submit. >>clerk: thank you. supervisor ki supervisor tang? >> we had originally introduced or single use plastic ordinance to reduce plastics in our streets and in our oceans. we had an exception in our legislation already for people with medical issues, there were other concerns that arose, and so i am simply introducing another piece of legislation given that the duplicated file had expired or went way because the ordinance took event to address that very concern and allowing people from the disabilities community to access plastic straws if they need to, and so that is what i will submit to you. thank you. >>clerk: thank you. madam president, that concludes

our roll call for introductions. >> president cohen: let's continue with the agenda. call the next item. [agenda item read] >> president cohen: thank you. i want to recognize supervisor fewer. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much, chair cohen. good afternoon, colleagues. today, i, along with supervisors ronen and kim, are amending the minimum compensation ordinance. this legislation covers raising the m.c.o. for a low wage home health care and nonprofit workers, workers who we rely on for the city's safety net services. this legislation is part of the original minimum compensation ordinance that was introduced by supervisors kim and sheehy about

18 months ago. a couple of weeks ago, we voted unanimously to support raising the minimum compensation for our airport workers to $17 an hour beginning november 13, 2018. this was a proud moment to support a long in coming raise for our low wage workers and at s.f.o., and now we need to address the wages of our ihss and nonprofit workers. a raise of $2 an hour could affect many people. they do not have the power to negotiate better wages through contract negotiations like we did for police and fire unions this year. as a result, when this minimum compensation legislation stalls, so does the prospect of wage increases for these low wage workers. making $15 an hour, they, themselves are one step away

from homelessness. this is how we plan for the future. our senior population is expected to grow 61% between 2011 and 2030, and there is a decrease in residential care homes for people with disabilities. currently shelter beds are occupied by a large number of seniors. 57% of people are over 50 years old, and 30% of over 60. these are positions that increasingly we are not able to recruit or retain due to the pay and the high cost of living in san francisco. in summary, my amendments are as follows: for ihss workers, raising ihss workers to 17 an hour beginning 60 days after this is enacted, around february

1, 2019. c.p.i. -- c.p.i. based increase on july 1, 2019. fon nonprofit workers, raising nonprofit workers to $16 an hour on july 1, 2019. c.p.i. based increase on july 1, 2019, and to develop a working group to examine wage equity and wage compaction that is convened by the controller and gives recommendation to the mayor and the board of supervisors by april 1, 2019, in time for budget discussions. colleagues, you have amendments in front of you today, and so i'm making -- acted empty as in front of you today, and i'm making a motion to pass these amendments, and i believe it's substantive enough that we would have to continue this until the next board meeting. >> president cohen: all right.

let's have further discussion. supervisor fewer has made a motion and seconded by supervisor ronen. supervisor ronen? >> supervisor ronen: thank you. i think that this piece of legislation is incredibly important, not just as the morally correct thing to do, both the 15 minimum wage in san francisco doesn't cut it for anyone, but it's actually smart policy planning for the city and county of san francisco. before i guess into why, i want to say i really wish we'd dealt with this in the budget process. we'd be in a much better situation if we did. but unfortunately, it didn't happen, and many supervisors explicitly didn't want to deal with it in the budget. so we find ourselves in the position that we're in today.

i want to start with the ihss workforce. this is a workforce that takes care of our senior population in san francisco, a population that's not doing too well as it is today but is expected to sky rocket over the next 20 years. this is not just an issue in san francisco, this is an issue in all of california. in fact, there was a -- there was a very good article in the los angeles times this past weekend about how the entire state is not prepared for the exploding senior population. currently in san francisco, we only have 29 residential care beds for every 1,000 seniors. if we don't get ahead of this crisis, then we're going to see more seniors on the streets of san francisco, our other major crisis that we're dealing with in homelessness, and we know that right now, today, over 50%

of residents in our shelters in san francisco are over 50 years old already. that's of today. and over 20% of those residents are over 60 years old. what ihs s workers do is they make sure that seniors are able to age in place in their homes and get the care that they need without losing their way and being forced out onto the streets. we have to figure out and get ahead of this crisis that we're dealing with, and i don't know a better way to do it than making sure that we have the ihss workforce that we need here in san francisco to take care of those seniors. right now, the ihss workforce itself almost mirrors the patients that they care fore. it's a workforce that's increasingly elderly, and are going to need care themselves. how may i ask are we going to

recruit worker to see do these incredibly difficult jobs if we can't even offer a wage that they can't afford to live in even a below rate apartment in san francisco? the irony is at $15 an hour, workers earn $31,000 a year. $31,000 a year. that won't get you a single market rate unit in the city. and it doesn't even make you eligible for a below market rate unit at 55% of the income, the discussion we had earlier around india basin. this workforce minimum wage won't be eligible for those lowest wage units. so we've got to get ahead of this. you know, alameda county just set a plan in place to raise their ihss worker -- workers t

16.80. we can't be behind them in terms of what we're offering the workforce here in san francisco. this is not only the morally right thing to do in the workforce issue, this is a must do if we're going to be able to recruit the workforce that we need to take care of the exploding senior population here in san francisco. that's on the ihss workers side. on the nonprofit workers side, i don't know if you saw heather knight's excellent article this weekend about the inability of the department of homelessness and the nonprofit that they work with to hire hot team workers. i am very frustrated myself because although i got funding in the budget to focus on the 16 street and 24 street b.a.r.t. station, four months later, they have yet to be hired. guess how much they earn an hour

through the nonprofit? $22, and we can't recruit enough workers to care for the homeless people on our streets. if we can't -- if we can't recruit hot team workers at $22 -- and mind you, it's an incredibly difficult job, how are we going to recruit workers that are the front line of our homeless shelters, that are monitoring, watching over people sleeping in the middle of the night? the -- the turnover that we're seeing at our nonprofits, at catholic charity, they have a 40% turnover rate every single year. tenderloin housing clinic, out of 350 jobs, there are 50 jobs right now that the director has to fill. this is because they cannot recruit at this -- at this wage, at this workforce. so while h.s.n. sent a letter worried about this wage, and while supervisor fewer, kim, and i cut the original ask from $2

an hour raise to nonprofit workers down to $1, not starting until july, this next fiscal year, we think this working group that we have to create immediately is essential because this homeless crisis, the mental health crisis that supervisor stefani just talked about, we're not going to be able to provide the care that we so desperately need to provide even if proposition c passes, and we get the revenue to hire more of those workers if we're not able to recruit the workforce of the so once again, this is not only the moral thing to do at this moment, this is critical. we have to have the workforce to take care of the most vulnerable people in our city. most of them work for ihss or nonprofits. if we are to meaningfully deal with the crisis that we see on our street every day, which mind you is supposedly the number one

issue of every single politician in san francisco. so this is a no brainer. i hope you'll all support the attempts that the supervisor fewer just implemented and then vote for this legislation when it comes up before us for a vote next week. thank you so much. >> president cohen: supervisor yee? >> supervisor yee: thank you, president cohen. i want to thank supervisor fewer for bringing this lemgislation up. everything that supervisor ronen just said, i totally agree. the -- we're really at the place where our seniors or ageing population are exploding. in my district, it's one of the highest percentage of seniors in the city, and we're seeing that

go up even further. and the issues that i've been dealing with with seniors in the past few years is exactly this issue of who's going to care for them? and one of -- there's really only in my mind two possibilities where we could have as a city, impact the situation. one is how do we reverse the losing of our residential beds for seniors? and we have a work group now that's setup for that. and we're going to hopefully find some solutions and start reversing it. i've been talking with laguna honda hospital because there's actually room to build some housing there. and what i'd like to see there eventually is not just one type of assisted care living there for seniors, but sort of a

gradual step up of moving kind of services so that people don't have to move out of the city when they need more care. so that's one, and that's -- in fact, the percentage of seniors that are being cared for in residential assistance is very small compared to those that are at their homes and needing the ihss workers. i've used ihss workers for my family, and i know their value. my sister, who was disabled who passed away before she was 50 was using ihss workers. i want to get that piece of it, and it's true. we thought we were being progressive at the 15% minimum wages, which maybe at the time it was a good start, but get

what -- a lot of the other parts of the country have caught up with us, also. and their standard of living or their cost of living is not anywhere near what we see in san francisco. so this is, to me, the right thing to do. let's get it done. the issue with the nonprofit, as most of you know, most of my career was with nonprofit. the issue that you get lousy pay, and you don't care because you care about your work. you get lousy benefits. in fact when i started in nonprofits, nobody had the health care. nobody -- even today, nobody has really any retirement plan. so for us to pay almost minimum wage, there is a reason why people are not entering it, and yet, it's probably one of the more important work that you would do for our most vulnerable

people. and the issue that we're talking about in terms of compaction of nonprofit as you try to raise the minimum, that's something that the early education field has been dealing with for the last 15 years, so it's a model to look at. there's already one setup in san francisco. i'm glad we're looking at these issues. i wish we had looked at it ten years ago, but let's not talk about them. let's move into the future with a better set of conditions for our ihss workers and our nonprofit workers, so yes, i'll be supporting this. >>clerk: supervis >> president cohen: supervisor brown? >> supervisor brown: yes, thanks, supervisor cohen. i just wanted to say i wasn't a member of this board when this topic was addressed a year ago. this critical need should have been addressed through the budget project.

i'm someone who totally understands the importance of ihss workers. i know so many people who use and have used them and have been critical in the care of their family, and as far as the nonprofit, before i came to work at city hall 12 years ago, i worked in nonprofits my whole life. and to talk about what supervisor yee was talking about, when you work at a nonprofit, there -- we didn't have health benefits. we did crazy things like try to help each other out when someone got sick or needed to go to the doctor, went to haight-ashbury clinic all the time to have something looked at. i have a splinter in my foot or whatever it was. and we didn't have -- you don't have pensions. i worked two jobs just to survive. i worked a nonprofit during the day and a lot of times, a book store at night. so i personally am one person

that knows what it's like to work in a nonprofit, and you stay there because you care. and i was just lucky to actually come into city hall and make a better wage. and i was one of the lucky ones to do that. but now, we're here, facing this huge supplemental, some precedent, really. i don't like that we're doing this, and i want to be clear that my vote in support today in no way indicates my vote next week. this isn't a way to run the city, taking from the reserve when we know there's a downturn coming. when i was an aide, working with many of you during the last downturn, during that time, we had hard decisions to make about cutting or reducing services. you know, vital city services. it was painful. and this makes -- this particular decision, is like a

sophie's choice for me. just a few months ago, i was part of the labor family in local 21, so i wholeheartedly support these laborers, and that's why i'm moving it forward today. but let me be clear, i believe strongly in the sanctity of our budget reserve, but i believe there's a day where we'll need it. >> thank you very much. first, i do want to begin by thanking the sponsors of this. i believe your heart is always in the right place, and even my own grandmother personally benefited from the ihss program. she started living with my parents when i was in high school, and i saw how firsthand service to important for having lived with our family for 12 years. but both my parents worked, and it was just very difficult to

care for someone who faced depression in addition to medical issues and could not leave the house. again, i have seen firsthand in my own home how this program and all the workers are so vital to our senior population. i do want to set the stage and building on the comments, i think, that supervisor brown just made. you know as i was looking into this issue and where we have a minimum wage ordinance in place as well as a minimum wage compensation in place, i saw we had compensation in place in 2000 at $9 perhour. at that time we did not have a minimum wage ordinance in san francisco yet. i was to thank our labor department working in getting a minimum wage ordinance passed specifically for san francisco. so again, i want to thank them for that. so in 2004, we had our minimum wage ordinance passed specific to our city. start out at $8.50 perhour.

and that was in comparison to the m.c.o., which was at $10.51, so there was about a $2.51 different there. then, we saw between 2004 and 2015, and you could see the m.c.o. has been higher than the minimum wage by an average of $1.86. but then, in 2016 is when the minimum wage started to become higher than the m.c.o., and how we are in 2018, and so again, that is the case where, again, while not -- not including the changes that we have proposed here, but we are at that juncture where our minimum wage is becoming higher than the m.c.o. so i just throw that out there as a discussion point for all of us, which is that i think for me, personally, i would love for this conversation to really include the minimum wage conversation.

i think prior to, when we didn't have the minimum wage ordinance that was specific to our city, it certainly made sense to have some sort of a living wage policy in place because we certainly do have a higher cost of living here in san francisco in the bay area, and so we need today address that, versus a statewide minimum wage ordinance. so i think that's an important point to make given where we have come given the history of san francisco, so i want to thank our labor partners for that. the other issue i want to address, having served on the budget committee for many, many years, and staffed it for many years, is there has been a difference in cost sharing. so over the course of the next or our current two year budget, we will see an additional $100 million in terms of what it

would have previously cost to run this program, and that's not even including the additional costs to just the program in general. so that's a very real problem that we're going to be grappling with during the budget season, so i'm not hour should you we're going to address that. i was here when we were addressing critical issues, like cutting public health. i don't know that some of us may not recall how challenging that was during the economic downturn, so you know, the comments that i'm making are simply that we do need to be fiscally responsible as an entire board, but yes, we do need to care for the nonprofit workers, the ihss workers, we want to be able to make sure that they can earn a living wage in san francisco, but we also have to do it in terms of what will come in our economic

situatio situation, not just in san francisco but for the entire bay area. today, i will support supervisor fewer's amendments, because i do think they make the ordinance better, but i -- i'm not sure what i'll be doing next week because i, again, i'm very concerned for our financial health in san francisco. so hopefully, some of our colleagues will be able to offer any solutions. so with that, i'll turn it over to the next speaker. >> president cohen: supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: thank you, madam president. colleagues, i don't think anybody questions the need, and i am struggling with this, and let me associate myself with some of the comments through previous members of the board. i lived through two of these recessions, one in the early part of this century, and one about a decade ago, and it was remarkably difficult.

and the decisions that we actually had to make really impacted lives in a very real and sad, tough way. there's an endless amount of deserving need and there is a limited amount of resource. and i' up to the minimum

wage -- the state minimum wage, when we got to 15 on july 1. we did not, as a matter of law, have to do that. it was a decision that we collectively made, and i also note that state subventions in and around ihss are being reduced by the state and supervisor tang noted that. so i will vote for the amendments, too, today, but there's a 12th person who's not in this room, and that is the mayor of the city and county of san francisco and we'll all collectively responsible for the health and well-being of our budget. but the mayor has certain powers that we do not have, and i would

like to note them for the record. i have been on this board when we proopappropriated money to ar who chose not to spend it. and i know that next year, many of us are going to be grappling with 29 open labor contracts, and, you know, i've lived long enough to see the cyclical booms and busts of our economy here and across the country, and it's not something that we control, so i will vote where it as is today, but i do want to add that i reserve the right to put in some fiscal triggers, that when a downturn happens, we are in a position to revisit whatever it is that we ultimately approve. and i wanted to also send a signal to the mayor that time

has tcome, and the devil is in the details, and that is c.p.i. i think that everybody on all sides now know where i stand and what i might do next week. >> president cohen: supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: thank you, supervisor tang, supervisor peskin, others that spoke before. i think i'd like to associate myself with a lot of those comments. i think that it is within every person's interest in this body, and i think respectfully, we all understand the hard work that goes into these jobs. we have a significant ageing population that in many cases is trying to age in place, and age with dignity, and i don't think it's been stated so far, but ihss workers represent the largest workforce in the city

and county of san francisco in organized labor. almost 20,000 employees. that is significant, and these are, as been noted, folks that are also themselves in many cases, over the age of 55, many cases, dealing with struggling with poverty as well as with housing challenges. many cases, these are family members taking care of family members, and this is not easy work. i have thousands of those families living in my district, i have thousands of those recipients living in my district. so i think we have a moral imperative to do the right thing here. i think this is important for the city and county of san francisco as well as future of our city. on the fiscal side, i think it is also important to note that we have a lot of competing interests, and we would be fooling ourselves to say this is not going to impact other areas

of our city's budget and other areas of services because it absolutely will. i think having a fiscal responsibility triggers is important. i think also that there's been some good progress in conversations. myself, supervisor fewer, and supervisor peskin were just involved in some knockdown, drawn out, long negotiations as it pertained to project labor agreement. folks were in the room, and labor was in the room, and i think we came to an agreement what was a pretty good negotiated settlement. i would encourage all parties to take this week to work with the mayor, work with members of the board that have been leading this to continue this conversation. i don't think this conversation is done today. i think i will be supporting these amendments today, but i would like to see more details and more work put in over the coming week. i mean, we sat for 7.5 hours to

close the deal on a project labor agreement with folks that are involved in that. that is a lot of time out of your day, but i think at the end of the day, end result was something very beneficial to the city. i know the folks that are leading this on behalf of the board have that in them, and we're all committed to doing what's right for san francisco. >> president cohen: supervisor mandelman? >> supervisor mandelman: yeah. thank you, president cohen. supervisor brown and i have the odd position of stepping into a conversation that's been going on for 1.5 years without us. and i do want to begin by thanking my press sever, supervisor sheehy, and supervisor kim for beginning the conversation, and supervisors ronen and fewer for continuing to push all of us to get to a

resolution. and i'm going to vote for these amendments, but i have some real concern about these legislation. i'm concerned about making commitments of tens of millions of dollars into future budgets without weighing the other costs and the other needs that are not part of a -- part of this discussion. all of us are acutely aware of the homeless and mental health crises on our streets. we talk about it a lot. we need hundreds for beds, we need thousands more units. we need to raise the wages not just of the nonprofit workers that are going to be covered by this ordinance, but of the hot workers that are earning $22 an hour. we need to raise the wages of our city workers who are struggling to survive in this city and raise kids and pay for all of their costs. and none of those other competing items are on our

agenda to be weighed against this extremely valuable, wise, and just thing, which is to raise the wages of ihss and nonprofit workers. i do hope over the next week there can be fruitful conversations that do get us to a sustainable place and get us to something that we can all support. thank you. >> president cohen: supervisor kim? >> supervisor kim: so a number of things that i would just say. as the original cosponsor of the minimum compensation ordinance with supervisor sheehy, as supervisor mandelman mentioned, it has long been important to me that we recognize how we pay or lowest paid workers. in fact, when asked a lot by the private sector on what they can do to address homelessness and housing insecurity, i always

respond by telling them to pay their lowest paid workers better, and in fact many of the lowest paid worker nz our tech companies and finance in the city and county of san francisco, whether they be our janitors, our ihss, our cafeteria are in the lottery for housing. they are sleeping in their cars, couch surfing with other members of the their family or friends. it is frankly just a state of the cost of living here in the bay area that exists today that is making it so difficult for people who make really good wages to live anywhere in the bay area. when my friends who i consider middle-income moving as far as

richmond and hercules to get a home. one of the ways we're -- by the way, the fastest growing income gap between the rich and the poor here in san francisco and is in san francisco, is by increasing the pay of our lowest pat workers. i am concerned about every worker and how we spend our dollars. we have to be fiscally prudent as we move forward, and we know that this incredible growth in our economy which is a little unprecedented is going to end at some point, and we will have a recession, and our reserves are incredibly important for those reasons to help us through the down period. having start office in the recession, i remember how painful it was when i started on the board with supervisor yee and fewer to cut down to the barest bones in our schools. and then, when i joined the board of supervisors to be on the six rounds of cuts to our

nonprofit and city services. however, we do have a crisis today, which is that even though we're not in an overall recession for our city, our lowest paid workers are experiencing a recession like never before, and we have to support them now. mplg. we have to have a conversation, but i think investing in our workers to get paid a little more so that they can contribute back to our local economy is going to have a multifold impact by putting more dollars in our local economy because these workers can't afford it. but the biggest concern for me is our approach to parity. this past year in the july fiscal year budget, this board

of supervisors approved a 3% increase to some of our more highly paid workers, our police officer. which we all supported. we gave them a 3% increase over the next three years, and that first hit cost our city $12.24 million. over two years, it will cost our city $36 million, and over the course of three years, you can do the math. so if we're willing to give our police officers, our middle class employees $12.24 million, we should be willing to give our lowest pat workers $11 million. now i would have liked that this happened in the june budget, as well, 'cause these worker should be getting this increase today. they shouldn't be waiting for as long as they have, but for a number of reasons, we're at the point that we are today. i do strongly support our m.c.o. i do want to figure out a way to

make it work. i think it's important to address all the points that think colleagues have brought up, but i just have to say, i continue, and i agree with supervisor peskin who said this during his roll call, we suddenly see a deficit of $30 million, and the city suddenly has the money to cover that gap. why can't we cover this one? i hope we can work something out, and finally, we do have to come to an agreement with the mayor's on this, because i would hate to see the board pass a supplemental even at a veto proof, and get spent do you object and not -- spent down, and not in the pockets of our hardest workers. i do want to thank supervisor peskin and ronen who spent many hours bringing us to the point we're at today. i think why we're voting this

now versus three or four months ago, there was a lot of cats to herd, and we were not able to get everybody in the same room by june 30, but hopefully, we can correct for that delay over the next couple of weeks. >> president cohen: all right. supervisor stefani? >> supervisor stefani: thank you, president cohen. i, too, want to start by thanking the cosponsors, for moving this along. i have -- also do want to associate myself with the concerns. i share those concerns. i was here for the hearings, and i saw those difficult decisions having to be made. i strongly encourage our labor leaders to continue to work with mayor breed on this to find a fiscally responsible way to pay for it. taking from the reserve makes me extremely nervous. i will be supporting the

amendments today, but i want it known that i do encourage greatly continued conversations on fiscal alternate tiffs or triggers as supervisor peskin stated. thank you. >> president cohen: thank you. supervisor ronen, i'm going to speak to you, because you've had a chance to speak, and i'll let you close it out. i don't think that the appropriate place for us to be dealing with an ongoing expense to the tune of $44 million is during the add back process or also known as the budget spending plan. second of all, when we had hearings at the board of supervisors, we asked what people's priorities were, and honestly only one person on this body said ihss workers was a priority. only one. and so it's a little unfair to say that we should have done it in the budget process and we didn't, implying that was a collective choice. and also want to keep in mind that we were dealing with competing priorities during the

budget season. also, want to acknowledge that it was mayor farrell that didn't put it in the original budget to find an ongoing source of revenue. i want to speak to the amendments. i -- no one talked to me or briefed my office on these amendments. i don't know what it's been like for any of the other members, but the first time i've seen these is today. it's hard for me to vote for something that i haven't seen. i'm looking to the labor leaders in the chamber that no one reached out, text messaged or anything, and also the sponsors that did not do the same. so to me, i interpret that as perhaps my vote is not that important. but i think not. i think my vote is important, and i think i was extremitial in bringing the m.c.o. that we got

passed, passed. i was not on the original list of folks that got the m.c.o., but i was at the end. i also want to acknowledge that the mayor's office was instrumental in getting that done. we are working with mayor breed's office. i also want to correct -- i think i heard supervisor kim say -- let me back up. supervisor peskin acknowledged that we needed an audit for $33 million, i think it is, over expensing of the housing authority. this just further exacerbates our financial stability. i also want to acknowledge that we've got a memo from the controller's office that pertains to the minimum nonprofit city contractor cost analysis, and i'd like to give him an opportunity to walk us through. we've had a lot of discussion around the amendments, but ben, could you -- again, this is the first time that i'm seeing this.

i need you to do a high level walk-through so that we're informed about exactly what these decisions that we're going to be making. before we go one step further, to the project sponsors, have we identify a source of revenue? i know the amendments that we're taking up today doesn't deal with financing, but how -- how -- and supervisor fewer, we can -- i'll circle back to you after supervisor ronen, and first, we'll hear from ben rosenfield. thank you. >> madam president, members of the board, ben rosenfield, city controller. so there's two components at cost, really in this ordinance and prior versions of the m.c.o. that have been discussioned here. it's been how does it drive ihss wages, and secondly, what is the cost for nonprofit organizations for their employees, and how much of that cost is likely to pass through to the city? so we provided analysis, as have the budget analyst and others

about ihss cost. we've done some of that work relate today this -- these amendments here today, and we can brief any of you in the week ahead prior to the action next week. we prepared a preliminary analysis of nonprofits about a year ago when this process started based on higher level information at the request of sponsors and others. we've gone through a more elaborate survey process in the last few months to put a finer grain number what the implications are for nonprofit organizations. that's what we were outlining in our memo. again, i'd be happy to brief any member on it. it's a complicated answer because for nonprofits, there's a district cost for them related to raising their wages from $15 to whatever the new m.c.o. is. that's a direct wage cost that we've outlined in the memo. secondly, in doing that, the organizations are going to face a cost pressures to raise others in the wage chain above them to

maintain comparable scales, what we call wage compaction. we've tried to estimate some of the ranges of what those could look like. what approach do they take for workers on noncity contracts, so we've tried to put numbers on those, as well. those are three variables that will drive the profcosts for nonprofit organizations. so happy to answer any questions from any member of the board in the week ahead. >> president cohen: thank you. supervisor ronen? >> supervisor ronen: oh, thank you. i'm glad that you had our controller speak because i wanted to thank you so much, ben, for preparing that, and your staff, and i'm so sorry, i'm forgetting your name.

your name? and michael for doing this incredible report. this has been a question that has been on all of our minds for so long, and it is incredibly complicated, and in a short period of time, you produced an excellent product of work. michael, i'm so sorry i forgot it, but i will remember it forward because of your excellent, excellent work, so thank you. it was largely because of the controller's report that supervisor fewer, kim, and i decided to substantially change the ask around the nonprofit worker raise, that at -- the amendments that you have before us today will only cost the city -- only, i mean, we have an $11 billion budget, $500,000 a year, so i don't think that's a major ticket item in our city budget. now the impact on nonprofits is

different, and that's where we setup the working group to figure out how you deal with both the equity issues and the compaction issues for that raise and any future. the other thing to realize about the $1 raise starting july 1 for nonprofit workers is the minimum wage has a cost of living increase every year. so by setting that $1 wage in january of this coming year, we're going to have a minimum wage increase, so the value of that's actually going to be much less, and those nonprofits would have been on the hook any way, the city would have been on the hook, any way. so i think the proposal that we put forth concerning the nonprofit workers is incredibly modest and thoughtful and reasonable. thank you largely to -- to the controller's excellent work. so thanks again for that. you know in terms of the comments of all of -- all of the

colleagues, you know, this issue has been before us now for a couple of years. it wasn't my legislation when it was before the board, so i wasn't, you know, as supervisor -- as president cohen said, not many people put it as their top issues on our list. well, i wasn't following this issue as closely because it wasn't my legislation, and i was kind of looking to my colleagues for leadership on and it never came before us. but i'll just remind you that the board of supervisors has very little ultimate power over our budget. it is, you know, $11 billion budget. we're given one month to dissect it. the budget and legislative analyst does a report, but we rary get into the -- rarely get into the nitty-gritty every department's line item's budget,

where really, is that material important, is it used over every single year? how much can we save there? you can't do that for $11 billion in the span of a month. so what we are playing with at the end of every budget season during the add back process is t is somewhere between 11 and $20 million divided by different sprier's priorities in a very short period of time. to say that that somehow -- in that process, we should have taken care of this after the mayor decided not to prioritize it, mayor farrell, at the time, and after only i guess one supervisor -- i'm assuming that was supervisor sheehy who was leading the legislation at the time, put it on this list -- >> president cohen: actually, it wasn't. >> supervisor ronen: okay. it wasn't. well, thank you to the supervisor who put it on their

list as a priority. but it doesn't mean that i -- that we shouldn't be, then, reconsidering it now, especially given all the very, very good reasons. and the other thing that i would say is, you know, sometimes i feel like you're darned if you do, you're darned if you don't when you're a low wage worker, when you're a poor person in the city. when we're in a recession, the police never get cut, but we'll cut poor people. when we're in a booming economy, with record economy, when all of

a sudden at the end of the year, we get this memo, $40 million, we got more than what we were expecting. this is what happens every single year at this board of supervisors. so in this booming time, everyone's talking point when they don't want to spend money on poor people, oh, we've got to get ready for the recession. we've got to save because things are going to be bad really soon. and i honestly think when do poor people get prioritized? we have a record reserve, $127 million general fund reserve. we've never had a reserve like that in the history of san francisco. what we're proposing is we take

a small little of that on an issue that we all agree is a crisis. we have seniors in shelters in -- and a city with an $11 billion budget. seniors in shelters. how is that not a priority and a crisis? and then, you were saying we're even going to put that back, and we have a booming economy right now. we have development happening in scores. the property tax that we're collecting every year, it's obscene. and landlords are profiting to tunes that we've never seen before in our city, and tenants are getting displaced. and we didn't do a modest increase that i feel is incredibly measured, that would get ihss workers to, you know,

what, a 35,000 annual salary a year so they still can't live in san francisco but that might keep them here and in place and continuing to do their work? what have we become? i'm kind of shocked. we work so hard to elect representatives that we think are going to fight for the people of san francisco that is suffering beyond measure. this wealth is not being shared equally. it's not even being close to shared equally. people say we used to work at a nonprofit, too, and we used to earn that salary, and it sucks. and now, we work at city hall, and we don't have to think about those people and more. i'm sorry to get passionate about this, but i just feel that we can never win here, and that sandy fewer, jane kim and i worked really hard to get to a

really, really reasonable place here. to hear that my colleagues are not ready -- are going to support it today but not be ready to support it tomorrow after we've gone over the data and the statistics over and over again is just incredibly disappointing, i have to say. but we will continue to work hard because that's what we do, and we will continue to fight with our labor and our labor partners and our senior community and workforce community and ihss workers and our immigrant communities and we'll organize as big as we've organized as ever before, and we'll make sure we have a meeting on the 23rd, lasting until 3:00 in the morning. i'll tell my husband we're going to have to celebrate some other day to show you how important this issue is because apparently we just can't get it by hearing the data, and we need more. and we will continue to dialogue with the mayor, which we'll been -- we've been willing to do

all along, and weren't able to get attention until yesterday. but -- and we'll continue to do that and try to convince you. but quite frankly, i am so sick of the excuses. if we are able to give police officers who earn record wages and didn't even take one of the budget cuts that were recommended by the b.l.a. in -- in the -- the budget process last year, but we can't give pennies to the workers that are keeping people off the streets, then who are we, san francisco? who are we? >> president cohen: supervisor fewer? >> supervisor fewer: well, that's a hard act to follow, but i will say. i want to say that i want on the school board when we sent out over 500 pink slips. i know what it's like during a recession, but i also know what it's like to be in a time where we have great wealth. we have an unprecedented amount

of money in our general fund reserve, 127 million, we've never had before. i think, colleagues, today, it's not about fiscal responsibility, it's really about moral compass. when we look at these workers and who -- this is the largest low wage workforce in the city of san francisco. these are people of color, they are women, they are one step away from homelessness, and i can just hear my colleagues saying and lamenting, oh, my gosh, our homesless problem is getting so bad, it's getting so bad, it's getting worse. well, yes, because we are not investing in this low-wage workforce. so what are we asking? we are asking to move from 15 dlan hour to $17 an hour. there isn't anyone in this room who is making 17 an hour that is trying to feed themselves or

clothe themselves. i remind everyone that it is our job to legislation and regulate greed. i just think here in these chambers people who have been marginalized, people of color, seniors, people who are doing this hard work every day, i have learned they have the smallest voice, and they joined the voices of seniors, they joined the voices of our children, that they have the smallest voice at the table because people are not listening. but i -- today, i thank my colleagues, supervisor ronen and supervisor kim, i hope people are listening. this is a workforce of 20,000 people that are on the verge of homelessness themselves. this is not only imperative to keep people who are ageing and disabled folks who are they caring for? they are caring for people like

katey tang's mother and norman yee's sister. they are making $15 an hour annual wage, which is 31,000 a year. if they make $17 17 an hour, thl be making under $5,000 a year. -- $35,000 a year. i dare you to get up every day and work, changing people's diapers and feeding them. this is to me, an issue of moral compass. this is about -- this is -- we can find a way to pay for this. as we said, i didn't take -- i was on the budget committee last year. we didn't take a lot of the recommended cuts from the budget

lemgs l legislative analyst that could have paid for this. i think it's -- i think it's great that people are willing to vote positive fore these amendments, but next week is where it counts. i think 20,000 home care workers are counting on us. as people know me, they know that i am very frugal. i save money for my own family, i save money for a rainy day. i am not a spendthrift. i weigh very carefully, and i have done that because i've seen these workers, i seen the work that they do, i've seen the data, and i've seen the statistics of how they impact the seniors in our communities. it will not work to push all of them out of san francisco. they are here. they are our responsibility. these people, some of them city

workers, quite frankly, and making a wage that none of us could actually live on. we are not asking for a wage of $30 an hour or $20 an hour or we're asking for a wage for them of $17 an hour. and these workers, they do not have sick leave, they do not have vacation. when you think about all these other city workers, the two and three weeks vacation, and then after you've worked for the city for so many years, you get five weeks of vacation, and over time pay. these people have no vacation days, no sick days, they have no days off. so let's just think about that before we take a vote next week. i hear my colleagues about being fiscally prudent, and that -- and i have to echo supervisor had said, is that we're in time now where we can -- we can give them some