>> meeting will come to order. welcome to the may 23rd, 2018, rescheduled meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services. i'm supervisor jeff sheehy to my right, is supervisor ronen. also thank charles criminak and

tom from sfgov-tv for staffing this meeting. >> silence your cell phones and speaker cards should be mitt -- submitted to the clerk. items acted on will be on the june 25, 2018, agenda, unless otherwise stated. >> today's meeting public comment will be one minute and item number 3 will be called out of order. also, a motion to excuse supervisor peskin and supervisor fewer? >> supervisor fewer is not part of the meeting. but supervisor peskin. >> so moved. >> ok. i've spoken with supervisor

fewer and their office would like a continuance -- sorry. mr. clerk, would you please call item number 3. >> clerk: 3, resolution urging the sheriff's department and department of public health to conduct a baseline assessment of existing food vendors and evaluate vendor alignment with the good food purchasing standards. supervisor fewer would like a continuance to the june meeting. any members of the public who would like to speak on this item? thank you. public comment is closed. motion to continue to june 13th? >> supervisor ronen: so moved. >> supervisor sheehy: motion without agenda, motion passes. please call item number 1. >> clerk: hearing on domestic violence and child abuse with review of the family violence

council's findings and recommendations. >> supervisor sheehy: san francisco is the only council with a family violence council, looking at child abuse, domestic violence and elder abuse. only county to publish the family violence data annually. proud to be the board of supervisors representative on the council. one in 12 violent crime calls to 911 involve family violence. it's crucial to give survivors of family violence options, and the number of agencies participating in our family violence council shows diversity of agencies addressing family violence. prevention programming at the san francisco unified school district, to screening for partner violence, to batterer intervention programs at the jails. the report helps us see the critical partnership we have with our community-based agency, who in the areas of child abuse and violence respond to many more families than the city

age agencies. i would like to call lenosh candell, and also katy albright, and then i don't see beverly. >> beverly is stuck in traffic. hopefully she'll be here. >> supervisor sheehy: also on the list, shauna reeves. >> good morning, supervisor sheehy and ronen, thank you for scheduling the hearing and supervisor sheehy. honored to be the department that staffs the family violence council and honored to work with our tri chairs, and the family violence council is an example of a really successful interagency work group here in san francisco that's been able to identify system gaps and sometimes failures and improve

the city's response to child abuse, domestic violence, and elder abuse. we'll be able to talked to about some of the achievements we have had in the past year and then just to echo your comments, supervisor sheehy about the diversity of our representation, i think we are one of the few councils to include our director karen roy is here, and really innovative programming happening at department of child support services to work with families experiencing domestic violence. so, example of how when you reach out to all city departments impacted you can do really innovative family programming. i would be remiss if i did not thank the staff, maggy, hired by the victim services, and lise. the report is data from fiscal

year 2015-2016. always a little behind because it takes us a while to put the report together. and so we'll be presenting on highlights on the data and then as well some of the recommendations that the family violence council has put together based on some of what we have seen with the data. so, we are going to go in order of child abuse, domestic violence and elder abuse, and start with katy albright will present the child abuse data. >> thank you so much, supervisors, for having us here todayism from safe and sound and will be presenting the child abuse highlights, menush will present highlights unless bev gets here on time, and shauna with elder abuse. and ending violence in the community, in so many ways and so many forum, thank you so

much. and equally want to thank the department and the status of women and the leadership of dr. emmy morasi for really moving this effort forward. every good movement needs a backbone organization in the department and the status of women does that. what you read in this report before you get into the child abuse prevention findings, is that this report unlike any other jurisdiction in california is truly connecting the dots between child abuse, domestic violence, and elder abuse. and we know there are generational cycles, we know these types of violences are connected, and so the fact we are looking at it holistically is a great public policy improvement in the direction for our county, and that we can share with other counties throughout california. in addition, this report uniquely is focussed on prevention. how can we move upstream in our work to end violence before it ever happens. and finally, what you'll see in this report as she said, is it's truly a public-private

partnership, that's what makes this so exciting where we can go in the future. we truly all do have a role to play in ending violence. let me turn to the child abuse statistics. a great deal of positive momentum, both on the response side after abuse happens, as well as the prevention side. let me first talk about the response side. there is a general trend that law enforcement is increasing its response to child abuse, investigations from the police department have increased 37% over the prior year, and cases filed by the district attorney's office have increased by 47%. this is mostly due to sexual abuse and child pornography cases. equally good news is that we are seeing as a city not only a decrease in the overall rate of child abuse, actually, if you look at the past 15 years, 67 decrease in the rate of substantiated cases of child

abuse, impacting all of us, great news. and decrease number of children in foster care, low of 738, decrease over the prior fiscal year. san francisco is being, leading a way in the area throughout the state and huge testament goes to the amazing work of the human service agency for being incredibly intentional how to decrease the number of kids in the foster care system. of concerning news, we are seeing a decrease in the number of reports that have been made by school mandated reporters. safe and sound where i work, however, has been providing significant training over the last few years, training last year in this report over 2,000 mandated reporters, and we are seeing 92% of our child serving professionals or saying this they are increasing likelihood to report after having one of these trainings. so, that is good news in terms of raising awareness and

ensuring we are identifying who are the kids hurt in the community. let me turn to some more details about where these reports are coming in. as menush said, the community is providing a significant amount of outreach to people who are in crisis, families in crisis. and playing a key role of being in that front end of the work. the top line which is a 24/7 phone support line run by safe and sound provides, and we have been operating for more than 40 years, we provide that sort of first response to families who are in crisis. whether or not they are seeking child care or housing or diapers or any other kind of support, we get suicide calls, calls where we are helping families get through the crisis of the moments so they don't hurt their child, and similar to domestic violence as you'll see, we are seeing three times more calls to the talk line than we are to our

child abuse prevention response line, which is very good news. we are stopping cases from getting there in the first place. the other prevention component really that has been incredibly supported by the board of supervisors and the leadership of supervisor sheehy in particular, thinking about how we are moving forward on the family resource centers. as you know, there are 26 family resource centers in every community in san francisco. and we are on the front lines providing needed services to improve family's protective factors. parenting classes, diapers, counseling, family dinners, crisis support, case management. whatever families need to keep their kids safe. it's an incredible system. i was just in san diego and in phoenix presenting on it. we are unusual in our impact on providing prevention, primary prevention support to families in crisis, and it is happening because of your leadership and because of the leadership of

dcyf, first five, and human service agency for blending their funding. so, we are thrilled in that, and it's showing significant improvement. now turn to who are the victims of abuse. and here we know that most children are victims of abuse by people that they know. it's not the stranger. 86% of those who are abused knew who their perpetrator, potential perpetrator was, and overwhelmingly there is a disproportionality, latin, and other people of color. seeing that in the numbers coming to the district attorney office, and those coming into the child protection system. it's important to note these are reported cases, these are people who are getting access to services, may already be

involved in the system. and that disproportionality is concerning to us. we also know and this relates to national trends as well that more girls are victims of violence than boys. but when we dig deeper into the data, we see that more boys are victims, particularly older boys, are victims of physical abuse, as opposed to sexual abuse and you see that reflected in this graph. next year we'll be doing a deeper analysis of who are the victims of abuse and who are the families that need extra support to ensure that we are preventing abuse from happening in the first place. finally, let me focus on a few major achievements in this area, and from 2016, 2017, again, the board was wonderful in its leadership to approve $250,000

to support child abuse prevention funding. that has been extremely helpful, in particular providing legal support to children and families who are in crisis. so, thank you very much for that funding. in addition, several years ago as you know, we have created the children's advocacy center in san francisco, and this is really a wonderful multidisciplinary partnership to provide children at risk who are coming in and telling their story to do it in the most trauma-informed way, and we are very pleased to be doing that work and in addition, not just the forensic interview piece of it, but providing the mental health services so that children can heal. not just get justice, but heal from the abuse that they may have endured. and finally, i want to highlight and thank the department of emergency management, it's all about data, we can only do our work if we have data, and the department of emergency management is doing a terrific job in collecting data and also being responsive to the other city departments in terms of getting the resources and that

first response that they need. so, i'll turn it now over to menush to provide an update on domestic violence. thank you. >> supervisor sheehy: thank you. >> i know beverly wanted to be here to present this part, i will try to fill in, but nobody can match beverly. so, just in terms of some highlights of the data on intimate partner violence for this fiscal year, one of the most concerning data points, increase in domestic violence calls to 911 that involved a deadly weapon. so, 87% increase in calls involving a knife and 53% increase in calls involving a gun. and this directly relates to one of our recommendations which is to create a program at the sheriff's department to actively go after firearms in the hands of domestic violence offenders,

want to flag that for now. and stalking calls increase to 911, partly may be, it could be there is an actual increase in stalking or just better awareness about coding the cases properly because when we look back at 2008, 0911 calls about stalking, and we know it was happening then. a lot of work to educate law enforcement and d.e.m. properly identifying the cases. one really positive note, work done by the public health clinics to screen for intimate partner violence. a lot of domestic violence survivors may seek health in the public health system, may not actively disclose, so, screening and asking everybody about intimate partner violence should be part of routine practice and we saw significant in skreess at department of public health clinics, female patients had, an increase in 80% of people being asked about intimate partner violence, and for male patients,

increase of 201% in the number of people asked. these are not people identified as experiencing, but screened, the first step. as with child abuse, we see that black and latinx residents are disproportionately victimized, and lesbian, gay, bisexual high school students are 2 to 3 times more at risk of physical or sexual dating violence. this is the chart that shows the general san francisco population, race, ethnicity, and then the people who are accessing the victim services at the district attorney's office. just in time. i'll finish this slide and then you can take over. and then seeking services in the community, and you can see that african american and latinax residents are disproportionately represented at victim services. when you look at the asian

survivors of domestic violence, you'll see they are actually accessing community-based agencies at a greater rate, not at the d.a. it's interesting when you look at the data, you can see where are people of different groups accessing services, and again, this highlights the crucial role that the community-based organizations play in providing services to some communities that may not feel comfortable accessing law enforcement. >> thank you, and thanks for doing this. oh, two hours -- >> i was stuck in traffic, too, we started late. >> so, anyway. we have drawn this little pyramid for folks 1,000 times at different venues, right?

so, if you really want to look at where the community is calling where they are reaching out, where they speak their language, where they trust us, look at community calls, 21,000. this is 2016, so it will even be more in 2017 and probably way more in 2018 as people feel less and less safe. missing number is 911, about 7,000. but looking at 3,000 going to the police department, look at about half of that actually going up to s.v.u. right? then that's investigated fully at s.v.u. and moves up to the district attorney's office. so, when we really look at the pattern, people are really seeking their services unless their lives are really at risk in the community. so we want to bring that forward. also i think you would see the

very same trends in child abuse and elder abuse as well. but certainly child abuse with 441 kids hotline, many more calls there than start at law enforcement. p ush pu-- >> so here is some of the highlights. some of the achievements and highlights in the domestic violence response for the city. in 2016-2017, the full list can be found on page 15 of the report. so, hopefully you have a full report. if you don't, i did manage to bring one with me. so, you know, they created and helped disseminate a policy and supplemental form to assist medical providers in complying with the d.v. reporting laws. oh, let me just -- ok. so, health care professionals have to report all individuals

who are showing up at a hospital with an injury that looks like domestic violence. that's somewhat controversial, right? could it have a chilling effect? could it save somebody's life? the answer is yes to both. so i think menush and the community of people around the table, that means law enforcement and the s.f. general came together and revamped that form to be the best it could be for san francisco under the current law. ok. you can read between the lines there. worked with police department, the district attorney's office and the probation department to create new protocols for special victims units when investigators are called out to a domestic violence incident. that's pretty self-explanatory. worked with the superior work and the police department to improve timely entry of d.v. retraining orders and so this was really brought, and you are familiar with the issue, brought from the community.

our attorneys, community-based attorneys came to us and said we are having a very hard time getting, you know, people are walking around with a piece of paper they think is protecting them, and it's not in the system yet. so, i am so pleased that the family violence council, perfect for us, right? brought all the stakeholders and problem solved it. meetings with the judges, records department at the police department, set up a whole new protocol and a new email address, those get filed and sent in to the courts and they are logged in at the end of every day. so, that is a lifesaving accomplishment of the family violence council. sheriff's department enacted an officer involved domestic violence policy to ensure that employees of the sheriff's department who commit domestic violence are properly investigated. so the year before that, we went through the san francisco police department. this 16-17, we got one through the sheriff's department.

so, it's -- it's not, it does not take people totally off the job but limits their access to information about the victim, third parties cannot look into the commuter on their behalf. it changes the pass codes so they don't have access through the computers, as safe as we can make it. looked at about eight promising practices from around the country. >> i want to highlight one of the strengths of the family violence council, you can have a great law, or some cases a bad law, but how the rubber meets the road where it makes the difference, so the family violence council, policies and protocols not necessarily a new law, but make sure the laws on the books are implemented the best way they can be. >> my colleague from elder abuse is up next. thank you so much. >> supervisor ronen, supervisor

sheehy, thanks for having us. i'm very tall, so, honored to be here, presenting with my tri chairs on the family voinz council about elder abuse. i've said it before and say it again. san francisco is so unique in considering elder abuse as part of a spectrum of violence. it is absolutely the truth, but i've not worked in the county yet that has looked at it that way until now, it's my honor to work with both katy and bev and menusha, and the deputy director of the aging adult services here today, i'll be talking about one of her departments. so, generally we are seeing an increase in the cases investigated at adult protective services. cases received by a.p.s. have risen steadily, 23% since 2012. and you can see the number there is quite high. so, there is about 7,303 elder

abuse cases reported. when it comes to substantiated cases, means there is some evidence to support the report, elder physical abuse cases have increased by 21% since the previous year and also d.a. victim services has increased their load by 44% for elder abuse. the top three types of elder abuse, and defined in california are those 65 and above, self-neglect cases, where the person is unable to care for their own needs, food, water, shelter, clothing, medication and california, elder abuse does not have to be committed by another person necessarily, you can also commit against yourself. so, in san francisco those are the highest number of cases. psychological, otherwise known as emotional neglect, or abuse is also quite high in the cases and then financial, and that's the type of elder abuse you are seeing every day now. when it comes to dependent adult

abuse, definition is between the age of 18 and 64, with a mental or physical limitation that makes it hard for them to protect their rights or, or carry out their day-to-day activities, self-neglect is also the top type of abuse reported, followed by psychological, and then physical. and yeah, so we are drawing an important distinction between abuse inflicted by others and self-neglect cases. self-neglect are by far the largest category. and when that is occurring, there are over other types of abuse happening as well. again we see people of color disproportionately affected by elder abuse, particularly the black and asian communities. so, looking at cases served by d.a. victim services, you will see over a presentation by those two ethnicities. there is a much more even gender distribution for elder abuse

than for child abuse. intimate partner violence, it's an issue that affects everyone. however, for the 2017 report, we'll seek to look at the gender of victims across different forms of elder abuse. sexual, physical, financial, this chart includes all abuses toward people over the age of 65, including stranger violence. i want to look a little bit different pyramid, and that cases are first reported to adult protective services in the city as people who work with elders independent adults in the city are required to report, mandated reporters, mandated to report any suspicion of elder abuse, independent abuse in the county. so, again, the number is a lot of cases, 7,303 were reported. substantiated cases, 3,302. police department cases, 608,

and then cases investigated by s.v.u., 114. we've also had some pretty big achievements. institute on aging, which i am a part, was the co-chair of the family violence council elder subcommittee with the d.a.s office and we accomplished creating a supplemental form used by police officers responding to elder abuse case, modeled on the form by domestic violence case, still in the final stages being approved by the d.a.'s office, we are pleased with it. and d.e.m., prioritized calls from adult protective services and child protective services to reduce wait times for city employees that report. so, cases, historically, that have been reported by adult protective services workers have been classified as the priority case, they could be waiting for quite some time to have police

officers respond and now they have been prioritized as a, and those were some of our achievements. some other highlights, the full list found on page 15. menusha will talk about the recommendations. >> so, just to conclude, i'm going to talk about some of the recommendations in our report. a lot of them have to do with improving some of the policies or protocols the police department and special victims unit but i am going to focus on the top one, implementing a firearm surrender program, to remove guns from persons with domestic violence restraining orders issued against them. so, we have a great law in california that provides when a domestic violence order is issued against someone, including in family court and civil cases, they are required to surrender guns they have and cannot purchase guns or ammunition, but it's not self-executing. it says on restraining order forms they have to turn in their

guns. many people do not voluntarily do that. so, we are really wanting to create a program at the sheriff's department to be able to aggressively go after the guns. it's modeled after a gun that the neighbors in san mateo county have, when they see a gun is mentioned, they actively contact the person that the restraining order is issued against and try to get them to give in the guns or go and get them if they are not voluntarily complying, and we would like to see that in the sheriff's department. so as you are looking at the budget, please, please look at that program. these are preventable homicides. not all homicides are easy to prevent. guns and domestic violence are a lethal combination. this is a restraining order flag that combination is present and so we should be doing everything we can to get the guns out of the hands of those offenders. i'm going to stop there, but obviously we are happy to take any questions that you might have.

>> supervisor ronen: thank you for this incredibly well organized presentation. it was incredibly impressive and i have to say, the family violence council is one of those uniquely san francisco things that makes me so proud of being part of the elected family here. it's just so innovative and so comprehensive and the success shows and all the statistics. i want to thank you so much, menush, for being the backbone of this incredibly innovative program and then to, you know, the three chairs for your excellent work. i wanted to get that out. absolutely we have to have this program, and whatever i can do and i know supervisor sheehy feels the same, maybe we should introduce a resolution at the board just saying that this is a cutting edge program that we

want to see here in san francisco immediately. as a way to, you know, make it clear that this is a priority for the budget. please let us know if that is something you are interested in and we would be happy to follow up with that. >> we can follow up with you after the meeting. >> supervisor ronen: that would be fantastic. and you know, just from meeting with community groups and coming from an organization working with undocumented immigrants, i know firsthand how important those strong community-based, you know, services and homes where people feel comfortable going, receive culturally competent, linguistically competent care and build important are so important for being the backbone of this system. so i just know there's a lot of anxiety in those community-based organizations about budget priorities this year, i have talked to beverly about it quite

a bit. i know that the passing of mayor lee has brought along a lot of the anxiety, he was such an amazing champion of your work, and i want to make sure that you have a champion in me and i am with you 150% that this work is crucial. it is effective, and it saves lives. and so i know that that's the same with my colleague, jeff sheehy, but i want you and the community-based organizations to know and say it very publicly that even though mayor lee's untimely passing has created a ton of anxiety in the city, that you still have incredible allies on the support of supervisors that will be by you every step of the way, because we know how critical and effective your work

is. so, i just had to say that here today, so thank you so much. it was such a comprehensive presentation that i don't have any specific questions, but i really felt important to make those remarks. >> thank you, and thank you for your support. >> supervisor sheehy: thank you, supervisor ronen. and as you noted, i completely echo the support of what you are doing, so keep us in the loop. resolution as well, we'll work together to be champions for. of course, i do have questions. so i just, one is, and i don't know if maybe i'll try to keep them in topic, so, per elder abuse, do you look at tenant evictions, one of the things i've heard, and this was talking to the sheriff, actually, who conducts eviction, she actually noted that she will go into,

she'll be conducting an eviction with someone who really doesn't have the capacity to really understand, an senior, they don't know what's going on, this whole process is unfolded, and suddenly there is the sheriff at the door and they are gone. so, is that -- i think, and given what we are seeing in evictions, and as we heard a week ago, given some of the landlords we have, the new landlords in town, such as veratos, i'm curious about that. i'm beginning to feel that may be a gap we may need to look at and partner with you. >> i come from a fair housing background so evictions are always on the radar. you will hear from jill neilson in a bit about the eviction and self-neglect unit which has my full support and hopefully your full support. i also run the forensic center

for elder abuse for the city and county, and a third of the cases involve evictions and gaps in services for those elders who are facing it. i'll let jill answer that question specifically about the program. >> and just before you start, i want to note that supervisor safai has joined us as a member. >> good morning, supervisors. jill neilson. one of the programs we operate, adult protective services and we were fortunate in last year's budget that we received some new staffing resources. we were able to initiate this past summer a new specialized unit in adult protective services. we call it the high risk and eviction prevention unit, and we are really serving those older adults and people with disabilities that are really unable to advocate for

themselves, experiencing self-neglect, may not be able to manage their own personal hygiene finances, manage their own services, and so this unit we served already close to 300 individuals, and we are working very intensively with these clients, and we are making sure that we are getting them connected before we are closing cases, and we have found a lot of success with the model that we are implementing. we have all licensed clinical social workers that are serving this unit and very close connections with the legal defense programs throughout the city, including legal assistance to the elderly that will do eviction defense, including half, and we also operate in our department the public conservator's office. so capacity, if we find a client that actually does not have the

cognitive capacity, dementia or other deficits to be able to participate in their own legal defense, we may consider them for a conservatorship, under the public guardian, a last case resort. but grateful for the resources, and the new model will keep people housed. >> and then another question. looking at your pyramids, no cases filed by the d.a. in the elder abuse. >> elder abuse are included in the domestic violence case, it's a coding issue at the district attorney's office. subset. the same unit prosecute the elder abuse and domestic violence cases. >> so, just, and this came up in our sexual violence hearing, as i look at this pyramid, is there a problem, is this -- a problem that we should be looking into

kind of, you start with a lot of reports and every single situation, which for the most part, are not in the criminal justice system. well, flip back through. i think it's -- is elder abuse, but do we have a problem that there's such a huge gap, especially once you start to engage the criminal justice system, seems like a lot of people are reporting community-based organizations but when you look down, except with domestic violence, and i really don't know if that's adequate or not, are we getting charges filed often enough? does that show up in your data? you end up with just, the very end of it, there's not -- and to what degree -- again, i did domestic violence, i know just

getting people, we have the mechanism of restraining order, that gets used so often, you create a record of the violence. and i'm just wondering in these other cases where you are not seeing a lot of prosecutions, you know, is that a problem? >> i think we could always do a better job and it starts at the beginning, are the cases being investigated, thoroughly, are cases slipping through the cracks, that's why we have done a lot of work with the police department to firm up, are they assigning cases for investigation that they should? and so now they have written assignment protocols. are we supporting victims in all the ways that we can so that if they, there is a criminal prosecution going forward they feel supported in that system. so i think we could always do a better job and are looking at ways that we can firm up and address any weaknesses. >> well, if there's any way we can help in filling some of of the gaps, i just -- again, having a record of people, even

if you don't get a conviction, but just knowing, because -- and i know domestic violence, i won't claim to have expertise, but usually the first incident is not the last. and not to note and be able to track this, you can have somebody doing something again and again, never really being engaged in the criminal justice system and the victim feels incredibly helpless. >> one of the problems, tremendous turnover at the special victims unit, with constant turning of the leadership there, and that has made it feel difficult to have policies implemented, and we have made that point to chief scott and we are hopeful in the future there will be more consistency there, and having enough officers in that unit to be doing the investigations they have to is also really important. and they have brought up staffing numbers and they could probably be even higher.

>> and echoing, we are seeing the trend and the country, increase of resources for seeing fewer cases at the justice end, and i would advocate we spend it on prevention before cases ever get into the system. it is much more cost effective as you know. economic analysis what the cost of child abuse is to san francisco alone. we have not looked at domestic violence or elder abuse, but one year of reported cases costs our city at a very conservative number, over $226 million every year. and when you multiply that and if you really think about what we think is the prevalence rate, it's in the billions of dollars. took that and put it into prevention for domestic violence, prevention for elder abuse, prevention for child abuse, we would reap much more

benefit in the community than i think we would at that other end in the criminal justice end. >> that's helpful, thank you. that is the last question i have. i just want to thank you for this amazing presentation. and for the incredible work that you are doing. >> thank you for giving us this time. appreciate it and thank you to colten for helping schedule this, a labor of love. >> thank you, thank you. so any members of the public that wish to speak? people will have one minute. >> good morning. good morning, chair. sheehy, supervisor ronen, and supervisor safai. karen roy, director for the department of child support services and also a member of the san francisco family violence council. we have been a member, a founding member, founding

department and i just wanted to support the work of this council, and quickly give you an example of what we have experienced in the department in terms of system gap. the child support program is required to close -- close child support cases where family violence is an issue. started to see a growing number of families, parents, suffering family violence wanting child support, needing child support so brought the issue before the council and they were amazing. they helped us build out training that we then implemented. we have been able to collect over -- >> thank you. so, thank you, thank you. and again, thank you for the excellent presentation.

excuse me, i need to close -- any one else who would like to speak at public comment? public comment is closed. again, thank you for the presentation. any other comments from members of the board? colleagues, do we have a motion to file the hearing? >> supervisor sheehy: so moved. hearing is filed. mr. clerk, could you call item number 2, please? >> clerk: 2, hearing on the city's overall diversion rates, reviewing how the city plans to achieve 0 waste, if not by 2020 as publicly discussed. reviewing the methodology for calculating the diversion rate and plans for increasing overall diversion. >> supervisor sheehy: thank you. i'll turn it over to my colleague, supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: now get down to the dirty work. just want to see if everyone was

listening. a lot of people are not necessarily excited about waste, but if we are really thinking about the planet and our future, waste is something that all of us deal with on a daily basis, and produce on a daily basis. and i had the great fortune of working with the front line workers in this industry, both the teamsters and the janitors, responsible for dealing with the waste. a decade ago, i know we are going to call up director rafael from the department of the environment. over a decade ago we started this conversation about mandatory recycling and composting. if many of you in the public remember, we went from one black bin, to then two and then three, where the green and the blue bin was created, and became part of our daily routine for some people.

some people ignored it for a long time, and some people still do. but in general, san francisco began to change its culture, and began to be on the cutting edge of what it meant to be environmentally responsible. back in 2002, all the way back in 2002, 16 years ago, the board of supervisors passed a resolution stating that we would send no more than -- we would be diverting 75% of our waste from landfill. and then one year later, we came out with the goal of having 0 waste by 2020. here we are, unbelievably, it's 2018, and it came out and come to our attention that we are not going to achieve 0 waste. so, the purpose of this hearing today is to talk about how and why we are where we are. how much we no longer use the word diversion, now we talk

about tonnage, interesting, watching a program 20 years ago talking about waste management and they were talking about tonnage, so i think it's a standard term all over the united states, i think we are changing the terminology, it gives a better idea how much we are producing and sending to landfill on an annual basis. we are going to hear a presentation from the department of the environment that says how much of the tonnage could be recycled and composted. and what are some of the major challenges to achieve getting as close to 0 waste as possible. myself and supervisor katy tang had an announcement last week, it may have seemed small, and the pieces of waste that we were talking about are small, they have a major impact on the environment, and that was the hearing, the announcement that you heard about plastic straws. on average, san francisco uses

about a million straws a day. and those cannot be recycled. they fall through the cracks, literally, of the machines that do the work to sort, and recycle our waste. and so we are moving toward paper and we are also moving toward changing people's behavior in that. some coffee and some takeout places consistently give little plugs for the tops of the lids, plastic stirrers, they use single use when you get takeout food, a plastic wrapped knife, fork and spoon, use it one time. it's some of the worst plastic out there, actually. it's tremendously, tremendously awful for the environment. so, we are trying to not only stop people from using materials, and change people's behavior. it's a small way we can have a major, major impact whether we think about the amount of plastic that's in the ocean, larger, there is a confluence of

plastic in the pacific ocean larger than the state of texas. that is outrageous. and so we are going to have to do something dramatic for the future of our planet, and san francisco has led the way in many ways. we are doing tremendous work, but there are a lot of people in our city and a lot of actors in our city that just have not changed their behavior. and that's probably why we are still sending about 50%, 50% of the waste that well send to landfill could either be recycled or composted. so, i called this hearing today to talk about that, to talk about the work that goes into that amount of diversion, the amount of work that can be done, and talk about the challenges that we still face as a city and how we are going to confront that, and maybe potentially lead to more aggressive solutions to achieve those goals. the first person i would like to call up, unless my colleagues

have anything to say, the director of the department of the environment, debbie rafael. >> good evening. thank you supervisor safai for that incredible introduction and commitment to 0 waste and holding this hearing, and thank you supervisors for allowing us the opportunity to come and explain where we have been and where we need to go. my name is debbie rafael, director of the department of the environment and joined today with a number of my staff who have such tremendous expertise, i wanted them to be here so that you could get the best answers to your questions, the most on the ground, street-wise, understanding of what's going on there. i'm also joined by john porter of recology and his partners. we have staff from public works here. we are here to engage in a conversation and a brainstorm

together on what we need to move forward. so peter is going to help me with that. the so, 0 waste. 0 waste means no material to landfill or incineration. the way we think about it here is getting rid of our black bins, whether those bins be the carts in a single-family home, or the huge compactor you might see in a hospital or a large commercial office building. as supervisor safai said, this goal is not new. in 2002, actually a very important context, when the board adopted the goal of 0 waste, they emphasized some very important concepts that have been the marching orders and the underlying values of our department and of recology as well. the first is producing and consumer responsibility. to get to 0 is a shared responsibility. it's not only on the residents of san francisco and the people who work here, it's also on the people who make the things that

we buy. this concept of highest and best use that when we are collecting things for recycling, we don't want to down cycle them so they have no use after one recycling episode. we want to keep using them in the highest and best quality so that they can benefit society for years to go. so they codify, the board codifies the reduce, reuse, hierarchy. the board referred to the commission on the environment on the timing. they said all right, we know this is where we want to go and by 2010 we want to be at 75% diversion rate. but commission on the environment go deeper and tell us how fast we can get there. well, the commission on the environment being the commission that they are and were at the time, decided that what was needed was the most ambitious goal possible, and aspirational goal of 2020. they knew at the time that was going to be extremely

challenging to meet. they also knew and understood that creating urgency drives action. and that's exactly what it has done. so, if you look back at that history since 2003, in the past 15 years, this city has put forward the most forward thinking, comprehensive waste reduction policies in the united states. we get calls from cities and states around the country, around the world, to understand what we have put in place so they can follow suit. so of course, we are familiar with the single use bag ban, the strictest restrictions on styrofoam in the country. 2009 was a really key date for us. that is where the city put in place mandatory composting and recycling, meaning it's not a choice, it's an obligation. it's a requirement. and because of that law that was put in place in 2009, we have the most amazing statistic of success that any city in the

world has. 99% of our businesses and our residents have three-bin system. that's amazing. so it's not about convenience anymore, it's not about availability of the service, it's really about behavior as supervisor sheehy said. it's about getting people to do the right thing, put things in the right place. next slide. and here is both the good news and the bad news slide. so, this is the slide that my team has looked at every day and motivates them incredibly to take action. so the good news is, since we started this process, we have, we had cut disposal in half, 2008 was our low point. and, what this slide does not quite show, but happened as well, in 2008, 75% diversion rate the board asked for by 2010. managed to do that two years

earlier. after ten years of decline, things are going in the wrong direction. that the trend is now going up, though if you look at 2016, our latest date, it's leveled off. but we need to reverse that hockey stick, we need to go back down again. we are still disposing about 580,000 tons to landfill. while we are sending more to landfill, we are also sending a ton more, tons more to recycling and composting. what that is saying is that san francisco is using and buying more stuff every day. yes, more is going to landfill and more to the blue and green bins as well, and we have a very, very robust construction industry going on, so more and more construction and demolition waste is being generated, put in the right place, the wrong place as well. so, 0 waste means for us as supervisor safai said, it's about the tons.

it's just, it's a metric that you cannot argue with. the tons are still going to landfill and our focus is heavily on that. so, now what i want to do, lift up the lid, if you will, of the black bin and look inside. so, when we look inside that black, and it's not just the black bins, it's city-wide, so, not everything is getting disposed of through the black bin system, i want to be specific about that. so, when you look city-wide at what's going to landfill, and the supervisors -- supervisor safai will notice the numbers have shifted a bit since i was in his office, because we looked at them again through a tighter lens and the news, it just shifts where we know things are. but 60% of what is going to landfill has a place, it has a place in the blue bin, it has a place in the green bin. 60%. 25% of what is going to landfill

also has a place, though it's not in those bins, it's construction and demolition debris. that needs to be sorted better, that needs to end up in being reused. and this 15%, this yellow piece of the pie chart is perhaps the hardest part of all because that's the part where if we don't get the producers on board, we are never gonna, we are never gonna achieve true 0. because that's where we don't have a good place for things to go because there are things like diapers, there are things like dog poop, which certainly are not sexy, but they are problematic for us. carpet, composite materials like a piece of furniture, furniture that has foam and plastic and wood, or a chip bag that is made up of mylar and plastic. these kinds of materials our system cannot handle. and so that is why it's so important for this body to stay engaged to change the way

products are made and to restrict what can be sold here because that 15%, we are powerless at our city level to really address. it's the collective challenge. all right. so, let me -- i want to dig into three of our main challenge areas, and you are going to hear from recology's perspective as well. very much mirror what we are talking about, because we work closely together, but hear through their lens of having to deal with this on the street. so, construction and demolition, no surprise to anyone there is a 30% increase in permits pulled. ok, everywhere you look, there are cranes. in 2006, this city passed a construction and demolition debris removal and recovery ordinance, which requires demolition and construction sites to take their mixed debris and send it to a registered facility. the reason that's so important,

they are approved by us as being able to sort. so they sort as much as they can so that they minimize what goes to landfill. what's happening right now is there are some bad actors out there at construction and demolition sites that aren't sending their things to those facilities. they send them straight to landfill so the mixed debris is going straight to landfill, it's very heavy. ascribed to san francisco as our waste, and so our tons to disposal are going up dramatically because of those bad actors. and gets even worse because those landfills are not inclined to tell us who those bad actors are. they are protecting their customers. we managed to get a law passed at the state to help us with the landfills. turned out to not be nearly strong enough, so we are very much struggling with how to get that information and how to go after the bad actors. i'll come back to some of our solutions for this in a little bit. second challenge i