strategic planning values reflected sfhss as an organization, 83% and the final measure, strategic planning values represented me as a person, 91% of our staff agreed or strongly agreed. when it came to both the all-staff planning sessions one resounding theme was your voice matters. wanting to put it forefront your experience matters, your role matters, we want you to feel a part of the plan and its creation and the business and everything we are doing moving forward, seeing yourself as a part of that process. for the size of the stakeholder sessions, interestingly enough, we did two sessions at noon and one at 5:00 to afford a little flexibility in the day, we had both larger sessions that filled our conference room and with smaller sessions people afforded an opportunity to disclose more intimate matters about their personal membership experiences that were both

positive and challenging at the same time. that size of group afforded that level of intimacy that might not have happened in the larger group. we were glad to see that variation. large group share outs and small group discussions to create those same atmospheres for disclosure. our charge is really forward for maintaining our commitment to that level of engagement for the future and moving forward involving our partners, our staff and our stakeholders and we would like to extend our sincerest appreciation to everyone who participated to our staff and i see stakeholders here that were just with us yesterday, so we thank you for your participation as well. >> president breslin: thank you. >> may i inquire about the staff. all staff, managers, front line folks as well? >> that's correct. we have about 50 staff members.

10 helped facilitated and at least 50% contributed to the survey so we saw some really good numbers. >> thank you. >> great. lauren anderson. we are back on page 7. we have a list of guiding principles, intended to be guardrails and guidance how we solve for issues of today and tomorrow. we have identified in just alpha order the guiding principle listed below. there are a few comments that i would like to make on the guiding principles versus reading them. on collaboration broadly in terms of with members and with city departments and health providers and partners in general is required and needed in many of the things that we are looking to accomplish in the future.

on the data driven insights it's extremely important but i think you know, what we heard consistently over our conversation the last couple months is relevancy to hss so that's in the forefront of our mind as we think about solutions and programs and services. the other piece that you will see throughout the document in more detail you will hear us talk about social determinants of health. conditions which people are born, grow, live, work and age. really the socioeconomic factors neighborhood zip code race ethnicity gender income education, housing, food security, etc. and there is a fair amount of research out there that

articulates 50% of health outcomes are determined by social determinants. you have yant who could talk hours, she is a deep expert in the area. coming to the forefront health despairities. abbey did you want to add anything there? >> we recognize this is an area that will require education. we just received an article yesterday or the day before that mike clark forwarded from the actuarial society where they have taken on this matter as well looking at health equity from an employer benefit perspective and we are scheduled to hear from kaiser tomorrow. about their work of integrating the work they have done on

social determinants through their community benefit arm into the integrated delivery system. there's a few systems across the u.s. that have really stepped into this, montessori, guysinger. there's a lot we know and solid understanding we have to solve for some of these problems or we won't get to the root cause. >> social determinants and cultural. >> cultural is part of it. economics have a big part in it. age. where you live. they affect our health seriously and we don't even assess for that. when we don't really know how to assess for that.

i was just reading an article about work that's been done in oregon, trying to build in assessments and it's really challenging. it's a cutting-edge kind of thinking but it's a nice merge that's always been kind of separate. >> san francisco has a diverse population, more so than other areas. >> we need to ask our self hard questions is the delivery of our health services equitable. another article i was reading earlier today about maternity care and health outcomes across different ethnicities and races are quite variable and we need to address that. >> moving onto page 8. before we go into more detail

this is a framework from a member perspective, the health cycle and we are trying to make the goals and objectives we just discussed a little more concrete and how we envision those goals and objectives to materialize and benefits programs and services are outlined on this page. so if i could walk you through this page, the member is at the center. and the member at some point could be well, at some point could need care. at some point could be receiving serious care or have a chronic condition. surrounding each category are types of services, programs, benefit design that are there to support the member in those categories of health. and how they experience health care within those particular areas.

the services and programs that would be available to say a member who is well. there would be a lot of things around well being, stress management, a lot of the more preventive care and you will see if you look at the member who is a patient there are more around condition management, specialty care for some of the complex care. so this is just really an illustration to put it to paper in terms of the concepts we are talking about. >> i like this slide. i think it captures everything in one page. it nails everything down so you don't have to read the whole book so i really like that.

>> i like it as well, it's a matter of how it's illustrated and i would like to come back with a few suggestions to you. >> please. for now, or later? >> for later. i'm sorry. i said i would like to come back to you. later. with some suggestions prior to the next meeting, i will send an email. >> wonderful. i would like to orient you to the rest of the deck. we won't go through that in detail but i want you to, starting on page 11, so what we have done in these sections are to take each of those strategic goals, identify strategies within each of the goals. each strategic goal has

anywhere between 3-5 objectives. and then if you move to the right side of the page for each objective we have a business plan initiative of the actions that we are going to take to ensure that we fulfill the objectives. if you move to page 12. initiatives reflected in the plan year we anticipate taking some action, evaluation discovery. you will see them noted by year 2020-2021-2022. i would like to provide definition for some of the bold cap words on page 12. you will see words like action, pilot and discovery. and it was a way for us to basically indicate action.

there's a good amount of knowledge in this particular business initiative so we are taking action to review the options associated with each of the business initiatives. on the categories categorizing as pilot more that make sense and seem to align with our objective, we need to do a much deeper dive and take a more measured approach to implementing those programs, it's the complexity of that particular action or that we just need to have a much deeper understanding so that's the pilot. and then in discovery, i would take that as more as emerging solutions and so we want to take, again, a much deeper dive and understanding what it is, the relevance it has for your population before we take action to implement a program service or what not. so those are the words there.

and you will see each of the strategic goals have these two pages on the following pages. >> the team with president breslin, this is much more filled in than what we dealt with in our two and a half hours. again, these are not the ten commandments written in stone. this is a framework to think of strategic plans over the next three years. i think the goal is the strategic plan offers not only the specifics but also the flexibility and the focus. so i agree, again the focus on the well-being of the member in all stages. we have to keep coming back, these categories may move and we may be moving quickly from pilot to action or whatever. i hope we don't get locked into thinking this is a time frame,

this is too soon, strategic plan says not until 2022. we may have to. i want to remind people to not get too anxious, remind me not to get too anxious about the plan. >> thank you for that clarification and i'm yearning to ask one question behind all this. where is it, or under what category will be address the sustainability and the future of the city plan. >> i knew you were going there. can i take us back to that 11 x 17? >> yes. >> okay. so the actions we have outlined or the business initiative we have outlined for plan year 2020 are really focused on addressing some of the key issues today.

one is the city plan. two is around mental health and behavioral health. the third is really around optimizing the current services and programs that you have. this is just my discussion wanting to ensure we were thinking about what we need today do for 2020. >> i'm trying to figure out where the strategic goal area this is coming under. >> yes. >> is my question. >> yes. so to answer your question specifically, they are in a couple different places, but for example one area we will look is around actions we are taking with the r.f.p. and the piece that we will look at in terms of alternative ways of looking at your risk pool

and looking at different financing mechanisms to address the issue of the inability and debt spiral within the city. they are captured here so that is definitely on the forefront of our mind and definitely something we have to solve for. >> i guess, just generically, so we don't lose it under some of these themes, you have hit upon some of those carry-over items from our prior strategic and operational efforts and where we are talking about them.

just to see some of that as a point of continuity that it hasn't gotten lost in this effort, you have done a tremendous job outlining and giving a broad overview and responding to what the landscape is but we also know that we have near term issues that have got to command our attention in a very immediate way. >> absolutely, we will make that specificity. >> thank you. >> would you like me to highlight or do you have specific questions. i don't want to read the spreadsheet to you. >> for me, i think the way you have outlined this to date has a lot of clarity to it. you have filled in and so forth. i guess the question that is

ultimately going to come to us as we start thinking about strategy where are the resources both time and staff and whatever else it will take to execute on this. as we get into maybe that's where organizational excellence is a category. if we are going to have to expand staff or redeploy staff in a different way to help us to do something or if we are really talking about new partnerships, kind of who might they be kind of thing. some of that specification needs to be threaded in here somehow. i don't know if that's where you are planning to go next or not. >> yeah, that's exactly where we wanted to go next. we wanted to present the high level and get your support, buy-in and questions regarding that. and we have drafted some of those plans you are suggesting

some sort of a work plan. pamela, mitchell and i have had a preliminary discussion about resources. we are coming up again on the budget cycle, so it's timely for us to have this discussion as far as any resources or reallocations we might need to do within existing resources. we plan to have all that prepared for you at the october meeting. it's time to move on this at this point. with your approval we will be able to do that. and we are already ramping up on some of these activities we know are before us regardless.

>> concierge services. i'm trying to figure out how that would work. >> so the model is to help employees, guide them through their health journey. so basically you would help an employee -- you would help them set an appointment, really to advocate and help move the member through the health care system. >> that would be our staff? >> it could be an expansion of the staff, it could be in partnership with existing health plans, it could be a specialty vendor that provide that's type of service. i don't think we have the answer to that question in particular in terms of the specific vendor but there's a variety of providers that can do that.

>> some of these classes, pre-diabetes, there's no influence on that. it's difficult to get one -- >> i'm sorry, i'm having a hard time hearing? >> pre-diabetes classes. prevention. all of this is when you are sick. even in blue shield, physical therapy is not good at all. we have talked about that a lot but nothing ever changes. so are just basic things that have to change and even the skilled nursing issue that was not an center of excellence at places they use for sure. but those are just examples of things we have had problems with, we haven't been able to get resolved. just basic stuff, you know. you would think that pre-diabetes classes would be

easy and free. >> stephanie and her team has done an amazing job on the well-being side. there are so many services that haven't been optimized or utilized and how do we spread together what you have today in capability to knit that experience, there are opportunities to talk about how we can streamline and optimize programs available today. >> optimize. >> if i can just say, one of the things i like about this version as it's evolving is number one, all these issues are in the plan holding ourselves accountable to look at our own data and finding out where are the areas that we need to prioritize. we have heard discussion of mental health and discussion about centers of excellence but it's in the plan, actually, it's buried in there but there's a lot of reliance on

our staff in our own organization to help us prioritize. obviously we would like to do everything at one time but can't. and i think there's a lot in here that looks like a laundry list of issues. and one of the reasons why i thought the "new york times" article on what comcast is doing is quite interesting is because they are trying to go through the same laundry list we are going through and trying to design, really along the same strategic plan in terms of their employees. the plan, though sometimes it's lost in the forest, the trees are there around looking at our own data and moving forward.

>> commissioner scott, you mentioned the planning process and how i think that it's been a tremendous opportunity for us to sort of build our shared knowledge amongst the entire team of staff, stakeholders, board, everyone understanding and getting us aligned to go in one direction. there's a lot of value in that, often having done as many plans as i have done over the years, they sort of get ingrained in what you do and yes they do adjust and change over time but the planning process itself is enormously valuable, not just the end point. so i think that's been very helpful. i think the other thing that we are clearly seeing in the comcast article that's why i included it, there's a growing movement amongst employer purchasers of health benefits to kind of take the reigns a bit because there hasn't been

the kind of movement that the employers need to contain and sustain affordable benefit packages. so to that end, i've had a meeting with the silicon valley employers forum, and with purchasers to see where we are aligned, pacific group on health, catalyst for payment reform, considering what we do with the ten county survey. are there other similar interests we can do to have some purchasing power? because as big as we are, we're not necessarily big enough to influence the kind of changes we all recognize we need in order to have a sustainable system. so i think there's a lot going on that if we are measured and data driven and work in partnership, we perhaps could have a bigger impact. our obligation is clearly to the members first. but we are in a pretty big fish bowl.

i think having power and aligning our needs and our desires for where improvements need to occur, could have a significant impact over time. >> i didn't have anything else. i think abbey is coming back in november with a full draft of the strategic plan. >> i'm sorry, you may want to speak up. >> i didn't have anything else other than the next steps abbey indicated in terms of coming back in october with the full details of the strategic plan that would include the measurement strategy as well as organizational excellence plan and project and execution plan. >> commissioner w. lim: just one comment.

once we finalize this i would like to see a glossary of terms at the end, we have a lot of acronyms. it will be publicized eventually so i would like to see a glossary of terms for all the acronyms. >> yes. >> commissioner w. lim: thank you. >> thank you. >> president breslin: any other comments from the board members? public comment? thank you. >> good afternoon, board members, and welcome to our new secretary. clara, president of ercs, i enjoyed participating in the group yesterday and finding this an interesting process. thinking that we are going along the right lines and thank you, commissioner scott, for some of your comments. i didn't have to make them, so i appreciate that. but i'm wondering also, i think we are an unusual employer in

the sense that we also cover all of our retirees for lifetime. and a lot of private employers and some of the other public employers don't necessarily offer those benefits so they come off when someone becomes eligible for medicare. i think we have to consider geography as one of the issues to throw in here somewhere because we not only have active employee who's live in other areas, my favorite people in tuolumne, hetch hetchy. it impacts their families, dependents. we have them all over the world, all over the country. i think we also have to take a look at the nature of the work. and i realize workers comp is a very separate section. but it takes care of that individual when they are injured. it really doesn't deal with

much with regard to prevention. and i think we need to find a way to collaborate more with various departments where we have, for example, utility plumbers in the p.u.c. water system in hetch hetchy where we have the high tension layer, the overhead workers dealing in the muni system but also hetch hetchy, but also firefighters experiencing different unique types of cancer because of the chemicals. i think we have to look beyond what we can do to address those issues. and when we talk about concierge services, i'm thinking education of our members and how to navigate the system and how to best utilize their health benefits to care for themselves and also their families, is very important. so they can understand how to maximize their benefit at the least cost to them but also how

to stay as well as possible. and in many cases when we have employees working in remote areas, we have dependents living in those remote areas. i think we have a lot of challenges. most of our people are here in the bay area. but we still have to address those issues with people in more remote areas. so maintaining city plan is crucial. yesterday we had a firefighter whose first question in the door was, what's going to happen with city plan? because a lot of people move away and need those services. i just wanted to bring up some of those other issues and after reviewing more carefully we may bring in more suggestions as well but thank you. this is an exciting process so far. >> president breslin: any other public comment? seeing none. item number 6, please. >> clerk: item 6, discussion item.

open enrollment update, mitchell griggs. >> good afternoon, mitchell griggs, deputy director of the san francisco health service system. president breslin and commissioners, i wanted to give you a brief update about open enrollment this year. we began this process last year of including it in the september meeting. we went through a really big demonstration with all the configuration and people saw the rates and the mailings, now that you can remember that from last year i want to brief you for what's changing this year. so on slide one, we always want to introduce what our theme will be this year. what are you seeing are images in the shape of an o like last year, when we want people to see some from a distance that

means open enrollment. we will use this on all of our posters, flyers, environments that our open enrollment mailings go into. so this year, you will see the individuals that are included in this photography are actually employees and retirees members. what we want to do and we began late and handled this year we got a photographer and went to several departments and took pictures of employees in those departments and their surroundings. this goes back to our tie into our strategic plan to engage membership. we feel if we are trying to communicate to members one way draw attention by showing something they can relate to. which is themselves or the areas where they work. versus using stock photography which may be pretty pictures of san francisco.

we wanted to personalize. it's a big job and we have an arsenal of our own photography to use throughout our communications throughout the future. benefit guides will be available to new hires and current employees and retirees through the next year and on each area, city college, retirees, school district we utilized hhs retirees or individuals in those particular employers. on slide three, i just wanted to briefly show you the numbers here, open enrollment mailing. total of about 76,000 open enrollment packets we will be mailing. just about 1,000 more than last year. to make that big mailing happen, there's several

different segments here. the first thing that we do is create mailings, very specific letters, very specific communications to each one of these groups which is the employers mostly and retirees with and without medicare. i broke down the numbers a little bit there for you. one up to three of the next, members included in self service which is new this year and members eligible for city plan choice, not available. also new this year. medicare members with non medicare dependents living in kaiser region. we added oregon, washington and hawaii. on slide 4 we wanted to do a deeper dive and talk about our self-service roll out which is the first time we will offer e-benefits or people could enroll during open enrollment

online. speaking of our letters, the self-service segment of that we had a letter to retirees, including about 4,000 or 4,400 retirees in self service this year. this is a unique challenge for us. technically, i won't get into the details but to get access through the health system now that they are no longer an employee has been a challenge. vision of the controllers office has worked together to do. the first open enrollment mailing weren't to those retirees included in self service. there's about 4,500. encouraging them, letting them know it will be out there for them, that mailing will be followed by another mailing, with a password to go on. the other letter on the right will be included in the open enrollment mailing that will be

receive today everyone else. providing instructions how to get online and encouraging them to do so. manager of enterprise and analytics really did the heavy lift on getting this completed self service as well as configuration for open enrollment as well as several other things. i want to give her the opportunity to speak to these things, so i will turn the presentation to her. >> thank you, mitchell. anna with analytics. on our next slide here we are showing who is included in the self service roll out. i know it's probably present on everybody's mind but why isn't everybody included so let me address that now. i think probably the first department in the city that is really leveraging people soft

and self service benefits for the retiree population so we are really excited to be a leader in that area. people soft where we do our payroll, leave of absence and also now with the financials, the vendor management and of course our benefits administration there, but getting people to the self-service portions, the roll out from that through the controllers office is really focused on active employees that's 30,000 there that aren't fully on the system because not everybody in the system is on the city's windows active directory. i won't go into technical details, we are all on different systems so because of that, we can't get everybody who is inactive on there and they have just been working hard to try to get all the active employees there and they won't be done with that until

roughly end of first quarter next year. so we came and held up our hand and said wait we would like to get some of our retirees going. because they are so focused with resources trying to get all the city and county employees there first, we took on, with some help with d.t. and controllers office, we have taken on the on boarding of the retirees. we had to have an agreement how many we could do knowing they are trying to on board 30,000 active employees. we wanted to make sure the experience is positive for everybody involved. we can't have another 20,000 retirees calling the d.t. help desk while you have 30,000 other people calling. you know what the phone calls just into our offices in october, can you imagine throwing 50,000 phone calls that way. that's the reason why we had to scale back the retirees.

also not every retiree record exists in the system the way it needs to exist today. the scope was to look at most recent retirees and work backwards from there, they are more familiar with people soft. that's what you need to log in. that's how we got to the 4500 population there and again with the city departments who we have really focused since not everybody is on self service, departments on self service today and have some familiarity with the environment. that was a lot of negotiations trying to figure out who the population was. there's 24 city departments in addition to the 4,500 retirees. on the next page you are seeing a few screen shots just quickly of online open enrollment, the e-benefits. we have been working diligently with vendor as well as our

systems division over the past few months to layer a skin over peoplesoft. peoplesoft is not very intuitive out of the box. so we are laying another interface on top of it so it will help people navigate the environment and ideally will just make it very easy to make your elections and click to the next screen. here is a look. these are out of our user acceptance testing environment of what it will look like, we will have alerts on the main page, there will be articles on the main page, links under the employee link section, it will say employee link even though you are a retiree, because it's the employee portal and we don't control that part of it. next slide, you are actually seeing the environment itself. you could see at the top there's those green dots that help you navigate where you are in your open enrollment

elections. a very clean look to it. your back buttons. next buttons. we are right now putting together all the help documentation. some additional web pages with resources for who to contact. there's videos posted there, there will be documents posted there to guide people through. any computer tablet, mobile device, smartphone, you will be able to use to access our e-benefits. the next screen is another one showing again where you will review your election and i will have mitchell cycle through them. it's just a few screens we threw on here, your old elector. audit tables built behind all of this, because we have to

capture this information that we traditionally have captured on paper and put in your files and finally we have our confirmation statements, not the official we will mail in november but a record of what a self-service user submitted. elections aren't finalized until we have everybody's proper documentation, etc., that's why even though they will be able to print out this statement, they will want to look for the actual confirmation we mail out late november. we are still moving, it's still not migrate today production but we have another week and a half and i anticipate it will be there. but a shout out to everybody on the hsf team and the controllers office and department of technology, identity and access management group and d.t. service desk. they have been very interested

in helping us make this a reality and i will turn that back to mitchell. >> before you leave, through the president. as you get to the stage of confirmation, you crossed all the other thresholds for the enrollment. is there an email sent back to the individual saying you completed it, or here is your number confirming you have done it? something in the environment itself. beyond the document that you might send later? >> there's the statement that you print out and it's date and time stamped. you could go back in over the course of the month and decide to make other changes. so all of our documentation, both the language in the environment and all the help materials is clear that we take the final version as the version of truth. >> and i, as the enrollee get a

copy of that? >> you will be able to print it out. there's no system email generated because it works off peoplesoft. >> i understand. but it's like the voting environment. you walk away and you don't know if it really got counted or not when you just run your thing through the machine. >> that's why we encourage people to print or save to their computer that statement. even with your paper enrollment, if it didn't come through our fax and you are like, hey what happened you will have your copy to get in touch with us. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> president breslin: commissioner lim? >> commissioner w. lim: is it biweekly, monthly? >> yeah, and it's based on your pay group. so for active employees it's a

biweekly amount, for retirees, it's a monthly amount. >> commissioner w. lim: i'm not sure, if you could specify biweekly or monthly and on the cost summary is it for the year, that kind of thing. >> great. thank you. >> commissioner w. lim: and a side note, i noticed with the three big departments, department of public health, public utilities commission, sf muni, if they are aren't there, it's the system they are using? >> yeah, they are on a different active directory. we look forward to getting them there. [please stand by...] .

>> very good job. any other questions? thank you. public comment on this item? no public comment. we will move on to the next item excuse me. we will have a break. a ten minute break.

>> neighborhoods in san francisco are as diverse and fascinating as the people who inhabit them. today we're in the sunset, where we'll join supervisor tang for the inspiration of this show, where we explore san francisco, one neighborhood at a time. hi i'm katy tang the district 4 supervisor in san francisco, which is comprise of sunset and parkside neighborhoods. i think what makes district 4 unique is that we have so many different cultures here. we have so many different generations of people. different experiences and that makes it a vibrant neighborhood. for example, which you go down urban street you can do to a japanese restaurant, chinese restaurant, american restaurant, and the

cultural diversity is just what makes it so amazing my name is ching le, and i'm the owner of the kingdom of bounty. 17th san francisco, 94116. we make the most authentic and different kinds of dumplings and dim sum. recently more and more popular because they are vegetables and meats that we use fresh vegetables and meats in the business. it's really inspired to start discover your district series, because i wanted to find a way for neighbors to come and get to know our small businesses and our neighborhoods. get to know each other, get know our office, and do so in a setting that was unintimidating and fun. so i launched this idea call the "discover your district," where we go every month to one or two small

businesss in district 4 and we have done things such as learning how to make dumplings that we're learning today and there are so many different activities that we have exposed our residents to. >> today is the very special day, because the city of san francisco hosting this for san francisco city. learning how to make dumplings and knowledge of dumplings. they love to do it and all enjoy it. >> this is definitely not my first time making it, so i have definitely improved a lot. the first couple of time s i tried to make dumplelings they looks inedible. they have definitely improved. there is a special dumpling eating contest, which is amazing. everyone those eat the dumplings that they made and see how many they can do. i'm curious as to how many

they going to be able to down today? >> don't forget to write down what you are eating today. >> we make all different kinds of dumplings and enjoy what they made. so after that, we'll have contact how many pieces of dumplings they can eat and announce the winner today. >> manufacturing in cities creates this perfect platform for people to earn livelihoods

and for people to create more economic prosperity. i'm kate sosa. i'm cofounder and ceo of sf made. sf made is a public private partnership in the city of san francisco to help manufacturers start, grow, and stay right here in san francisco. sf made really provides wraparound resources for manufacturers that sets us apart from other small business support organizations who provide more generalized support. everything we do has really been developed over time by listening and thinking about what manufacturer needs grow. for example, it would be traditional things like helping them find capital, provide assistance loans, help to

provide small business owners with education. we have had some great experience doing what you might call pop ups or temporary selling events, and maybe the most recent example was one that we did as part of sf made week in partnership with the city seas partnership with small business, creating a 100 company selling day right here at city hall, in partnership with mayor lee and the board of supervisors, and it was just a wonderful opportunity for many of our smaller manufacturers who may be one or two-person shop, and who don't have the wherewithal to have their own dedicated retail store to show their products and it comes back to how do we help companies set more money into arthur businesses and develop more customers and their relationships, so that they can

continue to grow and continue to stay here in san francisco. i'm amy kascel, and i'm the owner of amy kaschel san francisco. we started our line with wedding gowns, and about a year ago, we launched a ready to wear collection. san francisco's a great place to do business in terms of clientele. we have wonderful brides from all walks of life and doing really interesting things: architects, doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, other like minded entrepreneurs, so really fantastic women to work with. i think it's important for them to know where their clothes are made and how they're made. >> my name is jefferson mccarly, and i'm the general manager of the mission bicycle company. we sell bikes made here for people that ride here. essentially, we sell city bikes

made for riding in urban environments. our core business really is to build bikes specifically for each individual. we care a lot about craftsmanship, we care a lot about quality, we care about good design, and people like that. when people come in, we spend a lot of time going to the design wall, and we can talk about handle bars, we can see the riding position, and we take notes all over the wall. it's a pretty fun shopping experience. paragraph. >> for me as a designer, i love the control. i can see what's going on, talk to my cutter, my pattern maker, looking at the designs. going through the suing room, i'm looking at it, everyone on the team is kind of getting involved, is this what that

drape look? is this what she's expecting, maybe if we've made a customization to a dress, which we can do because we're making everything here locally. over the last few years, we've been more technical. it's a great place to be, but you know, you have to concentrate and focus on where things are going and what the right decisions are as a small business owner. >> sometimes it's appropriate to bring in an expert to offer suggestions and guidance in coaching and counseling, and other times, we just need to talk to each other. we need to talk to other manufacturers that are facing similar problems, other people that are in the trenches, just like us, so that i can share with them a solution that we came up with to manage our inventory, and they can share with me an idea that they had about how to

overcome another problem. >> moving forward, where we see ourselves down the road, maybe five and ten years, is really looking at a business from a little bit more of a ready to wear perspective and making things that are really thoughtful and mindful, mindful of the end user, how they're going to use it, whether it's the end piece or a he hwedding gown, are they going to use it again, and incorporating that into the end collection, and so that's the direction i hear at this point. >> the reason we are so enamored with the work we do is we really do see it as a platform for changing and making the city something that it has always been and making sure that we're sharing the opportunities that we've been blessed with economically and socially as possible,

broadening that >> we came to seven straight about 10 years ago. -- 7th street about 10 years ago. the environment is huge. it is stronger than willpower. surrounding yourself with artists, being in a culture where artists are driving, and where a huge amount of them is a

healthy environment. >> you are making it safer. push, push. that is better. when i start thinking, i see it actually -- sometimes, i do not see it, but when i do, it is usually from the inside out. it is like watching something being spawned. you go in, and you begin to work, excavate, play with the dancers, and then things began to emerge. you may have a plan that this is what i want to create. here are the ideas i want to play with, but then, you go into the room, and there maybe some fertile ideas that are becoming manifest that are more interesting than the idea you had initially set out to plan. so there has to be this openness

for spontaneity. also, a sense that regardless of the deadline, that you have tons of time so the you can keep your creativity alive and not cut it off and just go into old habits. it is a lot like listening. really listening to watch what is going to emerge. i like this thing where you put your foot on his back. let's keep it. were your mind is is how you build your life. if you put it in steel or in failure, it works. that works. it is a commitment. for most artists, it is a vacation and a life that they have committed themselves to. there is this notion that artists continue to do their work because of some kind of the external financial support. if that was taken away, artists

would still do their art. it is not like there is a prerequisite for these things to happen or i will not do it. how could that be? it is the relationship that you have committed to. it is the vocation. no matter how difficult it gets, you are going to need to produce your art. whether it is a large scale or very small scale. the need to create is going to happen, and you are going to have to fulfill it because that is your life.

>> good afternoon everyone." welcome to our land use committee meeting of monday, september 17th, 2018. our clerk is here. we would like to thank matthew and james. are there any announcements? >> make sure to silence all cell ph