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>> in room 400 at city hall, room 124. we thank everyone for being here today on a friday and joining us. so right now we're going to get started with the meeting and i'm going to read the welcome and then we'll go right into the introductions and then roll call. good afternoon, again, and welcome to the mayor's disability council, friday june 20th -- excuse me, july 20th, 2018 in room 400 of san francisco city hall. city hall is accessible to persons using wheelchairs and other assistive mobility devices. and wheelchair access is provided at the mcallister streets via ramps.

and wheelchair access at the polk street, carleton b. goodlet entrance is provided via a wheelchair lift. accessible listening devices are available and our meeting is open captioned and sign language interpreted. our agendas are also available in large print and braille. please ask staff for any additional assistance. yeah. >> thank you. >> to prevent electronic interference with this room's sound system and to respect everyone's ability to focus on the presentation please silence all mobile phones and p.d.a.s, your cooperation is appreciated. we welcome the public's participation during public comment periods. there will be an opportunity for public comment at the beginning and the end of the meeting as well as after every item on today's agenda. and each comment is limited to three minutes and the council will respond to your comments

following the meeting if you provide your contact information. you may complete a speaker's card which is available in the front of the room, approach the mike, and do your public comment or call on the bridge line at 1-415-554-9632. ana staff person will handle requests to speak at the appropriate time. the mayor's disability council meetings are generally held on the third friday of the month and our next regular meeting is on friday september 21,2018 from 1:00 to 4:00 here at city hall in room 400. call the mayor's office on disability for further information or to request accommodations at 1-415-554-6789 voice or by email at mod@sfgov.org. a reminder to all of our guests

today to speak slowly into the microphone and to -- in order to assist our captioners and interpreters and we thank you again for joining us today. right now we will proceed with the roll call. >> clerk: co chair denise sehaux. >> present. >> clerk: co which of chair jim blacksten. >> i'm here. >> clerk: and council member tatiana kostanian, absent. and council member alex madrid. >> present. >> clerk: couple member sally coghlan mcdonald. >> present. >> are. >> clerk: and council minister orkid sassouni. >> present. >> clerk: and council member helen smolinski. >> present. >> clerk: and council member kate williams. absent. item 1, welcome, introduction

and roll call. item 2, action item. reading an approval of the agenda. item 3, public comment. on today's jurisdiction within the m.d.c. we welcome the public's participation during public comment at the beginning and the end of the meeting and as well as after every item on today's agenda. each comment is limited to three minutes and the council will respond to your comments following the meeting if you provide your contact information. you may complete a speaker's card available in the front of the room, approach the microphone during public comment, or call our bridgeline at 1-415-554-9632. where a staff person will handle the requests to speak at the appropriate time. item 4, information item, co-chair report. item 5, information item.

reports from mayor's office on disability. please note that the director's reports are found in the "what's new "section of the website. and item 6, information item. assess recreation and park, highlights of the resources and programs for families with children with disabilities. presentation by emily vas questions, crts and jennifer wong, crts, crpa, and sf recreation and park department. public comment is welcome. item 7, information item. department of children, youth and their families, investors to support children and youth with disabilities. competed a competitive process for the children and youth fund in january 2018. grants awarded through this r.f.p. will provide funding to community-based programs for a

five-year period, july 1,2018 through june 30,2023. and in addition dcyf works collaboratively with the office of early care and education, first five and the department of public health to support this. and dcyf will present information on the programs funded through the r.s.p. to support children and youth with disabilities as well as its interdepartmental investments for this population. presentation by maria sue, director, director of the department. and public comment is welcome. break. the council will take a 15-minute break. item 8, information item. the arc of san francisco, inclusive educational and workforce supports and services offered at the art of san francisco. presentation by kristen

pedersen, chief of services, education and workforce inclusion, the arc of san francisco. public comment is welcome. item 9, public comment. items not on today's agenda but within the jurisdiction of the m.d.c. each speaker is limited to three minutes. please approach the mike phone or give your comment to the m.d.c. staff. item 10, information item, correspondence. item 11, discussion item, council member comments and announcements. item 12. adjourned. >> i would like to move for a motion for accepting the approval of today's meeting agenda. >> i move. >> thank you. >> i'll second. >> thank you. all in favor. >> aye. >> i know i have to say but any abstentions? i don't think so. okay, thank you. the agenda has passed. we're going on to public comment. item number 3, items not on today's agenda, but within the

jurisdiction of the mayor's disability council. we welcome the public's participation during public periods. this will provide an opportunity for the public at the beginning and the end to make any comments on today's agenda items. each comment is limited to three minutes, if you need more time please let the staff know if you need to be accommodated other than those three minutes and you can complete a speaker's card as we mentioned at the front here of the room. please approach the microphone. so do we have any public comment at this time? >> on the bridgeline. >> co-chair sehaux: on the bridgeline. please go ahead. okay. thank you. >> go ahead. >> please let me know when i can speak. >> yes, go ahead. >> hi, my name is zack karnise, a wheelchair user, a san francisco resident.

and i have to say that the conditions for people, the disabled people in san francisco are just atrocious. i don't think that it's even safe to say that we're second-class citizens, i think that we're third-class citizens. and we don't have basic housing, food, transportation and i have experienced all of these deficits myself. i have to plan my days around which buses won't pick me up, especially during the rush hour when the buses are very packed on the 14 line. i have to wait two, three, and sometimes more buses, just to get home. all of the conditions that are bad in san francisco, the ones that are affect the disabled people the worst. we're the first to be priced out because we can't afford the rent here. social security, disability, pays a maximum of $900 a month. how are you supposed to afford rent and food with that? milos wheels won't make disability -- meals on wheels won't mace disability accommodations to deliver to my home and i don't have a ramp

because there's no law that requires my landlord to put one in. and i have asked meals on wheels to leave my groceries outside of the gate and they won't do it. i've had to talk with multiple supervisors and they still refuse, even if i sign a waiver to relin wish them of liability. and community living fund which is set up by the human services agency to support people in my situation and make sure that we stay out of institutions and off the streets are incredibly underfunded and understaffed. we only have one occupational therapist for over 50 clients and i have been waiting over six months to see them just to get wheelchair batteries. independent living resource center and senior disability action, likewise, they share the same deficits of services, very hard to get durable medical equipment. and also it's hard to get housing help from either of those organizations. and not only that but i can't even volunteer from my home to help other disabled people.

which is in my opinion a really terrible form of discrimination. ihss public authorities make it almost impossible to attend their public meetings and they refuse to step in and help me with mentorship services so i can get the in-home support that i need to cook my meals and accessing basic health needs. home bridge right now is not taking any referrals and social workers are quick to deny a request for emergency homecare so that people with disabilities have no option for homecare right now. and a maximum that our providers are paid is only $14 an hour so it's extremely hard to get providers to come help us in the home. on top of that there is the issue of curb cuts and basic access in restaurants and businesses where we might have an access to the front door but we cannot access the bathroom or get to the basic areas and just recently i have been yelled at by business owners just for being in a wheelchair in their

business because they don't want me there. and they don't want me asking for anything. so i bring this to your attention with the hope that this can be addressed. i have brought some of these issues to mofd's staff at last month's meeting and i hope for some follow-up and investigation into these crucial issues. thank you for your time. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, zack. we're going to -- any other public comment at this time? >> no. >> co-chair sehaux: okay, thank you. we'll go ahead and close public comment and go to information item number 4 which is the co-chair report. and i just wanted to share some information. first of all senior and disability action sent out an email about the city budget and some news on how it affects people with disabilities, the communities and the services. so i want to thank them for providing the information. seniors and people with

disabilities did well in this year's budget. the communities will get $1 million in new funding and rental subsidiaries for seniors and people with disabilities, $500,000 in funding from employment programs, and over $2.5 million from home delivered groceries and home delivered meals and meal programs. and $200,000 for group vans and $300,000 to keep open the residential care facilities for the elderly. they also wanted to thank the sign your disability action members and their allies for participating. and also in the budget justice coalition for the participation of rallies and advocates around funding for disability and senior services. the next one comes from the san francisco department of elections and they're inviting people with disabilities to participate in an interactive demonstration of the city's next

planning voting system. the interactive demonstration will include a series of powerpoint presentations and description of the voting system, highlights on functionality, and discuss areas of interest in ranked choice voting. and the vendor will be on hand to explain some of the special features and ask questions and to do some mock demonstrations on voting ballots. and they want feedback from the community and here are some of the dates: july 25th, through july 27th, 2018. and through july 30th and 31st from 9:00 to 4:00. and this will be outside of the office of the department of elections here at city hall in room 48. and if you'd like any other information or would like to contact the department of elections, please contact them at 1-415-554-4375 or

sfvote@sfgov.org. that's the co-chair report and thank you everyone for your attention. we now proceed to item number 5, and the report from the mayor's office on disability as mentioned that the director's report can be found on the "what's new" section of the m.o.d. website and i introduce the director nicole bohn. thank you, nicole. >> director nicole bohn: thank you, council members and hello, everybody, and thank you for being here today and thank you to those following along on the bridgeline and on sfgov-tv. i have a little bit more of an informal appoint today but a number of announc announcementsl have a written-follow up to the website next week but there's a few things that i want to make sure that the council and the members of the public know about. the first item has already been

covered through the co-chair report and that's around this opportunity to provide feedback on the city's next voting system. i won't reiterate the details since they were just announced but i would like to reiterate that it is extremely important that we receive direct feedback from people who will be using our voting system and especially those who anticipate needing or wanting to vote in an electronic way. we really need feedback from folks with disabilities that can then be provided back to the vendor so that we can make enhancements and improvements if needed in time for the next election which will be coming just around the corner already in -- in just a little bit again. so please do think about participating in next week and the following week on some of those voting demonstrations.

if you're not able to do that please connect with the mayor's office on disability and we'll talk to you about other opportunities to provide feedback to the department of elections. the next item that i would like to mention is around healthy saturdays. the bicycle coalition has agreed in conjunction with m.o.d. to have a walkthrough of the healthy saturday closures that include people with disabilities and interested members of the public. the exact date has not been determined but we anticipate that that will be happening on the saturday either the third or the fourth week of august, so, please, stay tuned. and i want to thank the bicycle coalition for their willingness to help us to host that. and the next item that i want to make sure that people know about

is the plastic straws ban ordinance that is being proposed through supervisor tang will be heard at the board of supervisors this coming wednesday. and i wanted the group and the public to know that there are provisions within this plastic straws ban that would allow for straws still to be used by people with disabilities and those with medical conditions and those in hospitals and needing other assistance in restaurants and things like that. so if you would like some more information i'm happy to provide that. the department of the environment is currently working on a website with some public information about the proposal that i anticipate that will be up by early next week. so as soon as that's up we'll link that to the mayor's office on disability website as well. and the next thing that i would

like to announce is that this past tuesday the sfmta board of directors heard accessibility as part of their main agenda and our colleagues from accessible services were invited to present as well as myself on some of the issues that we hear from the public around transportation. and also general information for the board of directors about what is happening through accessible services that impacts accessibility. as part of that i want to really encourage the mayor's disability council to consider working collaboratively or inviting the multimodal advisory committee or the mac that works in m.t.a. as volunteer council people like yourself on some joint issues that are impacting people with

disabilities in transportation. we as the mayor's office on disability, we extended this offer at the follow-up m.a.c. meeting that was just yesterday. so i hope that the council will consider taking advantage of that collaboration. and the next item that i'd like to announce is that on this coming monday, july 23rd, starting at 5:30 p.m., from 5:30 to 7:30, there's an opportunity for the members of the public, including people with disabilities, to comment on your needs and concerns around emerging technology movements in san francisco. this is an open forum that is being housed through the committee on information technology and also a task force that has been appointed through the city administrator's office. so, again, i'd like to encourage anyone interested and wanting to

talk about emerging technology, especially technological accessibility, to consider attending on july 23rd, 5:30 to 7:30, one south van ness, south floor atrium. and just a few more announcements here. okay, and the next one i want to highlight is the transportation authority is also looking for community feedback on improving street safety at 10 intersections on the south of market neighborhood where there are freeway off-ramps that meet the city streets. there will be an opportunity for -- to hear about these projects and the mayor's office on disability will be in attendance and the public is encouraged to attend as well. the vision zero phase two open house which is tuesday july 31st, another evening

opportunity, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., in the 1010 mission street which is near sixth street so i would like to encourage you to participate in that. and to have a voice in our street safety process. and, finally, as an update to our senate bill 1376, which is the transportation network company accessibility for all act that is being proposed at the state legislative level, the bill will be heard once again in appropriations committee on august 8th and hopefully we'll be close to a final draft that can then be considered for approval. please stay connected to the mayor's office on disability newsfeed for more information about opportunities if participating in voicing your

thoughts and hopefully your approval and support on this effort that is specifically aimed towards asking the t.n.c. companies like uber and lyft, to have active plans, especially for accessibility for wheelchair users across the state and california. and those conclude my announcements and report for today. again, the report will post to our -- the m.o.d. website next week. and you can also always contact us directly by contacting our office. thank you very much. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, miss bohn with your report. and we proceed to the agenda to information item number 6. san francisco recreation and park. and i'd like to welcome our presenters, emily vasquez and

jennifer wong from the s.f. riskiation and park department. thank you for being here today. >> hello, good afternoon, council members. we'll get set up and go ahead and have our powerpoint set up and so we can go ahead and discuss our three things on the agenda. as jennifer is setting that up i'm going to introduce myself, i am emily vasquez, a therapeutic coordinators with the san francisco recreation and parks and we specialize in providing recreation and leisure opportunities for those with disabilities throughout san francisco. >> i am jennifer wong, the other therapeutic recreation coordinator and i thank everyone for having us here today. oh, so what we are focusing on today is we're touching briefly on the three different topics. it's really focusing on access to our services. specifically a therapeutic or inclusive after-school program.

and then, lastly, we'll discuss the children's play area assessment project which is very exciting to talk about. >> okay, so in regards to accessing our services, oftentimes the public doesn't know how to have access to our services so it's either through word-of-mouth or they come across our website. so what we do is we cover accommodations or modifications when they reach out to us. also answer inquiries and complaints from the public in regards to what they have ak acs to and what they don't have access to out in the parks. we'll pull up our website and show you our website www.s www.sfrec... and it shows questions for people with disabilities and the contact information -- before we provide the contact information it goes

into details about what type of questions that we may have. we have -- excuse me -- so program access, so program access and also questions in regards to what they have access to in our parks. and if you have any questions in regards to physical access, paulina is our coordinator and tobias is with program access. >> so what we pretty much offer are two different things. we do specialized program are where all of our programs are for people with disabilities and then we also offer inclusion support, meaning that there might be a participant enrolled in a program who might need additional accommodations or some other support in order to participate in that program. at the end of the day the big thing is communication is everything. a lot of times we don't

necessarily know where participants are and we have a hard time being able to support if we don't know. so communication, we love it. so just to go over a bit of what is the process of requesting accommodations or support, ultimately the page that emily showed that had our disability site, the sheet for it is going to www.sfrecpark.org/tr, and that will directly take you to our website. our contact information is also on that site and so the best email our department, would be rpddtr@sfgov.org and that email forwards to the entire leadership team so we're able to answer the questions in the most efficient way possible. our video phone is 415-242-5700

and our office is 415-206-1546. and so if you see and you're able to go to our website what you will see is pretty much a nice little image of people having fun, recreating. but on that right side there's going to be a link that says "sign up for our e-news" that's the best thing to do to be kept in the loop of all of our announcements on programs, special events and everything like that. if you go ahead and you click that you will be subscribed to our e-news. this slide is just an example of what it looks like and we have a beautiful colorful banner as well as provide updates on how to request the support or any special events as well. and so the most common question that we get a lot of the time, we get a lot of questions on the process and how to request accomodations and get in contact with people. again, communication is key.

so if you go to the main website or excuse me, if you go to the therapeutic recreation page we have some tabs to help to guide the website. so up here we have different tabs, and there's one for "what's new" and our blog posts and what we're highlighting today is a tab that is specifically says "request registration info -- i'm sorry "submit registration info" and that tab is directing you to our online forum that will help us to receive the accommodation request or the support requests for inclusion. and so we call it an registration info and accommodation request form. and this is separate than the actual registration of a program. so this is basically allowing us to know so that we can help to provide the accommodation and the request submitted. yes. so what it looks like is on that

tab if you click that tab, this form is embedded into the website. and we do ask that all accommodations and inclusion requests are submitted through this form. information must be submitted through that. and then a recreation assessment with one of our crtss, with emily or myself is required and that way we know our families and we get to know them and know what type of support and accommodation is needed for each family and participant. >> just to finish off what jen was saying with the submission form, this summer was our first time implementing this form and it's helped us to really keep track of the families that we're serving and we want to make sure that we're serving all families. we do have families that have been our regular families throughout the summer and they've had the opportunity to have the full summer but we want to be fair and to provide other access to our other families as well.

so this has really helped us to serve all families so that's why we're looking to carry this on throughout the school year. in regards to therapeutic and inclusive after-school program. we just had an intern that completed this project for us and we know that there's a need for an actual specialized after-school program for kids with disabilities. we're really hoping that we're able to pilot this program in the near future, some time next year, to really make sure that we're reaching out to the families. and currently we do have kids sign up for different programs around san francisco. it's difficult for some to work towards goals without a therapeutic recreational program and so it's up to the families of what they're looking for to really meet the child's goals. but we do want to have that option open for families who feel that their children would do better in a therapeutic recreation setting. we're not sure where we're going but we're just excited that we have a start after we had our intern this past semester and

we're excited based on the results that he gave us. and you see here in this picture this is actually one of our therapeutic specialized programs, with kids who are deaf or hard-of-hearing at the mission playground so we definitely have a vision which direction to go and to provide more for families and kids with disabilities. >> so the last main topic of what we're really here to talk about is the children's play area accessibility project which is very exciting. and as you know we have had a few inquiries or complaints from the public really about the accessibility of our different playgrounds. we've had a few requests for sharing information about specific features on our website. and we get calls at the office all the time. and the information is not accessible. currently we right now have

hardly any information on our website and no one really has the clear answers about what accessible features there are out there. so just to show you what is there right now... so this right now is our search feature on our current website and it basically shows you where the playgrounds are and there's a map right here and everything is kind of tagged. we have checked children's play area on the side so that we can see a variety of different playgrounds. but there's not really a list function so it's not quite extremely accessible to everyone out there. go ahead. >> if you see right here we have gone ahead and picked just one random children's play area to share as an example. this is the jean friend children's play area. it shows up on the map and it's okay, it kind of pops up, not entirely extremely great. if you see on the righthand side the website is saying that it is

accessible. so let's go ahead and see what that really looks like. if you pull up the website or the link to jean frange rec center this is the only picture that you get. the website is listing it as accessible and it's really only if you search for the actual rec center and it's not located on the general play area site. so there's a lot to improve on. so just so we learn more about this center, these are pictures, not on the website, that we have taken to just show a bit about the accessibility features per se. it looks like on this back area of the playground there's a picture right here of a very narrow kind of ramp on the playground which is kind of showing some access but it is an older rec center that hasn't been renovated in a while and that ramp is not the greatest and it kind of gets you out there but it's not quite extremely accessible. this picture right here is kind

of where that ramp goes. i don't really know where that ramp goes. it's basically a picture and it has it on the back of the play bound and it's very -- playground and it's very narrow and it drops off on the edging and so definitely room to improve on the access of the information to see what accessible playground looks like and how we're trying to improve that. and so what emily is going to go over right now is really the features of this interim project as well as exactly what this project would be addressing. >> okay, so let's see here... so the project -- we're really excited about this because lucas, who we work closely with, gave us a little bit more information about what children play areas are all about. and it's really a project which will create user-friendly accessible experience for families and caregivers to find info about parks.

it will also assist our permits division in informing the public on what to expect when they're scheduling a party, especially for children. when you rent our space with recreation and parks you want to be able to give them access to the playground. and mission clubhouse in the mission district has a great clubhouse for parties but when you look at the playground it's all sand. so it's definitely something that we want to pay close attention to in regards of assessing these children play areas. so this is a proposal that lucas is trying to really connect with with the recreation and parks department to see if it's a possibility to have an internship, and to also have an intern to assess most of the playgrounds. so as we showed here in the project, there were photos and icon descriptions on our website. with this proposal in the future we'd like to have more of a detailed assessment and clood that in our database.

and also to search for areas of accessible parking, accessible swings and accessible picnic tables. there should be a few more pictures there if we can go to the next slide, jen. okay. so swings with harness and accessible play surfaces. i'm going back to mission playground and there's an adult playground area where they have accessible play service. so it's definitely something that we want to look into in regards of the full playground area. and the results would also include screened readable lists and google map with pins and g.i.s. features, and descriptive text and videos with captions and descriptions. and here are just a few photos of certain examples of existing playgrounds to where they have accessible picnic tables. and then also accessible surface.

and then this is -- i believe it's at one of our playgrounds off of almone. and then also swings with harness. so those are a few things that we'd like to see in the future and, again, this is a proposal that we'd like to have with riskiation and parks to have an intern to assist with this project. that's the end of our presentation and if we have time if there's questions for jen or myself. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you. i'll open up questions from the council and we have a couple council members in the queue and the first one is council member alex madrid. >> alex, one sec. is your microphone on? >> good. thank you for coming and i have a couple questions.

one is what do you have for accessible fixtures right now? and the second thing is it seems like some of the playgrounds, we don't know if those places are accessible or not. my question is, how to go to those places and basically to take a look at those places and really make a list of what is available for those people that has disability. and my last question is that,

let's say that someone has a mobility device and goes out to an event in the park unannounced and they need accommodation. what then? >> i'm going to go ahead and answer question one in regards to the park site, we have over 200 parks within san francisco recreation and park so i personally don't know all of the parks in regards of what is accessible. when jen and i do community outings with our kids we do pay attention to what we have access to. ofoftentimes we visit the park before a community outing so that's what we hope for with this proposal to where we can go and assess each park and go into more detail in regards what people with disabilities have

access to and what they don't have access to. once we get that information hopefully we can make that improvement and have that improvement of making those accessible in the future. >> co-chair sehaux:. >> if i might add, i know a bit more of what the city is doing in this regard so i'd be happy to supplement that information when -- when we're through with the council questions. >> okay, that would be great. thank you. and then question number two, if there's someone who needs an accommodation for a special event like, for example, stern grove, the best thing that a person could do is call our main number and we oftentimes get those calls in regards to accommodations. and then that's when we connect with the people at stern grove in regards to their request. >> but if someone is unannounced -- >> oh, unannounced. um... i'm not too sure how they would work with that.

but i know that they do provide services in regards to making accommodations to special events since they're connected with the recreation and parks we try to relay that information to them, especially like, for example, for someone who has animal assisted therapy, they would find that information on our website. so that's just an example. so it's a collaboration of both, like, stern grove and recreation and parks working together. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. thank you for your questions. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, council member madrid. and counselor member helen smolinski. >> thank you, denise. >> co-chair sehaux: you're welcome. >> i would like to commend emily and jennifer and i know firsthand the good work they do for the disabled kids in the community of san francisco from your good work with my daughter specifically at camp matter these past few summers and thank you for your good work. a few questions... you know, honestly what strikes me most

immediately is how important of a job this is that you're proposing for an intern to survey essentially the recreation areas of san francisco. and what a big job it is and what an important job it is. so that leaves me with my first question which is, why an intern? why is there not more of a priority to get this done sooner and with paid staff? and maybe -- you know, i know that you two are subbing for other speakers and so if that's a question that, you know, you're not comfortable answering, that's okay too. >> and i do know a bit more about what the paid staff are doing so i can help with that. >> because it seems to be a heavy reliance -- i have talked with lucas about this off-line too and a heavy reliance on this intern. and interns are temporary. >> director nicole bohn: i'll

help to differentiate that. >> okay, so we'll skip that question, ladies. along these lines is there a commitment by rec and park to have accessible playground equipment, i'm talking playground equipment, at every playground in the city? do you know that? >> to our knowledge we're not quite -- we are not aware of that specifically. a lot of is because the department is so huge that, again, i yield to a lot -- >> okay, okay. could you speak at all to nicole's signaling that she can answer that more? do you have any sense though of how accessible equipment is meted out to the parks, like, how it's decided which playground gets the accessible swing or not. do you have an idea? >> we don't have a knowledge of how those decisions are made and we can only speak to hoping that this information is really

piloting a lot of really important conversations as well as a lot of the future decisions. but, again, those details are probably our superiors might know that stuff and we're just representing today. >> sure, sure. >> and maybe in regards to assessing the existing children's play area this might be something that would be connected with permits to see what's the most used facility. jen and i and our office is at mission clubhouse and we see that the playground area is always filmed up. so they may look at it in that direction in regards to what most areas, you know, people use the playgrounds for. >> i got it. you prior tie prioritize where e equipment goes. i'm very involved with support for families and other family members and parents have come to me and while it's not been my experience per se they have wanted to plan a birthday party at a local playground and, you know, they want to know about

the accessibility of it, not just get access to the playground but once they're there, does their kid in a wheelchair have a swing or their son or daughter's peers have that access and it's been hard to find this information. and i'm glad that is being rectified so that's huge. thank you for that. last two questions. do i understand this correctly that the form that you implemented this summer for families to complete, is that only accessible through the therapy site once you drill down through rec and park? is that what i understood? >> that's the most direct way of finding it is just going -- all is connected to the general rec and park website and we kind of channel all of the questions on disability and accommodations to one area of the website. and so the fastest way is going to the website and clicking through our page and then scrolling down to find that

path. that's the fastest way to get there. >> the therapy... -- >> the therapeutic recreation. >> the therapeutic recreation is what it's called. okay. >> we tell everyone that you can feel free to call us if you have any problems with it and we can definitely help people over the phone, if they are not having access to the request form or anything like that. but it does need to be done through the office or that form so that we can keep the communication to make sure that we can provide the right accommodation. or that we have the capacity. because especially for summertime is when we have the most inclusion requests, and we do sometimes reach our administrative capacity for supporting individuals. >> right, okay. i think that the form is a terrific idea and i am glad that you will continue with it. and lastly, my question is about the after-school program that you're piloting. can you share at all -- i think that it's a terrific idea first of all, but can you share any of what the findings that you your

intern had after this first trial run? what was so interesting, anything surprising? what is making you go forward with it? and are you thinking of partnering at all with sfu unified, with the schools? is there any thought to that? >> in regards -- jen and i we work closely with andrew who is our intern and in regards to the findings -- next time we'll bring the survey -- the way he did it is went to each after-school program and he had different locations in regards to where parents may want afte n after-school program. and with families with two-parent households or sentence parent households where they're working and we want to make it as easy as possible for the families as well so we're trying to meet that middle ground where we can find something central in san francisco. but we found -- i don't remember the percentage of it but we did find that some wanted to stay

with inclusion for after-school programs. but we had some that also wanted a therapeutic setting. so we would continue with inclusion but we wanted to have an option for a therapeutic setting after-school program. so it's still in the beginning process of it but those were the findings that we had in regards to it and i would say probably -- correct me if i'm wrong, 70% to 80% were requesting for an after-school program. i don't know if you want to child in and add more to that. >> i think that it was maybe even a bit more than that. and the reason i think that the few percentage that said no was really because they were satisfied with the current offerings for them for those specific families. and the whole takeaway from that project was really the quantitative data that would allow us to talk to our department to show them the importance of it. and so that we could have our families really with the testimonies and the requests captured and that was the big baseline and takeaway from that

intern project. it is easier to talk within our department when we have an intern work on something sometimes. so sometimes we like to try to steer our accessible goals towards intern projects so that the department can notice it more. >> and we also know that there's a great after-school program at promoy after-school program and so if we have another after-school program on the other side of town to where if palmroy has a list for after-school programs we can kind of connect and partner with each other in regards to that. but, again, as jen mentioned some families are okay with inclusion after-school programs. so, again, we don't want to have them rule out that option and just also to have another option for them. >> okay, thank you. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, council members. and council member orkid sassouni. >> yes, thank you.

hello. i will try my best to summarize and to get right straight to the point. you know, great in terms of services and the san francisco area, but i know that there's -- that, you know, the playgrounds are worn out and they tear easily and they're in disarray. how often are they actually attended to and repairs take place? i notice that there's quite a bit of holes in the rubber and the swings are, you know, just not quite hanging properly. for example, in delores park there's one example. you can see broken swings and, you know, i -- i am concerned that children are playing on that without supervision sometimes and just having a ball out there. and get a little wild and with the equipment in disarray. so it concerns me.

there's no ranger or anyone coming in and having a look at safety checks on a regular basis. so that is a red flag. and let's see, coret park is great, good. and bishop -- excuse me, mission playground is a great playground and it's a little more work because of the gate -- the gates add an interesting effect. you have to get through the gate and turn knobs and things to get through. and there's others that i can't name. i would say that, yes, a little more work is needed in those parks. in terms of being in touch through email what would be an estimated time of response? how long of a period before a response would be expected? that's one question. well, sure, go ahead. >> specifically for playground maintenance on the parks -- or the structures -- >> any of the -- yes, yeah, how

often is that actually repaired? is there a budget for that or anything? >> yeah. so one of the challenges with our department is because we have over 200 parks i and different play areas and i was trying to remember how many we had and trying to see for maintenance and things like that. internally we have a work-order system that helps us with crea creating -- not updates but addressing safety concerns for playgrounds if it's the swing that is broken, and the slide is cracked and things like that. and so typically if there's something like that and the person is concerned with that and let the staff know we notify our internal system and we're currently streamlining our processes for our maintenance system. i cannot remember what the abbreviation stands for. but we are working towards that and we're working towards ways of communicating to make sure that our parks are being maintained in the best and the most efficient possible ways.

but keeping in mind that we don't have people working full-time in every park because it's a variety, a group effort. so if you see something, please tell us so we can report it. >> to add to what jen said about our internal process, the great thing is that we have someone new that works for this internal area and he's been with us i believe for a month or two. and his process is to have a sticker. so if somebody from the public calls and says this needs to be fixed he'll put a stick or it so the public don't feel that they're ignored to show on the sticker that we hear you and it's going to be fixed and it's in the process. and so the public is aware of it. >> brand-new idea. >> okay, excellent. and then if someone was to email you, what would be an average response time? is it three days? i mean, i can't expect it to be immediate but what generally do you think would be good to say?

>> if you email our office we will try to get back to you as soon as possible and we really aim to get back pretty much in a week unless we have a lot, a lot of emails. so we can notify you but we're not sure on the actual turnaround time. in terms of priorities for fixing areas in the parks and playgrounds, the number one is really a safety concern. so if it's generally something is completely unsafe it's going to be attended to faster than something that just a cosmetic complaint or inquiry. yeah. >> okay, excellent. one last thing -- the registration online, you know, it's a tad complicated and just some input, it's not a fun experience to go through. there is -- you know, the summer programs that you have th