festival, and we have the honor and privilege of running our festival at clipper cove from 2005 to 2015. and i choose those words carefully, honor and privilege, because i think it is truly a gem. as i consider these things, you shouldn't just be asking what is it used for today, but what is its future uses? we run the largest youth program in the nation, and while our festival was there, it grew to become the largest dragon boat vest val dragon fest -- festival in the u.s. us being the bay area, i think we ought to protect the bay. you know, i think this idea that there was a comprehensive process over the past 20 years is truly, as my fellow cal

bearer said, asymmetric. we were there for ten years. we were never reached out to on this proposal. we were there one day, we found out there's a lot of land development, and it's a done deal. we had to go look for a new site. to tell you how unique this site is, we could not find another site in san francisco that offers the protections that this gem does. so when i step back and boil down, hey, you've had so many people that this benefits, if you expand it by what, 100 or two, that's the maximum number of people or constituents that can benefit, whereas you've got way more than that in terms of speakers, calls, and people that are here today. so thank you so much for your consideration and support. >> supervisor tang: mr. wu, before you go, where are you doing the dragon race now? >> we have moved over to lake

marin? >> supervisor tang: and why did you move after 2015? >> well, we moved because we have no choice. the development on the land side of this project was going to take away our festival area. >> supervisor tang: on the land side. >> on the land side. but you know we did hear some r rumblings of the construction of the marina. you know, once we heard that, we hoped there was such a way that we could come back to this wonderful cove. >> supervisor tang: thank you. perhaps between now and when the lease agreement was up, i would love to see that this might continue with the dragon boat and the project sponsors. i myself novice competed in dragon boat many times, and i understand how it is a safe place for dragon boats to

compete. i would love to see you come back to treasure island, as well. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm linda wu, and i'm the former director for the dragon boat races. california dragon boat races, we were he in our 23rd year. in addition to the dragon boat festival, we run a program with high school kids. there are many students that participate, they have a waiting list to get into the program. right now they practice at lake merced, which is a great home for practicing, but in order to get more competitive, they need more race opportunities, and lake merced, it is not sort of the best venue for a rapidly growing race. so we'd like to keep the option of clipper cove open. we can see many events there in the future. our high school program started as a very simple sort of just

scrimmage between lincoln high school and washington, when two high school teachers challenged each other. since that date it's grown into this very large program, and it's grown competitively too, where lincoln high school is going to hungary to represent the united states in the world race championships. as hans said, we did sort of a region wide search, and we looked at every single site in san francisco, and we could not find another site for our international festival. so we did move to oakland which has proven to be a good home, but we've run many, many races. aside from that, i'm the president elect of the mira loma schools p.t.a., we are the parents of a middle schooler who will hopefully participate in this program next year.

we intend to send the entire fourth grade next year. i know the teachers wanted to voice their tremendous support of this program. thank you. >> supervisor tang: thank you, and i'm so sorry i mispronounced your name based on how i read it. >> my name is rebecca evans, and i'm here on behalf of the sierra club, and i regret that i'm not a sailor. sounds like a wonderful community of parents and kids on the bay. clipper cove is a really important natural resource for the city and for the bay. the proposal for the developers to take one-third of the cove for private luxury marina is an unacceptable sacrifice of public access to the bay. in addition, this plan also poses significant threat to the eel glass beds in the cove. as you know, eel grass is an incredibly important ecospecies

in san francisco bay. earlier this year the california division of boating and water ways issued a troubling report on this expansion. the state revealed for the first time that the proposed marina and wave atenutaor may changed sentimentation cause the cove to fill in, necessitating annual dredging ex-pensions into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. you've heard other people testify about that. the sierra club notified tida about this, and we were also concerned that these factors were not included in the 2006 project report. the failure of the club -- we will be submitting some information from the leading biological expert on seal grass, keith merkel, in the very near future. thank you very much. >> supervisor tang: thank you.

>> hello. my name is martin thomas. i'm a sailor on the bay. have been sailing since 1970 on the bay. i just want to emphasize how from a sailor's perspective, clipper cove is so unique. it's really the only fully protected cove from the dun barton bridge. there are other coves, but they lack protection to the agree that treasure island clipper cove offers. and having anchored there over night and for lunch many, many times, and it's a unique and wonderful place that we should preserve. the idea of giving one-third of it away to a for-profit marina does not appeal to me. i think it would be wonderful if the marina would locate to the east side of treasure island, but there's been no objection. you could build a seawall out there, make as big of a marina

as you want. so that would be my proposal. leave the clipper cove aalone and move the marina island to the east. thank you very much. [applause]. >> committee members, thank you. i hope you take when notes -- notes on what i'm going to say. i'm a sailboat instructor, u.s. sailing instructor, currently a high school sailing coach, and i've been racing for about 40 years now. the clipper cove has dollar signs written all over it. please preserve clipper cove as you would yosemite. i would like to -- i like to go out, and when i throw out my tent, throw out my anchor for my boat, i throw it out at clipper cove. it's peaceful, quiet. i can spend the night and takeoff. i can go to ghirardelli square and throw out my anchor, but it's really noisy. angel island is another place,

so please, think about clipper cove as a sanctuary for boaters. if you go to the ecosystems, clipper cove does not have current. it doesn't have a flow. it goes up and down, so there's no flow. if you start throwing in 300 and 400 boats, you're going to get gasoline, you're going to get oil, you're going to get pollution. the ecosystem will change in clipper cove over time. you also have over boards living there. as for racing, the wind comes from the golden gate straight over the little jetty, and it's fairly constant. you start throwing in buildings or boats, like i have learned how to sail lake merit, and the high-rises, they change the wind condition. it's very much like a very nice soccer fields. if you start playing soccer with kids on a soccer field,

it's great. if you start playing with them on an open field, it's completely different. the same thing is going to happen with the boats if you start changing this. >> supervisors, my name is ron cusera, a lot of things that i wanted to say about the impact on people's person lives, the impact on education, on the environment has already been said, so i'll just speak a little bit about my personal presence here. i have a little boat at treasure island. a little boat named whisper. i have another boat that i have sald from half moon bay, san francisco to cape horn, and i've sald about every inch of the coast of north and south america. i've seen very few places like clipper cove. i have seen big yacht marinas in la paz and cabo.

you know, i -- this has been reduced to 313 slips. i think currently at treasure island, there's 107. maximum boat size, i'm not sure what's there, 36 or 40 feet. we're talking a beginning of 40 feet all the way up to 80 feet. it would just clog that natural pearl of an anchorage there. that's about all of i have to say. i hope that you'll act on preserving clipper cove the way it is now. great place for students, great place for people to come to enjoy it. raft up is great. and speaking to that person's point that not all sailors are millionaires, i've been able to do this on much less than the median income. i enjoy do, this, and i enjoy places like clipper cove. thank you. >> good afternoon. kathrin howard, sierra club, we support the resolution. i'm going to talk a little bit about eel grass. our environment is made up with

many small delicate building blocks that interact to create the natural world. one such building block is the sea grass with the somewhat unappealing name of eel grass. it's so important to the health of its ecosystem it is known as a keystone species. if it does not do well, then the lives that depend on it will do poory. that is system to what happened in the eastern united states when a disease wiped out the eel grass and wiped out one species and severely damaged other ones. in san francisco, eel grass for birds to lay their eggs. eel grass meadows catch minute partials floating in the water

and deposit them on the bay floor, slowly building up the sandy and muddy bottom. large beds of eel grass can absorb shock waves, protecting adjacent shorelines, but eel grass is also sensitive to water clarity, to changes in currents, to increases or decreases in the sentiment it lives in and to changes in depth of water. the sierra club is very worried that the proposed development could damage the eel grass development now living in the cove. the proposed impact is not known. even in public documents, the developer said they were not sure of the impact, and therefore we support a study before the city commits to a marina project. thank you. [applause]. >> hello. my name is john vontesmar. i have been a birth holder at

treasure island for nine years. i am certainly in favor of keeping the marina and the existing structure at -- in clipper cove the way it is. if there is to be some new development, i would not want to see anything enlarged. with my 21 foot boat, i use it to operate a kite surfing business, and it's been my sole business for five years out of the nine that i've kept the boat there. and kite surfing, as you may know, is a branch of sailing, and sailing is a very important part of the culture in the san francisco bay area. and if a large marina does go into place that has these minimal boat length restrictions or just if it's a new structure that's going to cost more, it's going to be difficult for me to keep

running my kite surfing business. so thank you. >> supervisor tang: thank you. >> supervisors, michael terrio, san francisco construction and trades council. i'm not going to talk about jobs. i do understand something about asymmetric negotiations having sat down on them in the past. when you come out of those negotiations, you have a deal. and i realize you as the members of the board of supervisors were not involved in that deal, but the sailing center was. i would ask them to respect that deal. certainly we all thought there was one. certainly when we came to the treasure island development authority meetings a couple of years ago. with regard to the resolution itself, it is mom and apple pie, much of it. you know, respect for youth sailing and support for youth sailing, unarguable.

preservation of eel grass beds, unarguable, and i do understand what that is having picnicked on that beach before the sailing center was already there. and yet, that resolution, there are items in it that will be viewed as binding even though they are not precisely binding. when you do negotiate the lease agreement for the -- for the marina, and i so think it's careful -- it's important to be very careful about what exactly is binding you in this thing, what provisions you feel you have to be obliged to honor when it comes to these leases. it seems the owner has rationally asked for a continuance so they can work with the community and with you on working out those items that will be viewed by some as binding. i'd like to get -- it's reasonable of you to grant them that continuance. thank you. >> hi there. my name's ashley wallace.

i'm a sailor out of emory cove marina. i just want to say how important the cove is for us. it's a gathering place in the city. it's a really great place for people to be able to afford there for people to gather up, and for their kids to swim. also sailing is supporting a renewable energy sport. we might use fossil fuels to move in and out of the marina, but once we move out of the channel, we're hoisting our sails and using wind. i would second the guy that brought up the dredging. emory cove just had a big dredging project, and it was expensive. i think it was $10,000 an hour to rent the machinery. also, the soil if it doesn't test properly, you then have to take it outside of the golden gate bridge, and that will cost

over $1 million, so i would just check into those numbers that they're talking about and make sure they're actually affordi afford -- reporting how much dredging would actually cost. i think that's about it. thank you. >> hi. i'm harvey morgan with engineering operators local three. operating engineers, we'd like to, you know, persuade you to support the continuance of the resolution. i know it's kind of tough on the sailors and everything. i don't want to get into that, but i'm sure they can, you know, probably reach a happy medium or work it out, you know? but we -- we're in favor of the continuance to do the -- you know, to do the resolution, so that's automatic i've g-- all i've got. thank you. >> good afternoon, members of

the land use committee. my name is timothy reiff. i'm a field representative of the carpenters and a native san franciscan. i'd like to ask you to continue this so that this can be worked out between the developer and the community and some type of resolution can come up that benefits everybody. i'm here with a number of working carpenters who would like to go to work on this when this does get passed and it comes to fruition. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is michael kwo. you know, clipper cove is a very beautiful and special place. when i was in high school, i watched the dragon boat races for three years until they moved to oakland. not ochbl that -- only that, clipper cove is a place where a

lot of people make great memories, and clipper cove is not a place for developers to make a quick buck. thank you. >> held hoe. my name is marina binsak. i am a resident of district 11. i'm not a sailor, but i grew up in the city, and i did not have this opportunity when i was growing up, and i usually get pretty emotional when i'm up here, just talking about equity issues, so i just decided to keep it pretty dry and discuss what would occur if this were to be taken to -- well, when it does go to bcdc, i just went ahead and jotted down a few policies in their bay plan. i urge you to look at the rec lati ration policies, specifically policy number one.

i think a number of the speakers here have spoken to that, as well. in terms of the impacts on the eel grass, i urge you to look at the sections on title marshes and title flats, specifically policy one in the bay plan. it says that filling, diking and dredging projects that would substantially harm title mars that includes the eel grass should be allowed for purposes that provide substantial public benefits and only if there is no feasible alternative. and finally, i would urge you to look at the policies in the bay plan regarding access. there's an entire section on public access, an entire section on appearance, design and scenic views. i don't think we've discussed how this would impact the views. thank you. >> supervisor tang: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. alex lansburg with the san francisco construction industry

which is a partnership of ibew. just wanted to urge our support for a continuance on this thing. it's clear that the sailing community is concerned and it's equally clear that -- that the city's development partner is -- really wants to try to find a way to make this thing work. so i encourage a week long continuance so they can continue the dialogue. specifically to the sailing community, i'm a district ten resident. i live rite across the stre-- e street from the bay in india basin. i want to invite all the sailors down to india bay where we also have a sheltered cove and great weather. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is jose villalobos, and i'm here to ask you on behalf of over 5,000 union members for

your support in passing this resolution. thank you. >> i'm the president of sunset park side education and action committee, also known as speak. speak has been an active voice in the community for almost half a century. speak is here to support these set sale learn stem programs. as it is consistent with the city's stated goal of keeping families here in san francisco. the set sail learn stem program benefits the students of feinstein, law ton, ulloa, jefferson and francis scott key elementary schools. speak would like to thank the legislation sponsors and cosponsors for their continued commitment to keeping families here in san francisco. thank you. >> supervisors, it's jay wallace again, if i may have one more minute just to wrap

up. i want to just say to the audience and to the supervisors that we hear your concerns. we respectfully would request a week or so continuance so that we can continue to work with our colleagues in the community to hopefully come up with a solution that satisfies everybody's needs. as you know, we've always had an open door policy. we will continue to do so, and we continue to look forward to working with all of the members of the board and the community on a solution that will work for clipper cove, so thank you for the indulgence here. >> supervisor tang: through the chair, mr. wallace, while you're here, because i finally took an opportunity to read the letter that you submitted on friday. i just wanted to go to your second paragraph where you ended with the life, the 400 slip marina approved by the board of supervisors has been in place for more than a decade. could you explain that sentence? >> yes. i was referring to the 2006 eir where the board of supervisors

approved the project. >> supervisor tang: a study. we've nefrd approved a 400 slip marina plan. >> there's never been a lease approval, that's correct. i just -- i can't express my immense dismay at a complete lie being written to the board. there are members of this board who have not been on this board as long as i have, and they will get this letter, and they will be incredibly confused as to why we approved a 400 slip marina plan, and then i am submitting this resolution. i just -- it just -- it boggles my mind that a project sponsor sophisticated as a treasure island enterprise would submit a blatant lie to the 11 members of the board of supervisors. we never approved a 400 slip marina plan, and it has not been in place over a decade. we studied it. there's a big difference between an approval and a study, is that correct. >> there's a big difference

between an approval and a study, and the study was approved 11-0 by the board of supervisors. >> supervisor tang: 1k to say there was no complaints as to its size or location, it's because there was a stud ey. there was nothing for them to complain about. >> supervisor, i'm not going to argue with you from the dais, but i think you would know that to be the case. [applause]. >> supervisor tang: sorry. to members of the audience, please refrain from applause. let's keep to that. >> hi. my name is lotus fong, and i moved from a land locked state, new mexico and did not have a chance to learn to swim, much less learn to sail. but i have three grandchildren

who i hope will learn to sail. my grandson stands at pier 39 and y and he looks at those boats. for other parents and grandparents, up in the back of pier 39, there's a store called think outside the box, and it's got wonderful little creative puzzles and you know games for kids to learn to think, and you can see the boats from their -- from their wall window. my concern after 35 years of being in this city and watching the kind of money that has been coming in the last decade is -- there's a movie called, "if you build it, they will come." it's that baseball movie. i'm not sure that's true here,

because if you look at the out of state developer that was brought in for the hunters point shipyard and the toxicity shipyard and fraestreasure isl and the megayacht shipyard, as someone else said, they're a berthing, marinaing in other locations. the best suggestion was about locating it on the west side or somewhere else. it doesn't need to be clipper cove. i think the other developer, his other business at the ferry building, also failed, and we shouldn't -- [ inaudible ] tappi >> supervisor tang: thank you. >> hello.

my name is janet reuds, and my son learned to sail at treasure island, and he became a sailing instructor, and his livelihood is probably going to be on the water, and we're very, very grateful for that opportunity for him. i wanted to just mention that it's very poorn thimportant th passes today, and also mention that this proposal is supported by save the bay, the national sailing club, the sierra club, and the national bay keeper. thank you. >> supervisor tang: thank you. seeing no other members of the public, i'd like to ask the chair to close public item on this comment. >> all right. thank you. we'll know close public comment. supervisor kim. >> supervisor kim: so colleagues, i just want to thank you for your time and i want to thank all of the members of the public for coming out to speak today. i have to tell you this is a very complex issue that took me

and my staff quite a bit of time to study and come up to speed on. it's certainly not my area of expertise, nor have i ever sailed on the bay or clipper cove, but i just want to say that in the past 2.5 years, i've heard stories of particularly our youth and families using the clipper cove, and certainly supervisor avalos himself and his family, and just how unique this cove is to san francisco and to our public recreation and our public education opportunities. and a couple of things that i'll just say about the resolution that's before us today, we don't actually mandate the number of berths or the size that will finally come before the board of supervisors for approval, but that we put forward a series of principles that we would like to be a part of the proposal before it comes to the board.

certain elements such as ensuring that we don't diminish existing public youth and public education on clipper cove, that we study and not harm critical important eel grass beds, which i've certainly learned a lot about over the last year or diminish the water depth, that these are the principles and analysis that the board of supervisors would like to see before a final project plan comes before the board of supervisors for a final approval. so this does not set what is going to be at clipper cove, and so i don't see a need to continue this for a week. i just also have to say as the office that has been mediating this conversation for 2.5 years, i'm really not quite sure what an additional seven days will do for this resolution. i had really been undetermined on my position on this issue for close to two years because i was hoping the stakeholders would work this out without our office having to intervene and

take a position. but after three years at a certain point, you have to make a call, and you have to move forward with what you think is goes to be the best set of principles and moving forward at clipper cove. i don't see a conen issues coming forward in the next seven days, so what i'm putting forward is a series of principles and analysis what i'd like to see in the proposed clipper cove project plan that will come before the board of supervisors. again, this is just a floor. it is not the details, so that will get worked out between the stakeholders before the proposed lease comes before the board of supervisors. so i don't think that we are tieing our hands in any way. that being says, there is another seven days before this resolution comes before the full board of supervisors, so if the project sponsor and tida would like to meet with stakeholders of the next seven days, please do so. if there are amendments that the stakeholders agree to, i will certainly consider them for amendment at the final

board. a couple of things that i just want to say. i have been a little -- well, i will say that i understand and i am sympathetic to the project sponsor in their concerns about allowing interim use before development because of their concern of being able to fully idealize or raeltz realize the plan that they had proposed 15 or 20 years ago. but the treasure island sailing center should not rely on its own continuance and future just purely based on the success of your program because we have never agreed to in some ways a permanent program here at clipper cove. neither should the project sponsor have relied on any conversations or studies as to what this board of supervisors would finally agree to 10, 15, 20 years later. in many ways, that is the nature of the business of this work. neither party could have relied

on either their existing use or on any existing conversations or study to say that this is the final project that should come before and is the best use of this site. so that being said, i -- i think, you know, i ask my colleagues to support this resolution as is. i do always encourage continued dialogue over the next seven days. finally, i just have to express my deep and utter dismay and disappointment with the letter that was submitted by the project sponsor to the board of supervisors. i just think it is completely unacceptable to lie to this board. this board has never approved a 400 slip marina in 2006, and it did not approve it in 2011. and to say that this has been in place for over a decade, it -- it just boggles the mind and is a bit insulting to -- to the intelligence of the members of this board. so thank you, colleagues for

hearing this issue. thank you again for members of the public. i have learned a tremendous amount about sailing and eel grass beds and many other things, and i just appreciate your advocacy and passion. i look forward to seeing a final resolution on this issue, but i do -- really do support the set of principles that we have put forward in this resolution, and so colleagues, i ask for your support, and so i'd like to move this forward with recommendation to the full board. >> thank you, and can we do that without objection? all right. we'll do that without objection. thank you. [applause]. >> all right. now we have another long item before us. madam clerk, item 3. >> supervisor safai: allegedly long. [agenda item read]. >> thank you. and i did want to announce that we are also now joined by supervisor peskin, and i'm going to turn it over to

sponsor of this legislation, supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: thank you, chair tang. just to give a little background on this item, just to talk a little bit about what this is all about -- i'll just wait a minute for folks to clear out. but essentially, we started a conversation, supervisor peskin and i, about a year ago, with some general parameters. one was some frustration with the level at which the request to come into members of the board of supervisors about issues with regard to the sf mta and the mta in general. and then, the understanding and the way that the city charter is setup and the way that the -- the current structure is that we essentially have no authority over the mta, and the voters made that decision. we went through a series of

legislative moves and charter amendments in '99 and 2007. but embedded in the charter was also the ability -- and as supervisor peskin pointed out when we also started this conversation is that we'd never exercised certain aspects that -- of the charter that the voters gave us, and that's the piece of legislation that you see in front of us today. i'm going to let supervisor peskin talk about some of the points that he made, but i think in its inception about separation of powers and the way of removing politics from the sf mta, the intent was never to create one final authorizing area, it was more about trying to remove politics but in effect, we ended up putting one elected official in charge of by appointment power for the commissioners, as well as the recommendation of the executive director and otherwise. so what we had attempted to do in our conversation was essentially begin a conversation about how -- at least from my perspective, some

of the microissues -- how some of the neighborhood affecting issues, the smaller, more micro-hassissues in terms whether it's a stop sign, whether it's a traffic calming, whether it's pedestrian safety, whether it's vision zero or under all of those principles, whether it's permit parking, meter parking, some of the bike stations, residential permit parking. these are the things that i have heard about the most more frequently than any other issue that comes up as an elected member of the board of supervisors, but the frustration lied in the fact that we ultimately had no say or authority over any of those decisions. some would say that's good, some would say that there needed to be some reforms. so supervisor peskin and i got together and first we started this conversation with a charter amendment. and we've put that on hold, but essentially, the charter amendment would say we would keep members of the commission,

but we would split the agency into two parts. one that would be more the department of sustainable streets that would deal with more of these microissues, one that would deal with a taxi and muni issues, and then, the two agencies would effectively report to the same governing body, and i want to recognize some members of the sf mta commission. we started conversations with them recently, and i appreciate the fact that they've come here today to be part of this conversation. but kind of bringing it full circle, we decided to pull back. we've asked the sf mta, and we've heard for them to make some reforms. they are going to present on those reforms today as to how it relates to each member of this board of supervisors will interact with the sf mta, in terms of staffing, in terms of engineers and planners, and so on, as well as what they see going forward. and then, we'll get into some of the details of this legislation. but essentially, it allows us

to have some review over some areas of concern that often come up the most when -- when they are highlighted to us as members of the board of supervisors. so we have the review under this legislation to discuss green, blue, yellow, white zones, street sweeping, parking restriction, taxi stands, shuttle zones, tour bus zones, so essentially, some of the temporary stopping zones. parking time limits for meters. also, the residential parking permit program, stop signs, as well as car share parking and vanpool parking and on street parking restriction, motorcycle parking only, and then some vehicle size over height of 6 feet, oversize vehicle restrictions which is a big issue in my district. motorcycle parking only, compact vehicle parking or marking stall designations, and

then restrictions of iscot permitting issues. those are some of the things that already -- and i just want to be clear, the voters of san francisco already gave the members of the board of supervisors the ability to exercise this authority, but we never exercised that authority. and so this is an attempt to move that forward and essentially balance out some more of the -- now, that doesn't mean we're going to be hearing all of these things. there still requires there be a threshold of the members of the board of supervisors to sign onto hear an issue that's maybe a decision that's been made in the last 60 days, but i think that's an important authority then to transfer over to the members of the board of supervisors, and so that's why we've put this forward. i want to hand it over to my colleague, supervisor peskin, if that's okay, chair tang, to allow him to say some opening remarks. >> supervisor peskin: chair tang, supervisor safai, and soon to be joined by supervisor

kim, thank you for that introduction, and i've enjoyed collaborating with you and your staff and my staff on this matter. i just want to start by thanking the sf mta and particular particularly ed reiskin for engaging with us as this has evolved over time as well as individuals and organizations ranging from the san francisco riders -- transit riders union, walk sf, save muni, the bicycle coalition, and the hundreds of people who have weighed in in -- with varying perspectives on the matter. i want to put this into historical context, which supervisor safai touched on. in the beginning, muni was a property of the public utilities commission of san francisco, not to be confused with the state public utilities commission that has allowed

tmc's to run rough shod today over san francisco, but the purchase var of our water, sewer and municipal electricity, and muni was a property of that organization for many, many years. if you'll recall mayor willie brown's contest where he attempted to walk down market street faster than the underground got there in the late 1990's, the issue du jour, while homelessness was still up there, was on time muni arrivals, and at that time, in a moderately unlikely progressive coalition, the then supervisors tom ammiano and gavin newsom then collaborated on what was proposition e which creates the san francisco

municipal transportation agency and gave it a level of autonomy, a level of funding, and made it quite independent from the board's budget process insofar as it required a super majority of the board to prejekt t prereject the budget and did not give us line item authority over that budget. when i was first elected and took office on january 8th of 2001, i don't think there's anybody around who remembers it. maybe jim lazarus does from his days as a deputy city attorney, we used to have at this committee, at the land use and transportation committee, a huge number of items related to increasing a yellow zone 20 feet, adding a stop sign, all of which in those days went to a separate entity, which was the -- what the heck was it called? the parking and traffic

commission, which was a separate entity. and all of those items had to be approved by this board. the 1999 prop e experiment went on for a controversial decade, and in the late 2000's, 2007, to be precise, we were at a turning point, which came to me as president of the board in those days, and we could go down two very distinct roads. one was to take all of the power back and reinsert the legislative branch, and the other was to make it more autonomous and take away the powers that the lengtgislative branch had. i chose the latter, it was proposed as a proposition a on the 2007 ballot. it was very controversial in those days. in fact one of san francisco's

leading civic likes, a gentleman named don fisher with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the theory that it was going to advocate against car traffic and for public transportation. mr. fisher, god rest his soul, lost in that matter, and the theory that i think many of us had at this time, including spur and transportation advocates, as supervisor safai said, was that we were going to depoliticize the transportation options of san francisco, and we were going to take out the meddling supervisors and mayors, and that, while it's counter intuitive for elects officials to give up power was the theory that i subscribed to. as it turned out, the board of supervisors exempted itself from the process, but as mr.

reiskin, you can -- i'm not going to put you on the spot -- attest to, it became a solely owned branch of the vicissitudes of whoever owned it at the time, and checks and balances be darned. i watched that in many inkarnations. i mean no ill will towards or former mayor, accommodating all too readily google buses or tnc's, and none of that, regardless of what we heard from taxi drivers who were being driven out of work or whatever was in the realm of the legislative branch to discuss, have any influence over. so when supervisor safai came expressing these concerns, i said something that's a little unlikely.

i said help break it, i want to help fix it. and that resulted in the charter amendment. >> supervisor safai: that was the cleaner version. >> supervisor peskin: having said all of that, i want reminded that a decade ago, i actually introduced an ordinance which but for the bell ringing on my then-two-term limit would likely have been passed, which used the specific carve outs proposed in proposition a, the 2007 charter amendment, that would have allowed certain items to be appealed to the board. that item never came forward for a hearing. here we are a decade later, and that is before us today. interestingly enough, it is in some ways modelled on a provision that the board passed a decade and a half ago -- more than that, 16, 17 years ago, on how conditional uses from mr.

cider's department could be brought before this board. in the old days, and this was manifestly unjust, only property owners within 300 feet of a project receiving conditional use could appeal to the board of supervisors, and subsequently, i passed legislation that actually gave the board the authority to be proxies for people whether they did not own real property, whether they were residential tenants or not residential tenants or neighbors outside of the 300 foot zone. and that required a certain number of members of the board of supervisors to approve that before that could be heard. i was actually talking to supervisor safai today, and he and i were trying to recall how many times since he had been supervisor, which has been how long now? >> supervisor safai: year and

a half. >> supervisor peskin: seems like forever. sorry. that was a joke. and i think we could only think of two times that the board had actually used that authority in the last year and a half to bring an appeal forward. but those have actually been very important policy matters that have actually -- are now leading to changes in the way, in one case, that we deal with demolition controls. so i am hopeful that this is seen in the way it's intended, which is not to go back to the days of micromanaging everything that you, mr. reiskin, everything that you and your very competent staff do, but in order to reinject the kind of dialogue that a, makes us healthier, that reinstills the checks and balances, that if they're done right, make us better. and b, also allow our

constituents who think that they are electing people who have a modicum of influence over these decisions to realize that we actually can insert ourselves in the process when it's manifestly important. to that end, i think there are a number of changes that we want to make today, and i want to speak to those. but i -- i really welcome this conversation. this is not in any way, at least coming from this supervisor, meant to walk away from or in any way undermine our transit first policies, which i absolutely adhere to, and the voters have spoken on. it's about really making this dialogue more fruitful for everybody. and i do want to say one thing that i've said to director reiskin repeatedly, which is actually this conversation has in many ways already achieved what it was meant to achieve, which is that the level of

dialogue between you and your staff and this body has, mr. mcguire, thank you, has been so much better in the last few months. and i get it. it's not that you were ignoring us or belittling the board of supervisors. you've got a really tough, complicated set of challenges in a world that is evolving very quickly, whether it's, you name it, electric scooters, chariots, google buses, and central subways and vanness e.r. t.'s. but this has gotten your attention, and i think it's been extremely helpful, so i want to acknowledge that. i do have a number of specific questions and i'm happy to bring those up when the time is right. >> supervisor safai: and through the chair, i just want to jump back in. i just want to make a couple more points. i want to hand it over to supervisor peskin because i think we came together on this

from two separate angles, and i appreciate it. i want to thank him from the beginning because i went and talked to him, and he said, to take responsibility for some of the -- and sometimes you can't anticipate how things will ultimately come out. but i will say literally daily, i receive e-mails, kaulds, concerns, and when i'm -- calls, concerns, and when i'm out in the community, people come up and talk to me about the issues that we've been talking about today. for the past year and a half that i've been in office, it has been extremely frustrating to say to people, we have no authority. that's not the say the structure is setup. i think people don't understand, and that's been the consensus of many members of the board of supervisors that i've talked to, supervisor tang, supervisor peskin, and president breed. i do want to acknowledge since we've proposed our charter

amendment, there has been a significant change in the behavior of the sf mta. and i really appreciate mr. reiskin and others to try to change the behavior and be more responsive on these issues. but it goes to heart the heart what we're trying to accomplish today, if you take on all of the criticism, if you take all of the heat and all of the concerns, but yet you have no authority, you and say that over and over again, people don't understand that. it makes sense that we have limits authority that supervisor peskin had worked on back in 2007, and it seems this is the time to exercise that. but he acknowledged, and i do want to say the sf mta has definitely made some changes, and we're going to ask them to present on the changes today. through the chair -- >> supervisor tang: supervisor peskin, do you have a

statement? >> supervisor peskin: i want to say that proposition a, which only could have gotten on the ballot by the board of supervisors, actually created another legislative brank ch o government. so when we gave the mta commission or i should say the voters gave the mta commission the ability to legislate, that was a pretty amazing thing. i mean, it's very rare that a bunch of elected officials actually cede power to a bunch of unelected officials. it's important for me to say that. there are second acts in american life, because here i am a decade later getting to talk about it, and i'm actually -- i'm saying that on the eve of this board being asked tomorrow to reconfirm because the mayor appoints, the

board confirms two members of the commission. and this is not -- i'm not pointing this at staff -- who at least in this supervisor's case, these individuals have not even reached out to my office. they may have reached out to other offices actually after i brought this up to the mayor's liaison to the board today, which i didn't have to do, but i did. one of those two members reached out. but we are the confirming authority for a shadow legislative branch of government, and those members feel so autonomous, that they don't even have the courtesy or respect to reach out to see whether or not they're going to be confirmed. which -- and again, this is not pointed to staff because i think staff has made marked changes in the last few months, but it does speak volumes about the attitude of some of these individuals who think that there are no checks and

balances, so i just had to get that off of my chest. >> supervisor tang: okay. we're back to supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: i wanted to talk about a couple of changes that were made, and i wanted to read them into the record. one was we removed the approval of 50 residents living near the location in the final decision. we added the review of final decisions on stop signs, and we added in an exemption of class two and class four bike lanes from board of supervisors review. so those are what you have in front of us today. and then, we have a few more amendments. and so i don't know if the chair would like us to talk about amendments now or you wanted to go to public comment or presentation. >> supervisor tang: maybe you could talk about what you're talking about in emergency room its of changes. >> supervisor safai: one of them talks about amending a project and amending the decision of a final mta decision. so -- and this is a specific

case because the -- in development projects that go before the planning commission, there is the opportunity for planning commission review, planning department review during the entitlement process, and then, the ability to appeal already to the board of supervisors. and once that has happened and we make a final determination, we probably need -- we don't necessarily need an additional review from this body again. so that was something that the planning department worked with us? just the last 48 hours. i'm okay with that amendment. and the other one, i think supervisor peskin's office highlighted that. we were working with lee from his office and cathy from my staff has done a tremendous staff. but the idea that the planning department would have a filing fee of $600, and they agreed to remove that fee.

so we will be talking about that amendment. those are the only two that i have at this particular moment. i know that supervisor tang might have something, but i'm happy to proceed with the presentation or if you wanted to -- >> supervisor tang: well, it looks like if the supervisor peskin -- >> supervisor peskin: i'm happy to hear the presentation, and i have not actually talked to supervisor safai on this, but i assume that what you're talking about is on page one, inserting a definition of bicycle lane. >> supervisor safai: correct. >> supervisor peskin: and at line 18, that would be the insertion of bicycle lane, period. this is definitions, a class two bike way or class four separated bike way or cycle track. >> supervisor safai: correct. >> supervisor peskin: and insofar as as that would be defined on page two at line 12, we would actually capitalize bicycle lane, capital b, capital l because it would be a defined term. >> supervisor safai: correct.

>> supervisor peskin: i have some other terms i would like to suggest, but i'm happy to hear the presentation. i just -- i concur with regard to the filing fee, in particularly insofar as as what supervisor safai suggested, which is that only a number of members of the brs as with tbo i -- members of the board could bring the appeal. i think the motion of eliminating the language at page four, line 20 with regard to the -- page four, line 20 with regard to the requirement of a filing fee in the amount of $597ship strickehould be -- should be stricken, and then, i have one additional amendment and then i have some questions. >> supervisor tang: so should we hear from the department staff now? >> supervisor sa: