when i heard about the break i wonder how many are versus the old because there's hope we'll make more progress as we switch over the trains and the other thing i wanted to highlight is i was on the train the other day and it was a new lrv and i think it got triggered and we were there five or six minutes but everyone was getting antsy and the piece of guesting an announcement, the emergency stop has been triggered, sounds forward and it sounds like a plan in place around communications with the driver. the presentation's very helpful. thanks. >> director torres. >> when will you be permanent? def >> she may not want the job

after i'm done with it. well, take that as the compliment that it is and i appreciate you coming here and doing it. i know you're new to the role and know some things are things you're new in deal with. i think what qualifies me most to be the chair of this board is the fact i ride this thing every day. it's no secret to anyone who rides it and i've been clear with you and director raskin the service has been spotty at best since the closure. you talked about the warriors. for me, as with everybody who rides it, it comes down to stories and for me it's two

basketball games. i took my kids to the oracle arena and came back on bart just fine. got in the tunnel, it's late for small children or medium children as these two are and found ourselves at a delay at vanes for 45 minutes late at night. no communication no overahead announcement or what's going on and it's not telling us a driver coming the other way. i stop and show my badge and say what's going on, he doesn't know. the situation was bad because you had a lot of passengers including high school students and younger coming home from the game stranded at the platform and for their parents who wanted to know what was going on, they had no information. so we failed those riders at two levels. similarly to mr. peterson's point, later in the week i'm going to watch my son's

basketball game. shut you had be a 30 minute ride and turns into a 50 minute ride and again no announcement. again the service for the past six has been spotty. the communication around the service incidents have been worse. passengers are frustrated because they're not hearing what's going on. and they don't understand. what's frustrating to me a little bit is i understand you're dealing with aging equipment and systems and have been candid and trans parent about that and an appreciate that personally, but the system functioned better eight months ago so we know it can be done. so i want the public to know the board gets it.

we're not oblivious to it and we see it and get it. you've identified problems i've been hearing about for the 12 years i've been on this board. i talked about some of the solutions but i'd like to talk about accountability for those solutions. we spend a lot of time on the board talking about plans for things that are 20 years off in the future. sea rise, these beautiful thoroughfares we may or may not build and that's fine but what we want customers to know about is about the present. we get an awful lot of phone calls and e-mails about the present. we hear about the bus service too but i'll start with the metro service. i'd like to request once a month through the director's report or an agenda item like this, we have a report back on how the issues are going and specifically, what i would like

to hear is what were the major delays, as you very well put it the disruptive delays, the ones that really disrupt commuters' lives and what caused them and what we're doing to fix it. i will tell you if we keep hearing the same cause and proposed solution over and over again, that will be frustrating. the second thing, and i welcome your input on this is a metric. for me, for the metro service it seems we can chart the service time so i propose that as a metric. you're the transit expert. if you think there's a better metric but we need something objective to report to the riding community about where we stand. and then finally, the west portal issue is one, the turnaround at embark dare yo --

embarcadero is another. i wouldn't be true if i didn't mention the notion of shuttle service to turn back platforms at embarcadero and west portal and have twin peaks tunnel. as i said to dr. raskin the experience during the twin peaks tunnel that was encouraging was the efficiency. we joked i'd be easy on you. i know you're new to the job and know with the system and the metro system in particular but this is a serious situation. it's not working well. and if our mission is to get people out of the cares and into the system, the system needs to work well and when it's not working well they ned to hear and understand why it's not working well. to me, the difference between having in central command give

up control for 15 or 20 seconds to let thousands of people in the tunnel know what's going on, that's a no-brainer. let the customers know what's going on and if we need to staff that differently in add advance of the radio change, do that. i don't want to go through all the solutions, you know them better than i do, but i have to say this, it's got to get better and i'd like accountability and we need to start with communicating life -- live time in the tunnel hon -- on what's going on and what they can expect to do in an alternative situation. okay? >> yes. >> okay. thank you very much. >> can i add a point to that? >> please. >> once you're on the train it's a little too late. we want to signal them to people

as they make their trip planning decisions and wonder what you think in terms of the apps on is there one you point people towards where to go for the best information and i noticed today as i was planning my trip over here the google maps does not link up to the real transit time with google and i wonder if you had thoughts to make sure the information you put out is up-to-date and accurate. >> i think with the question you're stepping outside my areas of expertise. >> yeah, let me take that question. with regard to the apps and how that information flows, we are providing that information as open data that different apps pick up. what google seems to do is they

pick up our schedule and more and more on the app if you have the latest version, you can see the prediction. so there's two different things. if you are looking at the schedule, it may or may not look as accurate as the predict but you have to have downloaded the latest to have predicted that and be tae attentive and there' private provider data where we're looking at other ways to address that to see purely the data without getting a commercial offering so we're looking at how we offer that on our own websites to give better information.

to the point of getting more communications while you're in the tunnel or from central control, that is a partnership between transit and communication to work on that and we need that information to come from the transit team and the communications teams officers provide that live on the system or through twitter five days a week, 16 hours a day. what we've not had the opportunity to have is weekend and late evenings on sometimes special events but we're making some changes in our partnership to be able to staff that more comprehensive and i do believe that will help. we have communication staff embedded at the control systems working closely with julie's team to be able to get the updates better and faster. i think you're hearing some of them but we need from the late

evening situation to have more robust and comprehensive coverage. >> anything else? thank you. tall order but if somebody up to it, it's you. as folks leave on this item, mr. peterson, good luck getting back to west portal. how many folks are here for item number 12. how many are here for item number 13? okay. that makes it easy. why don't we go ahead item number 13 should be quicker, correct? >> yes. >> call item 13. i expect there's shy people who didn't identify they're here. >> and two contracts for specialized training service to moran consulting for specialized

training in customer service and deescalation and management of implicit bias and coaching for supervisors and mangers for a contract with a term of five years and nobody's indicated an interest in addressing you from the public on this item. >> very good. >> mr. chair, i will be presenting this item so as roberta has said, we have these two contracts. these contracts are for specialized training. in part a response to feedback from staff from across our organization about requests for more training in particular feedback from staff who worked directly with the public. the staff has let us know that they want more and better training and skilled -- skills and how to engage with the public particularly in difficult

situation could compromise their personal safety. i want to mention that in particular 250a has been vocal about the need for training operators on xhrs service and also a requirement of the agency, and they've been vocal on training for vcos and other labor represents from stations an permits have expressed better training would support the ongoing interactions on a daily basis where sometimes they feel unsafe. and unions and staff are both interested in a training toolbox. and while there is some training that is currently out there, this contract gives us the ability to build and develop comprehensive training to envision training that could be

cost-cutting and wouldn't be siloed to their job classification and interested in training that would allow us to work very closely with the unions and employees to says their situations they're in. they're 24/7 type of jobs at different locations they're in. we're also looking at customized training development, training delivery, a coaching component which is very specifically requested in focus groups we did in 2017. and include an evaluation component. the contracts are focussed on three things. they're focussed on customer service which include the things we've recently spoken about. deescalation and reducing physical interaction and potential assaults which are one

of the most frequent cause of injury for our employees and we also have included an implicit bias component so if employees are being triggered or their customer's being triggered, there's an attentiveness to that situation. and we believe this as-needed will give us the capability to address these things. they're as-needed contracts that means they're task-order based and it doesn't necessarily mean that each of these contractors would get this l level of work. it's a contract that goes up to that limit. >> do we have public comment? you said none. we'll close public comment on this item. director gordon. >> i think it's important work and excited we're doing including implicit bias and hope we test people.

in the restaurant world we've gotten people to do this test and have some restaurants have signed up to do it with staff and they've seen the consequence in doing the implicit bias test and training and included a diversity of groups and even on the internal for customer service we should look at this overall as a larger agency-wide measure in how we interact with employees and each other. the only thing i saw i didn't see in here that was missing was around dealing with and granted no one is going to come in as a mental health professional, but a lot of what we're seeing particularly with drug addiction are the mental health concerns. there are people who are angry because you're giving them a parking ticket but there's the

next level of people at night using our system who may be having personal challenges. i see anyone with a medical expertise with the contracts but i would say if we can add that compone component in and see if the contractors can respond to that and think there's a greater need in all customer-facing roles and better understand people compromised from mental health or drug addiction concerns. >> if i may respond, i think it's an important point and while the contracts don't address the mental health aspect, we are looking at our front-facing employees as being almost first-responders.

there's been publication and works on work trauma so dealing with people who have dealing with trauma or having to work with traum tiefd -- traumatized people. we thought that was attractive to have in the contract. >> director brinkman. >> thank you for moving quickly on this. it's going to be so important and what we hear from public facing staff particularly the female operators and giving them the tools to de-escalate will go a long way in keeping operators happy and healthy and in particular hire more female operators. i'm happy to make a motion to approve this and thrilled we're doing this. >> we have a motion. is there a second. >> one comment? >> please. >> to say happy to see this and the monitoring and performance

measuring as the best practice to see that in the contract we'll evaluate how successful this was. two questions. what's the difference between the two contractors. one is significantly more expensive so if you can speak to that and are there other industry best practice where's this kind of intervention has been implemented in other cities. are there lessons to learn from or are we the pioneer in this area? >> in terms of the last question i'll mention that first. there are other cities who have done something similar i believe it's septa in philadelphia who has worked with vendors more localized to the east coast who have done this work and to some degree we have modelleded this approach on their work. and though the vendors are different, we do believe we can leverage the learnings that are out in the space both from the

trade industry as well as the work of at least septa. that's the one we know most about. in terms of cost, the two vendors which are the two responsive and responsible venders, the two that bid on the work, they're quite different. moran consulting is out of chicago and they focus specifically on customer service. they have more of a customer service training model. they've trained many types of employees including types like our own and dtui focuses more on equity and diversity and here locally. and we believe the contracts close to the same size with different offerings we can cover the work we need. >> i note it's as you said spread contract so it's not as

if we're agreeing to pay $3 million to two vendors but it's on a work-order basis. may i request as we go and decide to go as we decide to spend more on the vendors, we seek the input and feedback of the unions particularly because they're the ones requesting this? so since we're doing it for their benefit and retention, i want to make sure they're finding these programs and providers effective and if not, we can adjust within the contract? >> yes, we can. >> very good. so a motion and second. all in favor, please say aye. opposed? that passes. thank you very much. acting director hsu we move on to item 12. >> clerk: presentation discussion regarding response acts of responsibilities and no members of the public have stated wanting to address the

topic. >> i can't imagine why. >> members of the board i'm mark blake a city attorney. >> nice to see you. >> good afternoon. my area of specialty is public finance and i'm one of three attorneys in the city attorney's office that work in this space

and collectively we have about 100 years of experience with the municipal bonds and on every bond offering in the city we work as the city's in-house attorney with respect to d disclosure matters. what i'm going to do today is probably do a truncated presentation because the next bond offering isn't until 2020. so this training is just hit highlights and we'll revisit it to a bond offering so you can bring some training together and apply it to the bond offering. be that as it may, this presentation will cover and

maybe get a purchase agreement and maybe disclosure document and you'll act to approve those documents. in some ways it's the most important document in the group will be an official statement like a prospectus. so you're the final arbiter

whether it goes to market or not. because of certain circumstances with respect to failures with municipal bond offerings they imposed certain duties for offering documents. what they'll go through on this presentation not to make you security laws experts or anything but what's the law here, what's the context in which we're operating. what's the learnings associates and it's the municipal offerings. what's the official statement and what's it do and how do you as board members discharge your duties? okay.

the principle is there's no direct regulation by the securities and exchange commission. they enjoy broad securities an exempt from the comment period opposed to corporate securities. most you have to register with the securities and exchange commission and there's a review and comment period before you can access the capital market. municipal securities are not required to register and are exempt and there's a reason for that. one is if there's 55,000 municipal issuers and legal constraints and the second is the view is if the securities laws were enacted 33 and 34, munis were still viewed as safe

instruments and the opportunity for fraud was just not there unlike your corporate counterparts. indeed, i think the failure rate for munis where investors actually lose capital is minuscule and the fact of the matter is if an investor was actually doing his or her due diligence the likelihood of a loss of capital would go to zero because you know when your local government has one taxpayer, one large taxpayer and that taxpayer's failing if you're doing your diligence. but the sec indirectly regulates through brokers and dealers. so investment banks and now financial advisors so by imposing duties on those intermediaries they indirectly

regulate municipal securities and they cannot under write them without a document and a commitment from the securities office to provide annual ongoing market data. i would say 20 years ago when municipal issuers issued bonds, there was no obligation to provide continual financial and operating data and so therefore if you were purchasing that security in the secondaries market there was no way for you to do other than to do your own diligence and investigation to determine whether the financial health of the underlying issuer. and the other way the sec ri regulates the market is through the enforcement of the securities laws. so basically the sec views itself as the protector of the market ensuring that when you

invest your capital, you get a fair rate of return for the risk you're taking. so they require issuers to basically make a full complete disclear -- disclosure of all material facts related to that offering. so some of the observations to train around staff and be sure when a disclosure document comes for approval we have conducted on our part so one is that some of the securities enforcement actions have seen staff has not been trained so the professionals charged with preparing documents to come to market haven't been trained in terms of their requirements and in terms of their diligence

obligations and in terms of ensuring that they have the most complete and accurate information prior to the time they go to market. secondarily, in other enforcement actions they've seen there's been no opportunity for different departments within an issuer to talk to each other. so in one circumstance i'm familiar w familiar with, the individuals would speak to department individually and there would never be an opportunity for cross-po cross-pollination so one department could not make a observation on another department to get a more complete view of the issuer's project situation. and the lack of controls and procedures. the sec has commented favorably in recent speeches and

enforcement actions an they're better served with internal controls and procedures and we have worked with all of our departments throughout the city to make sure each department has controls and procedures and the sfmta controls and procedures and we'll bring those to you by end of year for review and approval. in the sec has observed issuers have made misstatements or not painted a complete picture because of political influence. that's to say what we try to tell staff is the official statement not a public relations document. and i believe investors quite frankly that investors are aware issuers have challenges, financial and individual

challenges and they're more concerned frankly with the current of their money than a return on their money. i believe that's the municipal space that in part returns here are not significant. this is really a safety security market. we tell people, tell all your challenges and that you will be rewarded in the marketplace where you tell your challenges and then talk about how you're managing your challenges and that's the better spot to be in. so one question is when did the securities laws attach. they attached in two instances and one is through primary offerings and secondarily when board members such as yourselves

make comments on the sfmta's financial health. those are likely to reach the marketplace and may be tested against the provisions. what we attempt to do is when we're accessing the marketplace or alternatively, when there are turbulent times, we we encourage board members to exercise caution in making statements about the financial health of the sfmta or when we're coming to market to discourage investment to say there's no risk, you should buy it. those statements will be tested against the anti-fraud provisions of the securities laws. and generally we're talking about material statements and the anti-fraud provisions make

it unlawful to make a statement of a material fact or omission. in our context unlike corporate security where's there's strict liability they have to prove we made a neglect statement. so we bro vide the training and -- provide the training and have controls and procedures so if something did slip through in our process, we can at least defend ourselves that we had taken every precaution to ensure that we weren't neglect but nonetheless, something slipped through. and one of the purposes here is simply to address the informationalized symmetry between what we know as the keeper of all financial information and data and what investors need to know before

making an informed investment decision. so what is immaterial? it's a likelihood the omitted fact would have assumed significance in the deliberations of a reasonable investor. we're talking about important information, significant information and so there is some space for forward looking statements which are projections but it's material information we're looking for. so who's the sec has gone after? they've gone after good afternoonal

governmental bodies and so far to date government officials or sfo, director of -- cfo, director of finance have been sanctioned. i would say one of the trend lines of the sec has been to sanction professionals financially with no in dem -- indemnity by the governing body and third parties, underwriters, financial advisors, lawyers, etcetera have been all subject to sanctions but no individual members of the board have been sanctioned by the sec. so again, guidance for board members, potential liability from misleading statements when we access the market in a primary offering and then

official statements and then communications likely to reach investors and make annual filings of financial information and operating data to the financial marketplace and those statements on an annual basis will be tested again the releases and some will not reb viewed before they go out. in some ways the seminole and only guidance we got from the sec arises from the orange county bankruptcy in 1994. in that case the county of orange approved a number of short-term financings and failed

to disclose they were dependent on investments from their pool and when they pool failed and they had to declare bankruptcy, they were subject it sanction by the sec. without getting too far into what types of financial products they're investing in, it's simply that they were accessing the market and were dependent on the pharmaceutical of the investment pool and and failed to disclose how risky the investment pool was and the inability of repaying if the pool were to fail. so what the sec states with respect to the orange county, is that while they had knowledge of their dependence on the

investment pool they took no steps to ensure when they approved official statements to access the capital markets that that information was accurate and that information was disclosed and mainly how they took they know no steps is they were approved on the consent calendar and they viewed it as a routine matter and delegated to the then treasurer, tax collector, so in any event let's move on. the bright line rule is if you have information you know is misleading and can't approve a document or may you recklessly disregard information and not take steps to ensure it's included in an official statement. what is acting recklessly, if you have knowledge of facts and taking appropriate steps and

we're taking steps including reading the document. such steps could have included asking staff and so here's a diagram of the official statement. the principle audience for the statement is the investor. so when you review an official statement or read the text put your shoes of an investor, would i need the information it clear and accurate based on what i know. is the sfmta an official statement. we will come to you with a team of professionals to bring that to market it's the official statement to the text and understanding of your operation and financial information has to

come from the sfmta and not outside professionals. and i think the answer and the key here is that by telling your complete information you'll get rewarded in the financial marketplace by getting viewed as a credit that people can rely on disclosures. you can rely on disclosures made and the market will reward you for providing good information by which they can make an investment. so here's also what we kind of trained staff on. and here's -- i'll give you the big takeaway we advise staff to take care and be critical and if they're not ready, if they're not comfortable basically say so. if something doesn't make sense, say so. before a document comes to you it would have gone through six

or seven iterations with that kind of as the underpinning. so s when we prepare financial statements is the agency has 20/20 hindsight. if we make submissions looking back they'll say that that was material and then observation two is when we have a debate whether to disclose we look at observation one as our guide post. so real quick, the sfmta has controls and procedures on the website when we renew them we can go through them and they're simply a set of internal controls to guide decision making in the absence of when those decisions have to be made.

theyal kate the competitive bidding standard and retention of professional and that type of thing is spelled out in the control and procedures so we're not making it up ad hoc. the reason we're doing the train in some ways it's a prophylactic so if we make an error in the future we can say we trained up and did the best we could. how do you discharge your responsibilities? you could read the official statement and then you're going to ask but can't i rely on staff and the answer is yes, you can rely on staff if it's reasonable and in good faith. if you see red flags in an office document and you don't make queries, it's not reasonable to rely on staff but on the other hand if you're aware that staff has retained experienced professionals and has controls and procedures and has gone through a robust and

diligent process presenting that document you can rely on staff. okay. real quick, so then we'll just and we'll come back -- how do you go back? the questions you should ask on any information statement is when it's before you is what's the purpose of the transaction and are there any unique risk associated with the transaction. do we have the wherewithal to pay it back and am i comfortable that everything i know is presented in the document and do i have an questions for staff that hasn't been addressed and i'm not comfortable. with that we'll end there and then promise to come back when you have an actual transaction in front of you and then we can tie some of these up. >> excellent. >> if you have any questions.

>> i think all of us have had this training before except for director eaken and that completes our 2019 training on this which is great and if we have bond offering we'll ask you back to give a refresher. directors are there any questions? okay, seeing none we'll move on to the closed session? >> item 14, yes, the discussion to invoke future and client privilege and conduct a closed session. >> very good. i will ask for a five-minute biobreak for the board as i hear rumbling as needed and before you do that, i will entertain a motion to go into closed session. >> all those in favor, please say aye. opposed? okay. we'll be back in five minutes and i'll ask directors to use

>> chair peskin: good afternoon and welcome to the land use and transportation committee of the board of supervisors, our first committee of the new committee structure of the new year. monday, january 28, 2019. i am the chair, aaron peskin, joined to my right by supervisor 5 hsha safai and shortly to be joined by

supervisor and new committee member matt haney. our clerk is erica major. we are joined in the audience by planning commissioner dennis richards. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: yes. [agenda item read]. >> chair peskin: do you have any other extraneous announcements that you would like to make, madam clerk? >> clerk: i do not. >> chair peskin: okay. i thought you wanted to make an announcement about emergency evacuation procedures? >> clerk: that would be in the case of an emergency evacuation. >> chair peskin: thank you. madam clerk, i would like to

welcome the counsel to this committee, counsel john give mer. welcome, mr. givner. madam clerk, the first item, please. [agenda item read]. >> chair peskin: thank you, miss major. and let me just start out by saying when i became the chair of this committee, i found out that there were actually a number of landmark designations that had been recommended by the historic reservation commission that were on the backlog of this committee's calendar, and i intend to bring them forward to this committee, including several at our next meeting on the 11th day of february . and this measure has been sponsored by supervisor mandelman. and i see his representative

today. sir, if you'd like to come back on behalf of supervisor mandelman. >> thank you, supervisors. i am here to speak in support of the historic landmark designation for the property at 22 beaver street, one of the oldest homes in the duboce triangle of district eight. the home originally built in the 1870's is one of the few structures in the neighborhood to survive the 1906 earthquake with minimal renovations to the italian style exterior. it is our belief that the duboce triangle neighborhood and san francisco at large would benefit from the designation of this property, and i ask that you support the history torque designation. i thank you, supervisors for your time. >> chair peskin: thank you. and on behalf of the planning department, miss ferguson.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. janet ferguson, planning department staff. i'm here to present the historic preservation commission's finding. the department received a community sponsored landmark designation from the property owner in june 2018. the landmark designation report was prepared by the planning department preservation consulting, and the h.p.c. initiated designation on september 19, 2018 and unanimously recommended landmark designation on november 7, 2018. constructed circa 1870, it's architecturally significant as a very early and well preserved italian villa within a garden

setting. in contrast to the much more italian eight row houses, the house has italian detailing on three of its four destinations, indicating that it was meant to be appreciated in its garden setting. out buildings include a historic carriage house and nonhistoric garage. character defining features include the exterior as well as that landscape garden setting. the property owner is very supportive of landmark designation and also planning commissioner richards has been very involved in helping with the landmark designation. the department believes the building meeted the established eligibility status, and the designation is warranted. this concludes my presentation. happy to answer any questions. >> chair peskin: thank you, miss ferguson. before i bring up mr. verplank

who prepared the report, i'd like to bring forward our esteemed planning commissioner dennis richards, mr. richards. >> commissioner richards: thank you. dennis richards here as an individual citizen because the commission did not hear this item. this house was a special house. i see -- i live directly across the street and i've been looking at it ever since i've lived in my house. people walk up the street and marvel that this house survived. it was on an 80 foot lot, and a 20-foot section was cut in 1953 as per the case report. the palm tree on the next door lot is also going to be coming before you as a separate landmarking of the tree because it was original to the house -- i think it was built in 1869. people walk up the street. it's an amazing house, even on the inside. we have the owner of the house,

miss geiling, who's been in the house since 1966, and against all odds, in the '60's and '70's, and the federal government came in, and we were supposed to be a redevelopment 2.0 area, she actually participated in the federally assisted code enforcement program known as face. it also created the landscape that we have in duboce triangle that many, many people including tour buses drive through the city and can't believe how lush it is. a couple of other things. this house, in its setting, plus most of the rest of duboce triangle is a california registered district. we had, as a planning department, determined in 200 # when the market octavia program was passed, several of us are going to be getting duboce triangle on the historic register because if it's on the

california register, it is exempt. and i'm also working with several other folks from several other neighborhoods that are also eligible districts to get them on the register. one last thing, if this esteemed committee or the board of supervisors can hold a hearing on s.b.-50 and its actual impact on san francisco because i've read the legislation and i've seen all the places where it points to, and you really need to understand it. it's -- it's going to rezone everything again, so thank you very much. i support this landmarking. >> chair peskin: thank you, commissioner richards, testifying in your capacity as a citizen of the city and county of san francisco and the matter that you just brought up is not before us, so we, as you know, pursuant to the brown act, cannot discuss that, but thank you for edifying us on the history of this property.

with that, mr. verplank, who wrote the case report on this, please come forward. >> thank you, chair peskin. justin sevplank. i want to thank the owner of the property, miss te tess geiling. without her effort and the effort of her husband, john, this property would be a stucco home or parking lot, no doubt about it. they painstakingly preserved 22 beaver street, but they've also put the personal touches on the property in the time they've owned it, which is why we decided to call it the benedict-gieling house. >> chair peskin: thank you, mr.

verplank, and thank you for all the work you do on behalf of historic preservation. you do it scientifically. miss gieling, if you want to come forward, and if you don't, i see just want to thank you for stewarding the house since before i was born, but if you'd like to come forward, we'd like to hear from you. right there. there you go. miss gieling, the floor is yours. >> i'm jean gieling. i've owned beaver street, 22 beaver for more than 60 years, and i think i've seen it at its worst, and i'm beginning to see

it at its best. in the beginning, the house was in such miserable condition, it was rumored that it would become motel. well, nobody on the street wanted that, and when we bought it, the neighbors came one by one to tell me how grateful they were that we would be able to restore the house and to live there. i've been in restoration for more than 60 years, but i'm

sure i can finish it. and the neighbors told me a great deal about the beginnings of the house. but what i've been seeing is the fact as i've worked on the house to bring it up to standard, the rest of the neighborhood came with me. beaver street had been left more or less neglected because of the rumor that it would become a park, a -- well, it

was to become something they did not want, either a motel or a nursing home. and as i've worked, the neighborhood has improved. everybody has painted his house and made it the street it is today, which i think is one of the best, most livable places in the entire city. thank you. >> chair peskin: thank you, miss gieling, for