combined, i think, can help us achieve a pretty transparent prioritization index for how we make choices on what to tackle first. >> president buell: public comment. >> richard? >> thank you for your presentation. i stand corrected what i said in the committee part on the equity and of seniors, and had something to do with what i thought would be where they used to be the shotgun club and fishing rod club, but there is another point i want to bring up. of the west south lake, i don't know, it sounds confusing, it's actually on the east side of the south lake where the work is happening, so it's not the west

side. on the east side of the south lake, which is a large lake there, so when i look at that, and i see equity, i thought why would seniors lose out on that much more funding for equity of seniors? that is not of the sites noted on different calendars of equity that placed out there, i thought it would be more in trails, roadways when i brought in the ada accessible to the south lake and the ada accessible to the north lake. where now they're doing work on the landing dock. supportive lines that don't get in the way of boats. so equities, i don't know what the total cost would be, but if there is a total cost for

seniors and people who are of such age that the park is going to try to give up equity and noted that you have seniors you don't have, maybe you have kane of wheelchair. so -- cane or wheelchair. if we have more accessible places, i thought we should get the funding where it's needed, a different source. so like where you have a different parks, like it's about 25th avenue and the golden gate bridge side of the park, over there you have a lot of russians and all the different other places, chinatown and the mission, there are equity places. if you use the access to a facility as -- total amount of funding, it wouldn't be very much to develop programs, so i

just looking out for a few of us seniors and hope we can rectify that through mr. phillip ginzberg. >> is there anybody else who would like to make public comment on the operational plan? >> yes, whenever i get a chance to speak anywhere at city hall, i'm going to take the opportunity and try to tell you all, because i done seen it all. i seen -- operations, stick to the script, ace. i'm going to be here when there is public comment and i've been informed, i say the right things, maybe at the wrong time, and it takes all the energy out of you going against the grain. you may say something that is real good, but i mess up the whole script. i've been doing that for years. and it's hard because i got passion. you know, i'm 62, i'm just like all the rest of you, i look a little younger, but i seen it and been through it. i had to go through it to get to

it. people of color, i got to go through more than most of you all. i'm no preacher, no teacher, but i know god wouldn't lead me, i'd be gone. i ain't got no money, no home. all i got is morale, i got a moral obligation. my family is across the bay. my daughters, they're probably feeling good, they have kids and they have kids. but papa still here in the city by the bay, trying to get these people to hear what i got to say. when i learn to do that, i got people -- queen bee, route 200, we know where we grew up, that's history. although i don't agree, i'm going to stand by her side until the time comes when i might have to split, because i'm not going to do that because she's a girl i know her. there is another woman coming with a better name than her and

willie brown. i was her bodyguard. personal bodyguard when she ran. i told her the election was being sabotaged. she had to go to the green party. i didn't know him. i know alley oto, what they did for the family and the blacks. go back to what i'm talking about now. yes, sir. i'm going to be talking about all the parks in my community. when i grew up, there was us. now you got people running around looking good in the parks, shooting all that, because you talking about big money you're spending in the park. but we is black, we're still in the dark. see, i don't cuss that much, sometimes it comes out as rhymes, i'm not trying to be no jesse jackson. god don't like unclean -- but i don't cuss, never did. but i can rhyme and tell you what i'm talking about. read between the lines. i could be rhyming and cussing at you at the same time, and you

wouldn't know it. read between the lines. when i get up here, where we at with justin herman, i want the truth. nobody pay me but god. i get my just reward when i gone. rest in peace, lee, because i'm still talking about the fillmore street. >> clerk: anyone else who would like to make public comment? being none, public comment is closed. >> president buell: seeing no further questions, chair would entertain a motion. moved and seconded. all those in favor? so moved. thank you very much. >> clerk: item 11, controller's office report on park maintenance standards for 2016-17. >> i'm going to set up the power point, just a moment, please.

thank you. good afternoon, commissioners lydia zaverukha, manager for operations in the department. i'm here to introduce to you the park maintenance standards report which you have seen for 12 years. i'm proud to be associated with the whole park maintenance standards for the last 12 careers from intepgs to what -- 12 years, from inception to what you're looking at now. we have a new format, interesting report, presented with the kind of detail you have

not seen before. this is the 12th year as i mentioned. this is actually the third year of the new data. if you recall, about three years ago, we revised the standards, that's what was referred to with the shifting in the scores. this is the first full year of the data from the new mobile app, that is built on a sales force platform. i love to say that, even though i don't know anything about sales force. what we're benefitting from is data at a detailed level we've never had before. when you look at the report, i need to thank the controller's office, they did the hard work, but you have detail and information sliced and diced in way we have not looked at before, with charts and information. what we haven't had before is the kind of data where we can look at statistically significant changes.

a lot of times we've had changes, but not the benefit to analyze to that level. the other thing about the report, is that it does not take a deep dive backwards again, because it's three years of new data. we went back just the three years. so i will take you forward. basically, these are the three major content areas of the report, so park scores are the whole property. overall, what are the scores for the park property? the next is features. looking at cpa, trees, the different features within the park property and then within each of the levels are the elements. we look at details within, let's say, a tree well, does it have weeds. what is the cleanliness rating in the restroom? that's how it's organized. we'll take questions at the end. i'll give you the overall introduction that was briefly discussed today, what has been the trend? we're proud, up to 88% this

year. not quite 89, but almost there. >> always round up lydia. >> i like that, too. what was established at the inception of the program was 85% was the good maintenance threshold and we've been hovering above that for the last three years. what is significant about the three year data points, 86, 88. this is three years of the much more stringent standards. we tried very, very hard to help a human being and guide them to precise information we were looking for. when we started, it was a bit more free form and now you're getting information in a deep and detailed way. i'm going to turn it over to the controller office, to alison, emily and joe is here somewhere. these individuals, again, i've talked about it before, i'm very proud to work with the controller's you woffice. the level of the detail is

amazing and i'll let the people who did the hard work give you the information. thank you. >> thank you so much to lydia, for all your support and that intro. as mentioned, we saw the city-wide average score increase over the last two years, over the comparable years using the revised standards. you can see that we looked beyond that mean, because we had a distribution of parks scores where each park score can be seen as a dot and the figure shown, like a his tree gram. and we saw not only was the distribution moving to the right, but the distribution was changing. because we only have three years of data, we're going to continue to watch this, but it's interesting trend that goes beyond just increasing standards, but what this could mean for how all parks are

clustered around the city wide average mean. we saw -- obviously, this city-wide increase is driven by park improvements. 61% of parks had increased score over the past year, so fiscal year 15 to 17. which is exciting large portion of the parks. most of those dramatic increases were often tied to renovations funded by the 2012 clean and safe neighborhood parks bond. so some else of those renovated with the funds, dolman playground, joe dimaggio, those were the most dramatic. we saw increases were subtle. volunteers from habitat for humanity, making big increases as well. i like to note those as well as the renovations made. in addition to these increases

there are also some parks, lesser so, but some parks that decreased dramatically in score. the most dramatic decreases are listed on the slide and these are individual changes in the park or the area around the park. we go into a really deeper dive in the report about the parks that were decreasing over the years. i won't go over that right now, but one of the features that decreased consistently across the parks were the on mental beds, so that's interesting commonality among the parks. we have that deeper information in the report and have already received a request from our staff about those details for these parks in order to inform operational decisions. it's a tie between the decisions we're making and the data we have. beyond the changes, we can look at this most recent year

snapshot to see right now, where are the highest scoring and lowest scoring parks. that map is in front of you. in that report, we have that feature. this is the highest, 10 highest scoring and 10 lowest. the highest, fulton playground and ca borriello playground were renovated with under from the 2008 fund. you can see that 60% of the bottom parks are in the southern half of the city. you can almost draw a line across the map and that's in contrast to the top 10 scoring parks which are almost all in the northern part of the city. looking at the park scores

aggregated to the supervisor district level, we see trends to the top and bottom parks, being a southern and northern distinction. we have districts number 1 with the highest average park score of 92%. followed by the districts 2 and 3, so northern crest of the city. and the bottom 2, district 11 with 83% and district 10 with 85%. just a note in that range. if you're living in district 1, your average park may be 92. 10 percentage points is the average park you would experience in district 11. so quite a big percentage point distinction there and i think that introduces a question about equity among parks which many people have mentioned today. we were able to look at specifically those parks labelled as parks serving equity zones. as rpd established following the

june 2016 charter amendment from opposition b establishing the zones and the park serving equity zones, we were able for the first time to look at the park maintenance scores in order to -- this will be the first year of benchmark of what is the distinction of park scores among these parks. on this slide, this is the park distribution of scores for the equity zone parks and the non-equity zones. you'll see the non-equity zone parks have average score of 89 which is above the average 88. and the equity zone parks have 2 percentage parks lower, 87, which i below the city-wide average. this is an important difference to consider as rpd manages the distribution of resources to pursue equity. and it's a good benchmark. we haven't had this data before, so we can look forward to

studying this in future years and watching the gap to ensure we're moving in the right direction. here's alice with more details. >> thank you, emily, lydia, joe, and everyone who works on this fantastic program. i want to take a moment and give a shoutout to those who participate, even phil does park evaluation. thank you to everyone in the crowd. when we go deeper from overarching park score, we look atrophiture scores. those are contained area of a park with commonality. you're seeing list of the features that we evaluate. you can see common one, lawns, children play areas, dog lay areas are tightly laid out in the map. and then there are overarching features such as buildings and

amenities, which are looked at in the end. so this is a map here -- sorry not a map -- a chart of the changes in feature scores over time and you can see that the last bar is trees. overall in the past three years, the trees have been the highest rated feature, which is in contrast to children's play area. that third category which has consistently been among the lowest. and so because they're among the lowest for the past three years, we're going to do a little spotlight in the presentation on children play areas. as i mentioned, they're the lowest scoring feature this fiscal year, 15 and 16, however, all of the top six -- all of the top six cpas have been renovated recently, so a great result from the bonds in the past. commonality between some of the lowest scoring is rubber surfacing.

four ever the lowest scoring cpas, every evaluation they failed on rubber surfacing. it's something to take into account. we hope the staff look at rubber surfacing when looking at renovations or resource allocation. this is a list of planned cpa renovations due to the failing playgrounds initiative you've heard spoken about earlier. those highlighted in orange are on the top -- sorry, our bottom 10% list of the cpa. in fact, most of those you see on the list are below the city average, so we're happy to see a lot of tie between the plans of capital improvement and cpas that don't score about high. you heard about west portal earlier and it actually got 65% on that distribution. just missed the cutoff of being in the bottom 10%. it's exciting to see movement on

renovations moving forward. we're just excited to see, as phil mentioned, we're in the era of data, city-wide and rpd. so we hope this information on scores at a feature level and park level can be used in operational decisions moving forward. we can go even deeper than features. lydia mentioned within the features there are elements. she mentioned cleanliness. that's one. we also evaluate graffiti, signage, structures, seating, a whole variety of elements of a feature that can be evaluated. so again, due to time, we'll just look at two. we're going to look at graffiti and cleanliness, those are generally hot topics in the public. you can see, we've done a spatial cluster analysis to determine what areas of the city are experiencing high rates of

graffiti and low rates of graffiti n. the southern part of thesy, there are cluster. something pointed out operation ply, internally, staff knows that mission delores park receives high rates of graffiti. talking about how can we apply policies to combat graffiti in areas such as this hot spot in the southerning area of the city? how can we take the data and make it operational? we often see high levels of graffiti in skate parks. you'll see the same distribution list and you can identify the lowest scoring on graffiti are in fact skate parks. due to time, i'll touch on cleanliness. it's one of the widest spreads of distribution. there is a big range from 33% up to 100%. we wanted to highlight some of the troubles that for example,

our lowest scoring park, embarcadero plaza, deals with not just high volume tourists and then also workers during lunch time, high homeless population. using the data to look forward how to improve cleanliness, focussing on those three areas would be a good choice. great, so i know you want more information. so you're in luck. there is an annual report, which was recently released, that has all the data, map for each feature. highest and lowest. we have a case study of the lowest scoring park. a lot of rich information there. and quarterly we updated website which is the sf parks score

wiebely account and that will show up to date information at the park and feature level. a lot of information out there. we are open for questions. if you have any. >> president buell: let's do commission questions first. commissioner low. >> commissioner low: i think what this data, it does give us feedback as to a sense of where we can guide and invest our resources. certainly the northern part of the city, with the exceptings of port smith square, embarcadero plaza, the turk hyde mini park, the southeast quadrant is really the opportunity for us to really invest our resources. it bears out from what we've sensed and this data really

supports that. it does show, though, that year over year there was a 1% increase from 2015-2016. but 2016 to 2017, there was 2% jump and i was wonni wondering you had comments of why we had the 2% jump as opposed to the annual 1%. >> i'll trying to tackle that. there is a couple of factors in my mind. first of all, these are measurements that are taken in points in time. and there are mix of data collected about park futures, deferred maintenance that doesn't move very much. and things like cleanliness that moves a lot. and can vary on the day that the evaluation occurs, which is why we do it four times. but still. so you're going to see movement there. i was interested to see the drop in restroom scores from 15 to 16

and i'm trying to think what that may be, although it was a drop of pun point. i think prop b is working. i think the planning we're doing, the focus on equity and while we still have work to do, if you go back to taylor's presentation, you'll see that $5 of capital investment for every one dollar is invested in the equity zone parks. we're making those investments. we see alice chalmers on the list, we just completed tennis court and basketball court renovations and it's on the playground list. so we're using all of the data to make investments and we have a year or so under our belt. resurfacing, attacking some of the deferred maintenance issues that we're capable of attacking. and that's helping. the other thing we did was we made a staffing decision at some

of the parks in the southern part of the city where we created extra gardener complex, which covers parks in the southeast. we made staffing decisions as well. we don't have the resources to pull everything from one part of the city to put it to the other. we measure carefully acreage, the challenges associated with different property. when they make the staffing allocation decisions, we did have the ability to create this extra complex, so we were able to give some of our more challenging parks, our staff in some of our more challenging park areas, fewer parks to manage which has happened. and with more investment, we'll continue to do that. >> now with the new software data from the controller's

office, how do those two interplay in future planning? >> again, commissioner mcdonnell asked how are you going to make decisions on what projects you tackle. so prop b, we've committed to put aside -- you're going to hear in in january and february -- $15 million a year we're reserving for deferred maintenance. that comes before you, it's for things likes court resurfacing, field, irrigation, boilers, different sorts of things. we're being much more careful -- we will look at the condition of those features based on data from the controller's office and this capital asset data. i would say that as an aside, the challenge for the park

maintenance structure, park maintenance core structure, it is a mix of cleanliness and deferred maintenance features. what the life cycle system does, is really just capital asset classes and their condition. then we're able to make comparisons between parks in underserved neighborhoods and city-wide. we're already doing this, but we're formalizing a process to look at all three data sources to make prioritization decisions about investment. i think that's how we do it. bond planning will include -- actually if you remember the playground task force, it was a mix of the criteria that you looked at, was a mix of controller park maintenance data

on the playground, then the presence of pressure treated lumber. so that criteria, and you looked at high youth density, low-income neighborhoods. so in a sense that was a little bit of a precursor for using all of the three systems for making prioritization decisions. >> so somehow it's brought together -- >> there is a little bit of overlap quite frankly, but maybe a little more -- maybe a smidgen more subjectivity to be honest, in the park evaluation process, because there are moments in time. the capital process has a lot of sophisticated background how long is this access supposed to last from engineering perspective? and then you have where is it located? and then that gets to the heart of the equity issues we're facing. >> president buell: commissioner

mcdonnell. >> commissioner mcdonnell: i always look forward to this perform, it's telling in terms of opportunity for celebration, the aggregate growth is fantastic, and continued concern. in particular, the park scores in terms of -- the optics of this map are telling. in that, it certainly more data is better. but i guess a concern i have, particularly when you go to the equity zones and comparison of equity and non-equity on the range that is true -- painfully true in the equity zones versus the non, that at the risk of being -- at the risk of being controversial, do we need more data to tell us where to focus?

i would argue we don't. because at some point, we know what we know and we know enough to know where we need to be focusing our resources. i get the political context. i get the challenges, general manager pointed out in terms of you can't pick things up and move them physically or otherwise to other places. but it would seem to me that the conversation, whether it's the geobond conversation, capital asset conversation, should start with, here's where we focus. and there are other things we'll do by necessity, safety, et cetera, but here's where we're going to start. i would hope as we again go through this process, that will be the leading mantra, because it seems we have in the past at least, backed into, as opposed starting, we're going to focus in these areas, these ways and other things we'll do, they'll

be by exception. the one question i have is it's a small question, you ended if you want more data, it's online. it wasn't clear if that was rpd online, or controllers online? >> controller online. anywhere. >> let me offer a smidgen of context on that. i know we're out of time. the more data, the more we're unlayering the onion. five years ago, the bottom half of the city was red. red, like 60-70% red. and 85% and above is considered under this model to be a well-maintained park. and we have now -- we're getting there. we still have work to do. and you tie that with the equity metrics, where we're able to monitor the level of investment we're making in the underserved has neighborhoods, whether it's

bay view, ex-sellsier, and the other neighborhoods that have scored lower. we're going to continue to reap that. your points are extremely well taken, but i think you're actually starting to see the fruit of that strategy long before there was this data. >> president buell: commissioner harrison. >> commissioner harrison: ornamental beds, was it the absence or they were not kept well? >> a park is never punished for a feature that the park doesn't contain. it's only what is at the park that is not maintained. >> you talk about ornamental bed, what is that? >> it's a piece of landscape that has planting. it's not necessarily a box, but it could be. if you look in a different

neighborhood playground, center beds might be considered around port smith for example, the beds that align sort of the kearney and stockton around the perimeter of that park. we have a mix of landscapes. we have lawn, we have -- >> so the ornamental bed. >> lawn is different, but where we're actually planting plants and arranging beds, we consider those ornamental beds. >> using port smith as example, that is a problem. that area. considering that, and then getting to the equity like the commissioner mentioned, i notice in the previous report you had trained -- are they new gardeners or current staffs trained? >> they were trained bay friendly practices, which is heightened level of ecology and

sustainable ecology. am i saying that correct? >> were they current staffing? >> yes. >> it's just part of the ongoing training and workforce development. there is a standard called bay friendly practices which focuses on sustainable planting pallets and how to use our existing soil conditions, our existing water challenges, to maximize the ecology of what we plant and take care of. >> excellent. also, in that, what are the staffing levels like compared to the north side of san francisco and the equity zones? are the staffing levels equal to that? >> commissioner, thank you for the question. the staff is pretty equitably districted. there was -- distributed.

there was several issues pointed to. so many of the lower scoring parks are a result of deferred maintenance that has not been accomplished. that drags down the scores. but to your question, our complexes are pretty much equally staffed. what we have done and phil mentioned it before, is that reorganizing the work down in the bay view, mclaren, crocker, that's where we created the additional complex. and we looked at our supervisory structure and moved two high performing supervisors, reassigned them down there to further motivate and organize the staff. and so -- and all of those decisions were based from last year's report. that drove this. >> i would ask one more staffing change, which is relevant to you, commissioner, we have created a southern complex of

apprentices. we're locating apprentices at crocker and in golden gate park and moving them around, but we do use our apprentice workforce in the parks that are lower scoring in an effort to bolster staffing as well. >> you did mention by reducing the number of areas an individual might have to take care is also an improvement and i congratulate you on all of this, but i'd like to see, i think, it would be important to have more staffing, gardening around and i would hope those with these apprentices would be promoted to full gardener at some point. >> thank you. >> i have one quick question. i found just as one example, the graffiti distribution map to be interesting and wondered do you

share the information and try to correlate it with other departments that have tangential issues around the things you're discovering here? >> there is actually a graffiti task force that is city-wide and we definitely participated in it all the time. we have a lot of conversation between the painter shop and sfpd in context of the graffiti task force, so we try to get more information and get together. >> i guess where i was headed and this is not the time or place to go deep in this, but there has got to be good information here that can be correlated to income distribution and employment levels and all these things and then you look at the issues we're facing, because it seems while it might not be our charge to stop graffiti, it might be interesting to learn about the incentives to create it.

with that, i don't see any other commission comments, maybe public comment? >> clerk: any public comment on this item? being none, that is closed. item 12, general public comment. at this time, members of the public who are not able to address the commission on item 4 may address the commission on items that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the rec and park commission and that do not appear on the agenda. >> welcome city and everybody watching me on tv access, because i created this channel. the history will be told. i'm here to tell and ask this com commission because of the recent article in "examiner" and i'm going to get on the editor of the examiner tt, because it's

fake news, opportunity news. it was some kind of conspiracy, because how in the hell -- i hope that's not a bad word, i done said it -- how is the hell the "examiner" supposed to be established paper here in the city is going to let an article get out like that right after the headlining of the legend of ed lee. it was perfectly placed so people reading about ed lee, they turn the next page, oh, renaming it after justin herman to ed lee. not as long as i'm alive it won't be. and whoever did that is not about the community, it's about a conspiracy. i wouldn't be surprised if silly willy did it. silly willy is just a name i use in my book. see, i'm a writer, therefore i can use character names. i won't use the real name, but you know who i'm talking about, because that's going come out in the series called places, places all part of my cases.

over 20 years people say, he ain't even seen a picture i took. if i took another picture, i got enough to fill this whole wall of things going down. you know what is going down? the black population is going down in this town. by the city, by the bay. hey, i'm saying this because i'm happy, but i should be cussing the hell out the city and the community what they've been doing, but they'd have city hall sheriffs coming out. sometimes i rhyme, it come out naturally, because my name is a-c-e, i have authority in the community, i'm the go-to person for the black news, i'm coming back to city hall, you all, back by popular demand, not because i'm black, but back by popular demand. conversations about racism and

all that. before the late ed lee, they were getting ready to line that up, when ed lee got into office in 2011, i got a picture. i had the black media. everybody came but the sun reporter, i wonder why. when i come out here, i'm talking about black, white, all the main pressures in sight. i have to name names and i put a spin on it and name them the name i think. so let's go back, you read the article. i'm telling you that you all need to tell whoever joined me to tell the examiner tt i need a full page add to rebuttal that. they didn't say anything about black community. second of all, they didn't have no right -- along with the conspiracy. >> president buell: thank you. >> you're welcome. >> clerk: anybody else who would like to make general comment? seeing none, this item is closed. commissioners, item 13,

commissioner matters. as a reminder this is to allow commissioners to raise issues that belief the commission should address at future meetings, but there will be no discussion at this time. >> president buell: i see none. >> clerk: any public comment? public comment is closed. item 14. new business ascend setting. >> president buell: i see none. >> clerk: public comment. >> i would like this sit down with mr. ginz berg to talk about the minnie park in fillmore. i read you donated $300,000 to revitalize, but you don't have to answer, we'll a talk offscreen. i want to know, i want a full report on every park. what is going on, dollar signs. need that by the end of year so

i can do the report. my name is ace, i'm on the case. i got a report on all the department heads. she got the same name, because she knows me. and when she was a little girl, she came here, raised in the project. i was born and raised in the projects. so ace is saying, my family we outside the projects. my mother came here from the south. worked in the shipyards. we had to struggle from the fillmore. i couldn't find a dam job. i'm a contractor. back in 1986. all the agents had all the jobs, contractors. they can't speak english, so i had to go down to the hutch and they started the redevelopment. i got no -- don't stop me. >> president buell: well, you're wandering off the -- >> this is public comment, if i want to say, you're not supposed

to stop me. i'm going to leave anyway, because i'm getting upset. i want a reprise from your director on what is going on in every park and i want the mini park i want to know where that money is going to. supposed to be going toward -- i don't know what -- building up to tear it down, you and i both know that's going to be housing in the future. you know it. it's going to be housing in the cultural center. my name is ace, dammit, you ain't heard so much until i head back to city hall. i ain't going to be here forever. no one can replace ace on the case. see as community, a, s service, and i hooked up with the prize. this is going to be something

from my family once i'm gone. from my great granddaughters they might want to pick it up. >> president buell: thank you. >> clerk: communications? public comment? seeing none this item is closed. >> we didn't have the opportunity to hear, as we have fort last few years, our elf. >> what is going on? >> last month. >> elf came last month. >> i was not here? i missed her. >> you sing for us. ♪ have yourself a merry little christmas ♪ ♪ let your hearts be light ♪ from now on our troubles will be out of sight ♪

have yourself a merry little christmas ♪ ♪ make the yuletide gay ♪ from now on our troubles will be miles away ♪ ♪ here we are as in olden days ♪ happy golden days of your ♪ faithful friends who are dear to us ♪ ♪ gather near to us once more ♪ through the years we all will be together ♪ ♪ if the fate allows ♪ hang a shining star on upon the highest bough ♪

♪ so have yourself a merry little christmas now ♪ [applause] >> clerk: with that, item 16, adjournment. >> i'd like to move for adjournment and thank you commissioner mcdonnell for the beautiful song. merry christmas, everybody. >> in memory of the nicest guy i know, ed lee. >> second? all those in favor. thank you, all, and happy holidays. [ ♪ ]

>> 7 and a half million renovation is part of the clean and safe neighbor's park fund which was on the ballot four years ago and look at how that public investment has transformed our neighborhood. >> the playground is unique in

that it serves a number of age groups, unlike many of the other properties, it serves small children with the children's play grounds and clubhouses that has basketball courts, it has an outdoor soccer field and so there were a lot of people that came to the table that had their wish list and we did our best to make sure that we kind of divided up spaces and made sure that we kept the old features of the playground but we were able to enhance all of those features. >> the playground and the

soccer field and the tennis fields and it is such a key part of this neighborhood. >> we want kids to be here. we want families to be here and we want people to have athletic opportunities. >> we are given a real responsibility to insure that the public's money is used appropriately and that something really special comes of these projects. we generally have about an opportunity every 50 years to redo these spaces. and it is really, really rewarding to see children and families benefit, you know, from the change of culture, at each one of these properties >> and as a result of, what you see behind us, more kids are playing on our soccer fields than ever before. we have more girls playing sports than we have ever had before. [ applause ] fp >> and we are sending a strong message that san francisco families are welcome and we want you to stay.

>> this park is open. ♪