>> good morning everyone. you guys sound as excited as i am. i am so happy to be here today. this is a project that so many people, who came together to make it happen, the masonic street scape improvement. how about a hand for the beautiful plaza. this project is a transformational redesign of what most of our streets in san francisco will be looking like. so many beautiful amenities. you can see the plaza back the nice stonework. you will hear about that today. you can see the new cycle track

which is raised for cyclists. you know, it is beautiful. the street design itself. all the landscaping. all the beautiful things that our city is evolving into. this is a model street. we have been doing these projects all around the city. a few weeks ago we were on broadway. we have done in the mission and we have many more of these projects to come. all of the agencies involved, you will hear from them. the beautiful art behind me. how about some applause for the san francisco arts commission. all that beautiful work. we will hear from the m.t.a. and we will hear from planning, you will hear from p.u.c. at all of us. this is a way that a project should be done. all of the agencies working together, along with the community and the community, most important, on behalf of all of us, i want to say thank you for all the patients. all of those phone calls, all

those concerns that we went through, you know, today all that is over and we will be enjoying this beautiful street. i can also tell you that the leadership has always been involved. sometimes when you call me or you call one of the agency heads, when you don't get the answer you want to, you always go to the top person. and the person i am about to introduce to someone who is very familiar with this project. someone who was the supervisor of district 51 this project was active. and now our mayor, london breed. welcome her. [applause] >> mayor breed: thank you, mohammed. first of all, let's give it up for the sombre band which is led by public works employees. thank you so much for being here. they don't just deal with infrastructure and clean the streets, they are artist too. how cool is that optically let

me just tell you. when i was supervisor for district five, and i first started in 2013, i got so many complaints from my constituents, probably throughout my entire career, more complaints about this masonic boulevard street than any other place else. and i am so -- i am probably more happy than anyone else besides the people who live on this block that it is finally, finally done. how exciting is that? i want to be clear. this project is about safety. we no kak sadly, this was one, and probably still is, we are hoping these improvements will change that, one of the most dangerous streets in san francisco. and part of getting to vision zero, where we don't have any fatalities as a result of the

conditions of our roads, is making the hard decisions to make the changes necessary to make our streets safe. this is about making sure people who are walking the streets feel safe. this is about making sure people who are bicycling feel safe. this is about making sure people who are driving and being safer. this is about bringing the community together for the purposes of creating a road that hopefully will lead to less problems than before. the number of challenges, the number of complaints, we hope that this will lead to the kind of results that will make this a safer and better street for all to use throughout san francisco. throughout the process, i want to thank so many people who have been actively engaged and patients. especially the people who live here. the people who have businesses

along masonic. those are the people who have had to endure many of the challenges that existed. i also want to apologize to many of the drivers who consistently complained about their wheel alignments to me. this smooth road with clear direction will make it possible to avoid that on this particular street, at least. this project includes separated bike lanes along the corridor. i know there are some concerns about protected bike lanes and it is something that we will address. newly paved roads, sidewalks and curb ramps. leiter sidewalks and pedestrian lighting. which is absolutely amazing. but this project also included much-needed infrastructure improvement. a new water main. on both sides. now, sometimes it is the things

we do not see that are the most exciting thing is to complete a project and make a city where it could. a new sewer line that now runs on both sides as well. also, this new and beautiful public plaza. applause for everyone to enjoy. i want to thank so many people who made this possible, and clearly, you see that there are so many trees. more trees than we probably need. but i want to thank the public works department for the work that they did in doing this project but also the future work that they will do in maintaining those many trees along masonic. i want to thank the public utilities commission, the san francisco m.t.a., the san francisco planning department, the county transportation authority, and when i was on the board and the county transportation authority, i hope to leave the efforts to secure

the additional funding we needed to get this project on. i want to thank the san francisco arts commission and so many that have made it possible. this project, overall, improves public safety, creates new open space for our community, and strengthens our infrastructure for years to come. when i was supervisor, high, michael, one of the leaders who basically helped move this project forward, thank you so much for being here and your advocacy of getting this project done. when i was on the board of supervisors, one of the persons in my office to help deal with many of those complaints and challenges from the folks who lived here and work here was, at the time, my legislative aide, vallie brown. she is now the supervisor to represent this district. ladies and gentlemen, district five supervisor, vallie brown. [cheers and applause]

>> thank you, mayor breed. i was told by someone, when i am riding my bike and i have photos, to put my helmet up front so everyone knows that yes, i too wear a helmet when i'm out there. kids, where your helmets. i just want to thank everyone for coming today. this is amazing. i started working on this masonic boulevard at the issues that we were having, to safety issues we were having, in 2005. there was a group of us, michael, dug, a bunch of us who came out at night when it was rainy and cold. we had our signs up to reduce the speed to 25 miles. because if you remember before then, it was a lot faster. it was our little mini freeway. we were out here it, day and night, going across the street, up and down masonic and working on the state level to reduce it to 25 miles an hour.

and then that happened. we are excited about it. we knew we needed to do more. and then we had the tragedy of a bicyclist getting killed. he was riding riding his bike in 2010 and he was killed by a car. it made everyone sad, furious, and also, gave us the power to keep moving. we needed to make sure that we needed to change masonic. needed to be changed not only for people who rode their bikes on masonic, not only for the kids that are at san francisco day school that walk around masonic, and the people who live here. they were also complaining that the noise and the pollution of the way masonic was was across a freeway. so we worked on that and we have these amazing community meetings. and michael and doug and tim and the others were at these meetings. we had 80-100 people at a planning meeting for masonic.

we had m.t.a. who would lead to them. they were amazing meetings. we were there, probably, we had 6-8 meetings that we had the community, everyone coming together to work on what will make masonic safe and what we felt good on whether we are walking, biking, driving or coming out of your home. and then back the next phase was funding it. and then mayor breed, who was supervisor breed at the time, puts the funding funding through t.a. so we could get realization that we have this beautiful boulevard. but we are not done. if you are a cyclist, we have a few blocks that need some work. as mayor breed said, we are going to do that. i was at first, a little bit where each. we will be celebrating a boulevard that we are still working on? and then i realized, and i

actually called my og, michael and others, to say why kate do we support this as it is now? and we really do. we support it because it is absolutely beautiful. when we first did -- name to the bike lanes on bell and oak, we had to change those. at first we put the bike lanes and nsa move forward we realized we have to tweak it this way and we have to tweak it this way to be safe. that is the way i look at masonic now. i want to thank everybody who has been here for the last 15 years, really working to change this. at all the departments that are involved. d.p.w., m.t.a., p.u.c., that came together and said, we will change this boulevard, not only for the people who live here, but for the people who walk, visit and bike here. thank you and i will bring up my colleague, supervisor catherine stefani because this area, we

have three different districts that intersect. we cross all the time. i would like to bring up catherine stefani. supervisor stefani? >> thank you supervisor brown. it is so great to be here today. i love that we shared this area. san francisco faces many challenges but we know that we can solve the dangers of the roadways and the city vision zero mission to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024 is a vital one to every resident. i don't think many people notice about me, but before i was appointed supervisor, i was training for a triathlon. i was training for the escape for -- from alcatraz and i biked all over the city. one of the scariest moments on my bike was on ocean avenue, or actually, on the grey highway. i was riding my bike, at the car started to come into the lane as they were turning bright and i had to pound on the side of the fan so as not to get run over.

i understand how important bicycle safety is and how important it is to make sure we are implementing changes in our roadways a cyclist feel safe and pedestrians feel safe so that our kids are safe. so to see this unravel today, to see all of this today is a very -- it is a long time coming. we have to do more of this all over the city. this project enhanced safety for pedestrians, cyclist, motorist and transit riders and it made it more beautiful. we have a newly planted -- wanted median and street trees in a public plaza which will be great to. especially for the target shoppers over there. and i think residents will also be able to walk safely down the streets and enjoy this new area. i just want to say that the collaboration of all the departments has always said we are all of the table. i want to thank public works planning, the sfmta and of course, all the residents and

businesses that endured. in the end, everyone is truly proud of what has become here and we want to thank everyone for participating and creating this beautiful new space. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. now we will hear from our m.t.a. director, director risk in. he is responsible for making sure that all the walkways and bicycle lanes and transit works around here. all right. welcome. >> that's right. thank you, mohammed to be a good morning, everyone. it is so great to be here at this point in time. i think the mayor and the supervisors said it well. this has been a long time coming. but do very well worth it. it is really a great success story from my standpoint. you heard from the mayor and supervisor brown. this really started from the community. before the city adopted vision zero on before we identified the high injury network, we had people from this community come forward and say this street is

not working for us. it is not working for people who drive on it and not working for people who ride a bike and for people who walk, for people who are getting on and off transit and driving the bus is. the street wasn't working well for anyone. we were having close to 20 traffic crashes a year just on masonic avenue alone. we had two fatalities and we came together as a community, with the community and city agencies and said we can do better than this. we can redesign the street to make it work better and make it safer and make it more inviting and that is what we have here today. we have taken what used to be a mini freeway as someone said that was really dividing the two neighborhoods in our city. at dividing the neighborhood in the city and replaced it with a beautiful safe, inviting street, that mixes together the community, and as the mayor said, we will make it much much

less likely that anyone would be hurt or killed on the street. it is now truly a neighborhood street. that happened because we had leaders like michael and others in the community that work with the then it supervisor aids, vallie brown, and with the support of the den supervisor breed tact to bring forward this planning process at -- it culminated in a recommendation for a project that we brought to the board of directors in 2012. i want to acknowledge the great leadership of the vice chair of the board and now chair of the board of the sfmta who has been a staunch advocate for safety improvements in the city. with their approval, in 2012, we got to work with public works and planning and with public utilities and with the arts commission. all working together to design and build and implement this

project. i think it is a great transformation of a city street and as mohammed said, is one of many that we have seen and will be seeing in the coming months and years. it is a great day for this neighborhood. for everybody who uses this street. whether they live here or travel through here, they walk or bike or take the bus or drive here. is a much better street and a great lesson for all of us on how to do things. we need to figure out how to do it a whole lot faster. i will acknowledge, we have heard from supervisor brown some concerns. this project is not perfect. we will continue as we do with every project to evaluate how it is performing at identify ways to make it even better. we will work with supervisor brown and the community to make sure that we make the street work as well as it was intended from those first days of protest back in 2005 and 2006. thank you to everybody. the leadership and support we

have had from the mayor and the supervisors, pass supervisors, by particularly the leadership from the community to make this happen, in partnership with the city agencies. it brings us to where we are today. congratulations to the community on making this happen and getting this done. >> thank you, edge. we will now hear from the public utilities commission, as the mayor said, some of the important things that go and a project that a lot of us don't see, but have to be part of a project are water, our power and our sewer. come on up. >> so, mohammed, i want to thank you for inviting us. as you say, out of site, out of mind. we actually have about 70% of our infrastructure is 70 years or older, especially the sewer and water mains. we are trying to prioritize them based on joint projects. so this was a prime project

where we can come together and work with other departments to get into an area one time, dig one time so that we can invest in our infrastructure. so this was a great opportunity to work with mohammed. we actually have watch what water mains and two sewer mains running down the street. so that is something that we want to make sure that we really invest in new infrastructure. we can provide vital service to everyone. we worked on the streetlights as well. so you can see the beautiful pedestrian lighting here, i don't other projects were looking at investing in green infrastructure. one theme i want to make sure, when mohammed asked me to participate in a project where we have aging infrastructure, we are definitely there. thank you for inviting me to say a few words about my hidden infrastructure. thank you. >> thank you. you all know it takes a village.

we will talk here a little bit. i know you are not on the program, but this is so beautiful and i want you to talk about this art. thank you. >> thank you, mohammed. it is great to be here today on this incredible community projects. the artist here that was selected through the competition is scott oliveira. he is originally from reading and what is incredible is he spent over three weeks on the plaza interviewing many of you, three questions. where are you headed right now? where were you born? and where would you like to go? i think for a transit hub like this, it makes a perfect conceptual concept to share this incredible story of the people that use and inhabit the space here and what is really exciting as all of the arrows point to the real place to. they are actually directional signage if you ever need to find

yourself at the corner store. or to lands end, or the department of motor vehicles. we want to congratulate scott oliver. there will be a little celebration here on saturday night. we encourage you to come back and celebrate this great work of art. congratulations to all of our colleagues in the city and for the committee champions who made this possible. >> thank you. thank you. and it takes a lot of people to do these projects. the community, all the city agencies, all the nonprofits pick one of the nonprofits that we work with very closely, we meet regularly, we really advocate for cycling in the city. we really advocate for making the city a better place. the san francisco bicycle coalition. speaking on their behalf is brian. come and say a few words. >> thank you. i want to thank the city partners that are here.

special thanks to supervisor brown and supervisor stefani for your support of this project and your support of vision zero across our city. i want to say a very special thank you to mayor london breed for your support in securing funding for this project during your time on the board of supervisors. we wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for that leadership. this project exists for a reason. it exists because of the leadership of folks sitting up here in the hard work of our city staff. but it is also the grassroots energy of every day san franciscans who would not settle for less, that brought us here. four too many years, masonic avenue was a speedway. cutting through the heart of our city. for some of the most storied neighborhoods. for too long, it has been a place for cars and not for people. i want to thank the city and our members for their dedication over the last decade to make masonic avenue a friendlier

place for people. in particular, i want to thank the folks at six masonic and some of the members who have been mentioned. their energy under tireless advocacy and years and years of patients have made this day possible. it is also important to honor those who have been injured or worse on this street. in particular, i would also like to mention a man who was hit and killed by a drunk driver on masonic a few blocks from where we stand in 2010. he was 22 when he was killed. he would be 30 years old today if he was still with us. i think of the years of lost life that will never be given back to his family and friends and i particularly think about his mother and his sister who are in germany and who wanted to be here today, but couldn't.

so there is no doubt that these improvements that we are celebrating today on masonic will make it a safer place for people biking and walking. but our work is not done here. like many new projects of this scale there be a period of adjustment as people get used to the new street designs. these designs, let's not forget to, what they are first planned in 2007 and 2008 to, and in 2010, they were considered revolutionary. it is now 2018 and we have some other ideas about what makes a great street to bike and walk on. so we look forward to working with supervisor vallie brown and the sfmta and our members to address those problem spots, particularly as masonic approaches other streets. we know for people biking, if they are not very confident, that can be a stressful spot. let's get to work quickly to fix that. as we celebrate a decade of effort that brought us here today, we need to remember

people who have died on our city streets. of san francisco and streets like masonic avenue and streets across our city are going to be transformed, we are going to achieve vision zero and make this city i just avenue's a place for people, we don't have another decade to wait. let's finish fixing masonic and get to work on the rest of the city. thank you to everyone for your leadership. i am really excited to ride my bike on these new bike lanes when i we leave today. thank you. >> thank you, thank you. so we will cut the ribbon. before we do that, i want to thank everyone for coming and especially the team from public works. our city engineers sitting right here. the project manager, our communications department to, all the engineers who worked with the rest of the city agencies to make this project possible, and of course, the team that looks after the city

every day, the street cleaner said everybody. thank you for everything that you do and thank you for coming. let's get ready and cut the ribbon of this great project. and another one down. come on up. >> doug, come on up. come on. should we say hop on up. [laughter] >> maurice, come on in. they want you in the picture. [laughter] >> it is multiple cuts. make sure you cut on zero. come on up.

>> ok. we will go. countdown. five, there you go. all right. five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] [♪] >> i have been living in san francisco since 1957. i live in this area for 42

years. my name is shirley jackson, and i am a retirement teacher for san francisco unified school district, and i work with early childhood education and after school programs. i have light upstairs and down stairs. it's been remodelled and i like it. some of my floors upstairs was there from the time i built the place, so they were very horrible and dark. but we've got lighting. the room seems lighter. they painted the place, they cemented my back yard, so i won't be worried about landscaping too much. we have central heating, and i like the new countertops they put in.

up to date -- oh, and we have venetian blinds. we never had venetian blinds before, and it's just cozy for me. it meant a lot to me because i didn't drive, and i wanted to be in the area where i can do my shopping, go to work, take the kids to school. i like the way they introduced the move-in. i went to quite a bit of the meetings. they showed us blueprints of the materials that they were going to use in here, and they gave us the opportunity to choose where we would like to stay while they was renovating. it means a lot. it's just that i've been here so long. most people that enjoyed their

life would love to always retain that life and keep that lifestyle, so it was a peaceful neighborhood. the park was always peaceful, and -- i don't know. i just loved it. i wanted to be here, and i stayed.

[♪] >> i just don't know that you can find a neighborhood in the city where you can hear music stands and take a ride on the low rider down the street.

it is an experience that you can't have anywhere else in san francisco. [♪] [♪] >> district nine is a in the southeast portion of the city. we have four neighborhoods that i represent. st. mary's park has a completely unique architecture. very distinct feel, and it is a very close to holly park which is another beautiful park in san francisco. the bernal heights district is unique in that we have the hell which has one of the best views in all of san francisco. there is a swinging hanging from a tree at the top. it is as if you are swinging over the entire city. there are two unique aspects. it is considered the fourth chinatown in san francisco. sixty% of the residents are of

chinese ancestry. the second unique, and fun aspect about this area is it is the garden district. there is a lot of urban agriculture and it was where the city grew the majority of the flowers. not only for san francisco but for the region. and of course, it is the location in mclaren park which is the city's second biggest park after golden gate. many people don't know the neighborhood in the first place if they haven't been there. we call it the best neighborhood nobody has ever heard our. every neighborhood in district nine has a very special aspect. where we are right now is the mission district. the mission district is a very special part of our city. you smell the tacos at the [speaking spanish] and they have the best latin pastries. they have these shortbread cookies with caramel in the middle.

and then you walk further down and you have sunrise café. it is a place that you come for the incredible food, but also to learn about what is happening in the neighborhood and how you can help and support your community. >> twenty-fourth street is the birthplace of the movement. we have over 620 murals. it is the largest outdoor public gallery in the country and possibly the world. >> you can find so much political engagement park next to so much incredible art. it's another reason why we think this is a cultural district that we must preserve. [♪] >> it was formed in 2014. we had been an organization that had been around for over 20 years. we worked a lot in the neighborhood around life issues. most recently, in 2012, there were issues around gentrification in the neighborhood. so the idea of forming the cultural district was to help

preserve the history and the culture that is in this neighborhood for the future of families and generations. >> in the past decade, 8,000 latino residents in the mission district have been displaced from their community. we all know that the rising cost of living in san francisco has led to many people being displaced. lower and middle income all over the city. because it there is richness in this neighborhood that i also mentioned the fact it is flat and so accessible by trip public transportation, has, has made it very popular. >> it's a struggle for us right now, you know, when you get a lot of development coming to an area, a lot of new people coming to the area with different sets of values and different culture. there is a lot of struggle between the existing community and the newness coming in. there are some things that we do to try to slow it down so it doesn't completely erase the communities. we try to have developments that

is more in tune with the community and more equitable development in the area. >> you need to meet with and gain the support and find out the needs of the neighborhoods. the people on the businesses that came before you. you need to dialogue and show respect. and then figure out how to bring in the new, without displacing the old. [♪] >> i hope we can reset a lot of the mission that we have lost in the last 20 years. so we will be bringing in a lot of folks into the neighborhoods pick when we do that, there is a demand or, you know, certain types of services that pertain more to the local community and working-class. >> back in the day, we looked at mission street, and now it does not look and feel anything like mission street. this is the last stand of the latino concentrated arts, culture and cuisine and people.

we created a cultural district to do our best to conserve that feeling. that is what makes our city so cosmopolitan and diverse and makes us the envy of the world. we have these unique neighborhoods with so much cultural presence and learnings, that we want to preserve. [♪] >> third thursdays at the commons is a monthly event series to really activate krisk

centkrisk -- civic center, fulton mall, and other locations through social operation. >> in 2016, an initiative called the civic center progress initiative was launched, it was launched by a bunch of city agencies and community partners, so they really had to figure out how to program these places on a more frequent basis. i'm with the civic center community benefit district, and i'm program manager for the civic center commons. also, third thursdays will have music. that was really important in the planning of these events. >> we wanted to have an artist that appeals to a wide range of tastes. >> i'm the venue manager. good

music, good music systems, and real bands with guitar players and drummers. >> we turned uc center and fulton street into a place where people want to be to meet, to laugh, and it's just an amazing place to be. there's a number of different exhibits. there's food, wine, cocktails, and the idea, again, is to give people an opportunity to enjoy what really is, you know, one of the great civic faces in america. when you look from the polk street steps, and you look all the way down the plaza, down market street, daniel burns' design, this was meant to be this way. it's really special. >> the city approached us off the grid to provide food and beverages at the event as kind of the core anchor to encourage

people who leave a reason to stay. >> it's really vibrant. it's really great, just people walking around having a good time. >> this formula is great food, interesting music, and then, we wanted to have something a little more, so we partnered with noise pop, and they brought in some really fun games. we have skeeball, we also have roller skating lessons, and we've got a roller skating rink. >> if you're a passion jail skeeball player like me, and you're deciding whether you're just going to roll the ball up the middle or take a bank shot. >> our goal is to come out and have fun with their neighbors, but our goal is to really see

in the comments that it's a place where people want to hold their own public event. >> i think this is a perfect example of all these people working together. everybody's kind of come together to provide this support and services that they can to activate this area. >> there's no one agency or organization that really can make this space come alive on its own, and it's really through the collective will, not just of the public sector, but both the public and our business partnerships, our nonprofits partnerships, you know, neighborhood activists. >> i really like it. it's, like, a great way to get people to find out about local things, cuisine, like, it's really great. >> it's a really good environment, really welcoming. like, we're having a great

time. >> we want to inspire other people to do this, just using a part of the plaza, and it's also a good way to introduce people if they're having a large scale event or small scale event, we'll direct you to the right people at the commons so you can get your event planned. >> being a san francisco based company, it was really important to connect and engage with san franciscans. >> how great is it to come out from city hall and enjoy great music, and be able to enjoy a comtail, maybe throw a bocci ball or skee ball. i find third thursdays to be really

reinrig rat reinriggating for me. >> whether you're in the city hall or financial district or anywhere, just come on down on third thursdays and enjoy the music, enjoy an adult beverage, enjoy the skee ball; enjoy an adult playground, if you i'm nicole and lindsey, i like the fresh air. when we sign up, it's always so gratifying. we want to be here. so i'm very excite ied to be

here today. >> your volunteerism is appreciated most definitely. >> last year we were able to do 6,000 hours volunteering. without that we can't survive. volunteering is really important because we can't do this. it's important to understand and a concept of learning how to take care of this park. we have almost a 160 acres in the district 10 area. >> it's fun to come out here.

>> we have a park. it's better to take some of the stuff off the fences so people can look at the park. >> the street, every time, our friends. >> i think everybody should give back. we are very fortunate. we are successful with the company and it's time to give back. it's a great place for us. the weather is nice. no rain. beautiful san francisco. >> it's a great way to be able to have fun and give back and walk away with a great feeling. for more opportunities we have

volunteering every single day of the week. get in touch with the parks and recreation center so come >> clerk: call to order. roll call. [roll call] >> clerk: item 2, approval of the minutes of june 22, 2018 meeting. >> so moved. >> second. >> is there any public comment? all in favor? [voting] >> the minutes have been approved. >> clerk: item three, public comment on executive session. >> is there any public comment? seeing none, okay, is there a motion on executive session? >>