested

$19 million in historic strrts that is a team effort so congratulations to everyone and particularly congratulations to the residents and everyone else who will by the people from this service thank you (clapping.) >> thank you, supervisor wiener and the rest of the board of supervisors it really is a team effort we couldn't have done it without you a little bit closer to the ground in order to make the streetcars available and in order to be able to find the the resources to be able to expand the services to open the line there are a lot of tough decisions in terms of the overall mta budget in terms of of the execution of our strategy plans they're made by the board of directors we're governed by a 7 member board the folks that are appointed empty the mayor

serve would the compensation but we've been very lucky over at least certainly from my tenure in having great leadership with the board of directors it is with great pleasure i welcome up the chair and vice chair please join me in welcoming tom nolan and concerning. >> thank you, mr. mayor the board of supervisors is happy to be here on behavior the board of directors we're numerously proud 7 thousand people move around the city that is a wonderful thing i want to mention two people one is not here i never think of historic vengeance without thinking of cam beach who died several years ago and also i wanted to say ed reiskin we're so fortunate to

have a man of his dedication and lots of great things are happening thank you vice chair. (clapping.) >> year and a half i think the chairman said it all i will echo nothing in the city happens by the result of one person's actions or organizations this one example i look forward to riding the e line it was some of the most fun i've had in san francisco thank you (clapping.) >> thank you. the political leadership behind muni and behind the e line expands far and wide the mayor made reference to senator boxers and senator feinstein was one the chief architect and part of what makes that possible we're joined could i by formerly supervisor and board president supervisor

david chiu staff and justin a muni alumni want to acknowledge him and assembly member the support we get increasing a recent hundred and $40 million cap & trade is how we're continuing to grow service in san francisco we've heard from a lot of the folks in government but without question next to dianne feinstein there was no person who is as both peppering and professionally responsible for us being here today than rick this is a passion of his both in his professional time and a lot on his own times over decades that is part why we're here today please join me in welcoming the president of the market street railway association rick (clapping.)

>> well, we know this is a team sport in fact, san francisco is a team sport and i could spend all day talking about everyone that is involved in the activity its all true you don't do anything alone in this city and the listener of the mayor and ed reiskin and tom nolan and cheryl brinkman and sfmta are important for the betterment of the transportation system i want to acknowledge the market street raul railway past and present your surrounded by them those folks have given thousands and thousands of hours of volunteer time over decades to help make what you see here happen if you sit in this spotlight thirty years ago we

have had been directly under a double freeway the entire waterfront you know had trithsz away from it's mairment history but didn't know what that was going to be a few people had the vision to see a world-class waterfront i want to acknowledge one in particular he can't be here he passed away one year and one day ago doug right that served mayor feinstein and served mayor agnos as the deputy mayor for transformation tra transportation that is part of douglas lying lillian widow i hope you'll give her a round of applause also anothers important few minutes is me, me the president of the

delance project she got those tracks put in to connect the f line up there what the n and t line to the south the e line couldn't have taken place if it wouldn't have gotten done she lobbied city hall she can't be here but i'd like a hand for me, me delany's street is a gift to our city the original vision so for the e line that mayor feinstein and doug started was to go to fisherman's wharf and continue to for the mason the e line has been a tragedy dream for a looked at and connected the parkland and provides walking and bicycle successful assess

and serve the nonprofits organization that were at for the mason the past director of mason alex it is here a guiding light in retrofits this idea along with the fisherman's wharf organization they're the who helped to get the national park to do an environmental impact report not paid for by the city by the fed's with help from then speaker peelings office we're ready to engineer and fund that as soon as we get through the remaining hurdle to senator feinstein has pledged her hope we hope the city family makes that a reality the effort mason makes that longer and astrologer

when she was mayor dianne feinstein support made the first streetcar possible in the 1980s i was in her office as a wet behind the easier volunteer and said is this not a mayor we can do this. >> she would i'll do it but i don't want to see new junk she had high standards he knew that every street corner had to be beautiful and reflected well, in the city she loved to see the original muni streetcars in fact, the one that the mayor piloted for the mayors coincidental they still run and she loved the streetcars from around the world and a can new from back in the 1980s and

she loved to drive that car and she actually grove it several times well, today, besides openly the e line we're to double our procure mark street railway has been from england we depended upon r donated it from muni we started the first official run with passengers and has it's original sign reading the pleasure beach we don't have a pleasure beach but have a promenade and it is embarcadero so muni shop workers and i'll shout out to lee and mike ellis and the other carl johnson retarded if muni did a great job restoring this car (clapping.) we can't do this without our

city workers ballot wouldn't have sailed our way excepts for two generous by michael thorstein who under wrote the costs of the car michael put your hand up please (clapping.) and to get it here we got a lot of help from ed ford explicit represented by cassandra (clapping) >> i bet you didn't know that fedex ships streetcars ear thankful to both of them and everyone associated with the boat and the e line thank you all so have much (clapping.) >> thanks rick and finally as i said before there was a strong community demand for the

advocacy to get service on to the embarcadero so i want to invite up a couple of community leaders one from the north side and south side starting with john a third generation fisherman's wharf guy and the president of the festers benefits district please join me in welcoming in welcoming john (clapping.) >> thank you, ed also like to thank ed and supervisor christensen, formally assemblyman david chiu and denying for helping to make it possible the fisherman's wharf association is happy for the e line service to begin my family has been a part of the fisherman's wharf for a a long time and watched the waterfront transform back then the embarcadero was beginning it's

transition to the incredible use any questions of the uses today back then the what if was an island between the maritime and the embarcadero and fort massachusetts so that to the west west people like to use the cable cars but the locals used their cars today, the wharf is more important than ever we we've got the moratorium and the cruise ship and at&t park just to name a few automobiles can't handle the demand we rely on the f line it is transforming travel we thank senator feinstein for her lunar new year. >> thank you to her for connecting the designations and taking the pursue off the

embarcadero and thank you to the sfmta for making that a reality and looking forward to the full 7 day service we urge the city and national park service to move forward for fort mason our past leader was responsible for reviving the plan through the historic tunnel and saw the exhibitions were a natural fit with our restaurants and attractions we needed that extension soovrn and bend to having attractive streetcars to the jerry dell square and the hiding and the muni pier and fort mason we hope you'll all join in supporting it. >> thank you. >> thanks john and representing the southern end we're pleased

to be joined by katie the president of the rincon hill mission bay association she's been a unifying voice in government and other organizations to improve the quality of life many evenings down pier 40 where the group has it's meetings and she's a great advocate and critic when need to be but a great partner in improving things in that part of town please join me in welcoming. >> good morning neighbors i see a lot of the familiar faces i'm so excited to be here on behalf of the rincon hill association welcome to the e line finally we've been advocating for the e line for a number of years? a tree special day for us who live

here thank you, mayor ed lee and director reiskin and rick and bruce of market street railway our eastern neighborhoods if you're not familiar going set we're the most dynamic part of the city we're adding residents and businesses every single day but the option in transportation have not kept pace we're happy to have the e line but now, now we need to look at the future and make sure that the e line gets extended to fort mason and the dog patch thank you. >> (clapping) >> well thank you. i want to close by anglo the many people within the sfmta who have been working not only to make this event and day happen but the e line up and happening john

halley our transit dork and his staff lee and julie and others our communication director candice sue who is responsible and thank you to the riders that know how to use the e line and we're joined by our rail director the difficult task of getting people from safety and a lot of folks working together to make that happen so thanks everybody 10:00 a.m. tomorrow we'll start our weekend 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. if this point forward and next year extending 7 day service so we'll really excited to be at this milestone and thanks everyone to be coming out we'll cut a ribbon and service starts tomorrow

morning thank you. >> also want to acknowledge one last time our board chair bruce is serving the city on jury duty it is all for him he played a huge we'll role we all appreciate it. >> hold this with one hand 1, 2, 3. >> all right. (whistle blows)px.

>> and this place did not look like this this is unbelievable and it is the jewel of the tenderloin thank you, mr. mayor for making it so and boys and girls club over there and other entities and the big missing piece a kid's we're missing with only trophy we have to yeah oh, at the hall of fame without further and i do let me introduce the mayor of san francisco mayor ed lee. >> thank you. well it's fun to

be here with the champion of tenderloin and the police station as well as the wonderful kids out here happy summerhouse life without school (laughter) well, i'm glad to be here joining you on to national night out we're doing that all over the city you'll be up in another place greeting the kids it is a night where we have a sized family kids coming out to really participated in 234ir playground and we have rec and park staff and we can neighborhood staff here we've got people running important office we have the united way and social services, we have community people most importantly the residents of the tenderloin who deferred this world-class particular to play in and have fun to be healthy and they enter in

between with the rec and park volunteers tonight our social services provided up, up would the sport to make sure our neighborhoods are strong many say what national night out does i'm glad to be with the chief to make sure everybody is safe we have a couple of things in front of us chief what are the things for those of you who have yet to catch up those are the san francisco giants world series trophies so later on everybody that has cameras can take a picture of yourselves i have one with my business cards i give it to other marries and say what have you got in the way we celebrate the giants have been be us a great fund that helps to penetrate all the communities

i'm happy they lent you will say here for more fun and a lot of great shoppers i want to give a note of appreciation for everyone that provides food and refreshment where we happen we have a new company that opened up their ice cream that is the human try if you've been to the ferry building you've lined up with many thousands of other people and they tent are donating ice cream for the kids how about that have a happy nationals night out and enjoy our communities, enjoy the relationships, get to know each other this is a time we ought to be knowing each other by our first names in the parked and streets this is part of was this the community is all about glad to be here celebrating thank

you. (clapping.) >> your new champion trashing i'm handing it off and what more can i say we have lots food and ice cream and candy corn kids sugar up and playing music it might be a little bit of dancing enjoy the night >> hi today we have a special edition of building san francisco, stay safe, what we are going to be talking about san francisco's earth quakes, what you can do before an

earthquake in your home, to be ready and after an earthquake to make sure that you are comfortable staying at home, while the city recovers. ♪ >> the next episode of stay safe, we have alicia johnson from san francisco's department of emergency management. hi, alicia thanks to coming >> it is a pleasure to be here with you. >> i wonder if you could tell us what you think people can do to get ready for what we know is a coming earthquake in san francisco. >> well, one of the most things that people can do is to make sure that you have a plan to communicate with people who live both in and out of state. having an out of state contact, to call, text or post on your social network is really important and being able to know how you are going to communicate with your friends, and family who live near you, where you might meet them if

your home is uninhab hitable. >> how long do you think that it will be before things are restored to normal in san francisco. >> it depends on the severity of the earthquake, we say to provide for 72 hours tha, is three days, and it helps to know that you might be without services for up to a week or more, depending on how heavy the shaking is and how many after shocks we have. >> what kind of neighborhood and community involvement might you want to have before an earthquake to make sure that you are going to able to have the support that you need. >> it is important to have a good relationship with your neighbors and your community. go to those community events, shop at local businesses, have a reciprocal relationship with them so that you know how to take care of yourself and who you can rely on and who can take care of you. it is important to have a battery-operated radio in your home so that you can keep track of what is happening in the

community around and how you can communicate with other people. >> one of the things that seems important is to have access to your important documents. >> yes, it is important to have copies of those and also stored them remotely. so a title to a home, a passport, a driver's license, any type of medical records that you need need, back those up or put them on a remote drive or store them on the cloud, the same is true with any vital information on your computer. back that up and have that on a cloud in case your hard drive does not work any more. >> in your home you should be prepared as well. >> absolutely. >> let's take a look at the kinds of things that you might want to have in your home. >> we have no water, what are we going to do about water? >> it is important for have extra water in your house, you want to have bottled water or a five gallon container of water able to use on a regular basis, both for bathing and cooking as

well as for drinking. >> we have this big container and also in people's homes they have a hot water heater. >> absolutely, if you clean your hot water heater out regularly you can use that for showering, drinking and bathing as well >> what other things do people need to have aren't their home. >> it is important to have extra every day items buy a couple extra cans of can food that you can eat without any preparation. >> here is a giant can of green giant canned corn. and this, a manual can opener, your electric can opener will not be working not only to have one but to know where to find it in your kitchen. >> yes. >> so in addition to canned goods, we are going to have fresh food and you have to preserve that and i know that we have an ice chest. >> having an ice chest on hand is really important because your refrigerator will not be working right away. it is important to have somebody else that can store cold foods so something that you might be able to take with

you if you have to leave your home. >> and here, this is my very own personal emergency supply box for my house. >> i hope that you have an alternative one at home. >> oh, i forgot. >> and in this is really important, you should have flashlights that have batteries, fresh batteries or hand crank flashlight. >> i have them right here. >> good. excellent. that is great. additionally, you are going to want to have candles a whistle, possibly a compass as well. markers if you want to label things if you need to, to people that you are safe in your home or that you have left your home. >> i am okay and i will meet you at... >> exactly. exactly. water proof matches are a great thing to have as well. >> we have matches here. and my spare glasses. >> and your spare glasses. >> if you have medication, you should keep it with you or have

access to it. if it needs to be refrigerated make sure that it is in your ice box. >> inside, just to point out for you, we have spare batteries. >> very important. >> we have a little first aid kit. >> and lots of different kinds of batteries. and another spare flashlight. >> so, alicia what else can we do to prepare our homes for an earthquake so we don't have damage? >> one of the most important things that you can do is to secure your valuable and breakable items. make sure that your tv is strapped down to your entertainment cabinet or wall so it does not move. also important is to make sure that your book case is secure to the wall so that it does not fall over and your valuable and breakables do not break on the ground. becoming prepared is not that difficult. taking care of your home, making sure that you have a few extra every-day items on hand helps to make the difference. >> that contributes dramatically to the way that the city as a whole can recover. >> absolutely. >> if you are able to control

your own environment and house and recovery and your neighbors are doing the same the city as a whole will be a more resilient city. >> we are all proud of living in san francisco and being prepared helps us stay here. >> so, thank you so much for joining us today, alicia, i appreciate it. >> absolutely, it is my pleasure. >> and thank you for joining us on another edition of building

they teend interfere with the equipment in the room and can we please rise for the pledge of allegiance? >> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> i would like tacall roll call. >> thank you inspector. >> president loftus, here. vice president turman is excued. commissioner marshall,