house about 263 individuals in approximately 50 properties in neighborhoods across the city. placing four or five residents together to share a home with 24 serve household case management services. until now almost all of the cooperative living units are private owners. in san francisco current rental market they are subject to the same eviction threats the renters face. by purchasing the units we would have what we need for near and long-term. dph would provide the oversight and direct the client placement and we would need real estate expertise. it is a priority for me in the

budget process. since i didn't see that in the bla report i wanted that on the record so it is included in the resolutions we pass subsequently. i have talked to the chair fewer and president yee about my desire to expand the model looking at potential legislation as well-to-do that, working with chair fewer so i just want that on the record to make sure that while we are looking to expand models we expand the models that work and that we get that in this year's budget. thank you very much. i also have spoken to the mayor about my desire to have the residences in my neighborhood. have seniors mentally ill who

will need supportive care. this is exactly the type of housing that will fit in my neighborhood to serve the homeless population in my neighborhood. i think i have many single family homes i hope we can buy for this purpose and i think this is a good investment. i think is outcomes are much better. i concur and have spoken to the mayor about this for my own district. i am glad we are on the sage page -- same page and supervisor yee is in favor of the model also. i want to thank everyone for coming and staying late. sorry this went so long. we learned a lot. i would like to make a motion to continue this motion to the call of the chair. seeing no comments i would like to continue to the call of the chair. thank you very familiar.

any other issues before us today? >> no, madam chair. >> thank you very much. this meeting is adjourned.

>> shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their business in the 49 square files

of san francisco. we help san francisco remain unique, successful and right vi. so where will you shop and dine in the 49? >> i'm one of three owners here in san francisco and we provide mostly live music entertainment and we have food, the type of food that we have a mexican food and it's not a big menu, but we did it with love. like ribeye tacos and quesadillas and fries. for latinos, it brings families together and if we can bring that family to your business, you're gold. tonight we have russelling for e community. >> we have a ten-person limb elimination match. we have a full-size ring with

barside food and drink. we ended up getting wrestling here with puoillo del mar. we're hope og get families to join us. we've done a drag queen bingo and we're trying to be a diverse kind of club, trying different things. this is a great part of town and there's a bunch of shops, a variety of stores and ethnic restaurants. there's a popular little shop that all of the kids like to hanhang out at. we have a great breakfast spot call brick fast at tiffanies. some of the older businesses are refurbished and newer businesses are coming in and it's exciting. >> we even have our own brewery for fdr, ferment, drink repeat. it's in the san francisco garden

district and four beautiful muellermixer ura alsomurals. >> it's important to shop local because it's kind of like a circle of life, if you will. we hire local people. local people spend their money at our businesses and those local mean that wor people willr money as well. i hope people shop locally. [ ♪ ] >> you're watching quick bite, the show that has san francisco. ♪ ♪ ♪

>> we're here at one of the many food centric districts of san francisco, the 18th street corridor which locals have affectionately dubbed the castro. a cross between castro and gastronomic. the bakery, pizza, and dolores park cafe, there is no end in sight for the mouth watering food options here. adding to the culinary delights is the family of business he which includes skylight creamery, skylight and the 18 raisin. >> skylight market has been here since 1940. it's been in the family since 1964. his father and uncle bought the market and ran it through sam taking it over in 1998. at that point sam revamped the market. he installed a kitchen in the center of the market and really made it a place where chefs look forward to come.

he created community through food. so, we designed our community as having three parts we like to draw as a triangle where it's comprised of our producers that make the food, our staff, those who sell it, and our guests who come and buy and eat the food. and we really feel that we wouldn't exist if it weren't for all three of those components who really support each other. and that's kind of what we work towards every day. >> valley creamery was opened in 2006. the two pastry chefs who started it, chris hoover and walker who is sam's wife, supplied all the pastries and bakeries for the market. they found a space on the block to do that and the ice cream kind of came as an afterthought. they realized the desire for ice cream and we now have lines

around the corner. so, that's been a huge success. in 2008, sam started 18 reasons, which is our community and event space where we do five events a week all around the idea of bringling people closer to where the food comes from and closer to each other in that process. >> 18 reasons was started almost four years ago as an educational arm of their work. and we would have dinners and a few classes and we understood there what momentum that people wanted this type of engagement and education in a way that allowed for a more in-depth conversation. we grew and now we offer -- i think we had nine, we have a series where adults learned home cooking and we did a teacher training workshop where san francisco unified public school teachers came and learned to use cooking for the core standards. we range all over the place. we really want everyone to feel

like they can be included in the conversation. a lot of organizations i think which say we're going to teach cooking or we're going to teach gardening, or we're going to get in the policy side of the food from conversation. we say all of that is connected and we want to provide a place that feels really community oriented where you can be interested in multiple of those things or one of those things and have an entree point to meet people. we want to build community and we're using food as a means to that end. >> we have a wonderful organization to be involved with obviously coming from buy right where really everyone is treated very much like family. coming into 18 reasons which even more community focused is such a treat. we have these events in the evening and we really try and bring people together. people come in in groups, meet friends that they didn't even know they had before. our whole set up is focused on communal table. you can sit across from someone and start a conversation.

we're excited about that. >> i never worked in catering or food service before. it's been really fun learning about where things are coming from, where things are served from. >> it is getting really popular. she's a wonderful teacher and i think it is a perfect match for us. it is not about home cooking. it's really about how to facilitate your ease in the kitchen so you can just cook. >> i have always loved eating food. for me, i love that it brings me into contact with so many wonderful people. ultimately all of my work that i do intersects at the place where food and community is. classes or cooking dinner for someone or writing about food. it always come down to empowering people and giving them a wonderful experience. empower their want to be around people and all the values and reasons the commitment, community and places, we're offering a whole spectrum of

offerings and other really wide range of places to show that good food is not only for wealthy people and they are super committed to accessibility and to giving people a glimpse of the beauty that really is available to all of us that sometimes we forget in our day to day running around. >> we have such a philosophical mission around bringing people together around food. it's so natural for me to come here. >> we want them to walk away feeling like they have the tools to make change in their lives. whether that change is voting on an issue in a way that they will really confident about, or that change is how to understand why it is important to support our small farmers. each class has a different purpose, but what we hope is that when people leave here they understand how to achieve that goal and feel that they

have the resources necessary to do that. >> are you inspired? maybe you want to learn how to have a patch in your backyard or cook better with fresh ingredients . or grab a quick bite with organic goodies. find out more about 18 reasons by going to 18 reasons.org and learn about buy right market and creamery by going to buy right market.com. and don't forget to check out our blog for more info on many of our episodes at sf quick bites.com. until next time, may the fork be with you. ♪ ♪ >> so chocolaty. mm. ♪ >> oh, this is awesome. oh, sorry. i thought we were done rolling. ♪

the meeting will come to order. welcome to the thursday, may 2nd meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. i'm gordon mar, the chair of the committee and i'm joined by vallie brown and aaron peskin. i'd like to thank corwin sfgovtv for staffing the meeting. mr. clerk, any announcements?

>> clerk: please ensure you silenced your cell phones and other devices. speaker cards should be submit issed to the clerk. items acted upon will be on the may 14th board of supervisors agenda. >> supervisor mar: number one? >> clerk: resolution declaring the intention of the board of supervisors to establish a property-based business improvement district known as the downtown community. ordering and setting a time and place for public hearing of the board of supervisors sitting as a committee of whole on july 16, at 3:00 p.m. approving the form of the notice of public hearing and assessment ballot proceeding. directing environmental findings and directing the board to give notice as required. >> supervisor mar: i'd like to recognize helen mar and andrew from the office of economic

development for a brief presentation. >> thank you, good morning. helen mar, project manager with workforce development. i work on the team that provides oversight to the cbds in the city. i'm here to present on the resolution. this project has been a multiyear process with initial formation dating back to 2007. the original cbd was stopped by the recession of 2008. the steering committee came together and decided to reinitiate a campaign. the expanded cbd steering committee worked to determine the appropriate services to deliver and the appropriate assessments for the services. this was done through considerable outreach, including a survey to all property owners and stakeholders in the area. this outreach guided the

creation of the formation documents attached to this resolution and call for assessment of 10 cents per building square foot and 8 cents for vacant lots. the service areas which the cbd consultant will present in greater detail on sidewalks, management, which is 77.45% of the budget, district identity, marketing and public space development and management. 5.16% of the budget. program management approximately 14.2% of the budget. and contingency, 3.19% of the budget. the total district budget will be approximately $4 million with approximately $3.8 million by special assessment dollars. the district encompasses 669 parcels and their services will benefit property owners, business owners, residents and the area as a whole.

the downtown cbd has reached their 30% threshold necessary to trigger a special election and the cbd will have 15-year term from january 1, 2020 through to december 31, 2034. if there are no questions from staff, i would like to invite marco to present. >> thank you. >> thank you, supervisors. supervisor peskin, i hope you're doing well today. always a pleasure to see you. supervisor peskin and i have been doing this for 15 years now, been through a lot together. i'm going to go through the power point presentation. will it show up here, helen? just to give you an overview.

as stated, we had started this -- am i doing something wrong here? so, this shows the activities or milestones we're working on. the background on the financial district as helen mentioned, we started this effort back in 2007-08. and because we knew that was the financial district is really, as far as -- i work throughout the state, so i -- really throughout the country, this is most significant business district in the entire west coast. it's one of the greatest ones, great density. and we started the effort in 2007. as you all know in the fall of 2008, everything collapsed. the effort to try to get to the

petition drive through our old efforts just stopped completely. so what we decided to do was go on hiatus. april 2016, we began to discuss it again with a few people as led by clint reilly, myself, jim lazarus of the chamber and commerce and we wanted to figure out was there support to do this. so we had the first meeting of the property owners in june 2017. we sent out a survey to property owners in august 2017. the petition threshold was reached december 2017. and now we're moving forward -- excuse me, the survey petition threshold. the survey has to demonstrate to the mayor's office that there is support enough to go to the management phase. we wrote the management plan in march 2018 and cbd petitions were mailed out -- we met the threshold -- i'm having problems

with this thing, helen, so... we sent out a news letter to all the property owners in april 2018. threshold was met in march 2019. presentation to the board of supervisors is today. the resolution is anticipated for june 2019. public hearing july 16. the new nonprofit corporation managing the district will be formed between august and september. and the contract with the mayor's office in probability october 2019. first transfer assessments this december and the cbd services will begin early 2019. you might want to just stay here. what we have here is the times that we met. we had incredible participation. we've done nine districts.

my company has in the city of san francisco. the one that had the most participation before this was tenderloin. i did that in 2005. this one had has had 30 to 50 people talking about this plan. this is the survey results. you can see when we do a survey, we list what the properties are, supportive are green, red are people opposed. yellow are people stated no opinion. and based upon this, we met our threshold of properties. the survey demonstrated that the biggest services that people really wanted to fund -- because the cbd really is just a financing mechanism. and it's supposed to fund only special benefits. so is marketing promoting the

area to create new demand. rincon, union square, everything surrounding the district was marketing and promoting it. if you google financial district, there is really nothing there. we decided as part of the survey, because we had property managers that represented jackson square, that they wanted jackson square included too. but it alone would not generate the revenues to make an impact. we mixed jackson square in the financial district. providing daily maintenance and cleaning services in the public rights of way, where the city and count are currently providing, including traffic control officers provided over and above those provided by the mta. one of the greatest problems is trying to cross market street from 4:00 to 6:00 to get to the 880 or the 80. we know that everybody commented

that when the super bowl was here, it was easy to get across market street, because there were officers at each intersection. we want to figure out if there is a way to do that with mta also. not managed by signals, because if you know the area, it backs up heavily going southbound on the north side of market. so one thing that everyone was adamant, we need to have people get out of the financial district so they can be just as competitive as the people in soma or the greater rincon district. connecting people to resources. that is something that i think every cbd is trying do. securing safe passage of employers. re-branding the historic nature of the cbd to remain competitive with the massive development south of market. and retaining staff to oversee new services and ensure effective practices are being

deployed. so the final map now that we agreed to was, one, we made an adjustment for chinatown. supervisor peskin, as you recall, we put the boundary around there. we also have, it looks like a missing tooth on the south side of market. that's the federal reserve building because we knew it would be difficult for them to pay into the district and we want didn't to -- didn't want to provide services if they weren't paying in the district. this does not include the embarcadero center. there is interest in having it expand to the ferry building and other places in the portside, however, we figured that could be phase two and possible expansion in the future. on the west side it runs parallel to union scare. on the south side, it's a jagged edge, which is where the rincon is. we tried to fill in all the gaps. the budget, as helen mentioned,

we call them civic sidewalks and mobility management and that's where we would be working with mta to facilitate the traffic flow north and south of market street. it's about $3 million. it's over 77% of the budget. district identity which is promoting the district, creating a website, social media, trying to develop public spaces, et cetera, is around 5% of the budget. program management is about 14% of the budget and that is doing the multitude of tasks that are necessary to oversee the 82% of the special benefit services and then we have a contingency of 3% budget, giving us 3.8 almost $3.9 million. the civic sidewalks and mobility management, the services that are included, and they could shift from year to year, hiring employees or service providers to perform regular sidewalk and gutter sweeping, removing trash

overflow from current reaccept receptacles. and hiring nonprofit or private case workers to connect homeless individuals with necessary resources and services. continuing in the civic sidewalk, because this is over three quarters of the budget. considered live well live safe program that will benefit those who access the public rights of way. the whole point is to try to make the curb to the property line as enjoyable as possible. whether you're going from bart to the building, all the way to jackson square, or just trying to make it so it's attractive. and it's in everybody's best interest to enjoy the public rights of way. news racks, remove or consolidate. most of them are empty. advocacy for increased resources

to improve traffic management. and then traffic and mobility efforts to share parking, possibly valet program and curb cuts. district identity has to do with branding the financial district in jackson square. and finding a website, development and updating it. funding an app to help people get around the financial and jackson square. management and coordination of social events. hiring a pr firm. installation of holiday decorations. creating a banner program to tie the district together. planning of art displays. funding logo development. funding local space design and improvements and creating programs that fund business attraction workshops and fairs to ensure that owners have a good inventory of prospective tenants to choose from. program management is basically

staffing. it's paying for staff. it's advocacy for the improved traffic management, office related expenses, financial reporting. legal work and relation with the other cbds in the city. so that is the overview of what the intent of the financial district or the downtown cbd is. and we would just encourage the committee to move this forward so we can do our -- this has been 12 years in the making, so we'd finally like to see it happen at the beginning of 2020. and i'm available for any questions that the committee members might have, but there are some other speakers too. i can take a seat or should i answer questions. okay. >> supervisor mar: thank you. and ms. mar for the presentation and the good work. colleagues, any questions?

>> supervisor peskin: no, this thing has been kicking around since the first time i was on the board of supervisors and happy to have lived long enough to hopefully see it come to fruition. >> supervisor mar: why don't we move to public comment. i have speaker cards. you can line up on the right-hand side and speak. you have two minutes for public comment. >> good morning, on behalf of the realtry trust. we represent the 555 block of california street and they're expressing their support, to put it mildly, they're behind this. >> supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning. my name is sheyna. i work for all house, i'm a

property manager and i just want to say i fully support this. i've been involved with the group for the last couple of years and i really hope we can move forward. thank you. >> supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good morning, i represent cbre downtown and i was involved with the uptown district in oakland when was kick started on the board there, and i'm looking forward to having the same success here in the financial district. >> supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker, please. >> morning. thank you for having us today. my name is frank holland, clint reilly organization. we have a number of buildings in the financial district and in jackson square primarily historic buildings around the california street and montgomery intersection. and this has been a long time coming. before i begin, i have a short statement, but i would like to thank city staff for all of their help, particularly chris,

who isn't here today, but really did a phenomenal job of guiding us through the process and thanks to marco as well. you know, since 2004 when the city augmented the improvement district law with article 15 of the business tax regulations code, we've seen this flourishing of the districts throughout the city and they've done innovative things in helping increase the vibrancy of the neighborhood. as so many other neighborhoods have seized opportunities afforded by this structure to partner with the city on behalf of cleaner streets, public art, place making activities, public safety, the financial district -- which historically has been the heart of the city dating back to the gold rush -- has failed to do so. so our project to bring the cbd,

which as supervisor peskin mentioned, dates back to over a decade. it's nearly complete and we need it now more than ever before. the city has evolved dramatically over the past decade. more challenges than ever confront us and this allows an opportunity to be proactive, coordinate with the city and address them. we've worked hard to the steering committee over the past two years to develop a thoughtful effective management plan that will administer the revenues. on behalf of the neighborhood and partnering with the city -- [bell ringing]. >> supervisor mar: thank you. next speaker, please. >> i agree with everything you're doing and i would like to see it in granite by the board of supervisors here. but also, i'd like to see you

expand and take it a step further than what you're doing. with this type of budget, $3,873,491, you could build 144 units of apartment building complex for $56 million. i'd like to see you help take care of the homeless problem by means of building and investing and building a brand new apartment building complex to help the most vulnerable people in the city that need housing. there is also a 68-unit building being built for $57 million. i'd like to see you get involved in building apartment building complex of that magnitude, too. that don't mean for people to get these types of buildings and price-fix them and make it in order for the tenant to be

eligible claim as affordable housing and then do price gouging and price fixing and making the eligibility for the tenants to have income of 80, 90, $120,000 a year like mission rock. there is going to be bad consequences behind that, because that it is price fixing and price gouging. you have rules in the mission rock instruction packet that says 15% of those apartments are supposed to be for low-income bracket people. it's 1500 units in that building and that rule 410.2 says part of that construction and redevelopment of that land is supposed to have low-income bracket tenants. that means 225 of those units -- [bell ringing] >> supervisor mar: thank you.

any other persons who wish to testify? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, can we recommend this item to the full board without objection? >> supervisor peskin: so moved. >> supervisor mar: great. mr. clerk, can you please call item number 2. >> hearing to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the retroactive nature of the board of supervisors approval of the grant agreement between the city and county of san francisco and the tenderloin housing clinic and review of the agreement. review of other contracts to which the city and county. in spite of the lease limitations set forth in section 9.118. >> supervisor mar: i would like to pass it off to supervisor peskin, who is the chief sponsor of this hearing.

>> supervisor peskin: thank you, as stated in the request back in january, it came to the board's attention that one particular contract had been approved three times in violation of section 9.118 of the charter, which is a responsibility that i take and i know we all take seriously. i'll just read the most important part of 9.118, which is subsection b, which says unless otherwise provide for in this charter and with the exception of construction contracts entered into by the city and county, any other contracts or agreements entered into by department, board or commission, having a term in excess of 10 years or expenditures of $10 million or the modification of amendments to the contract or agreement having impact of more than half a million dollars, shall be subject to approval by the board of supervisors. and in this instance, that did

not happen. and so subsequently representatives from the human services agency explained how that happened. and identified one subsequent contract, the meals on wheels contract, which we retroactively approved. i think mr. roar and his department have scoured all of their contracts and found that these two probably due to a change in personnel at a particular juncture, have now been addressed. when i did this hearing request, i asked every department in city government to scour their records. and none of them have come forward to say that they have approved any contract in violation of section 9.118. so i'm -- this is going to be a very quick two-minute hearing. i wanted mr. roar to come down and say it again for the record.

and i want every other department to be sure that they follow 9.118 and bring any contract before it is entered into that is in excess of $10 million or 10 years to the board of supervisors for its review and approval or not approval. with that, i just want to turn it over to trent to say a few words and then we can file this item. >> supervisor, trent roar, human services agency, as supervisor peskin noted after discovering the contract in question, housing clinic contract, we did scour all of our -- probably close to 200 contracts we have entered into with the community based organizations or for-profit entities through department of aging and department of human services, which as you know, the three departments that comprise the human services agency. we found one additional meals on wheels that we brought forward.

i think what was important about the process, we saw gaps in our system of contract processing from procurement to approval and have since developed 15 differently measures to ensure we're following the proper protocols to ensure that we don't make this mistake again. and i'm pretty confident that is going to be the case. >> supervisor peskin: you might want to circulate that to the other 52 department heads so they can learn from your wisdom. >> sure. >> supervisor mar: thank you. any questions? before we move to the motion that supervisor peskin made, we'll take public comment. so you have two minutes to speak. please speak into the mic. >> this goes and flows with the earlier demonstration. not only is this type of contract that was conducted by

him, the same type of breach of contract took place at mission rock. now you got the giants caught up in it. they're laughing when i make that demonstration, but when i get you in front of a federal district court judge, the giants will be the first team to have a lawsuit filed against them. you're not following the rules in the instruction and that big bank of information pertaining to mission rock. i flashed that page and showed it to all of you, including you, bre, when you were president. that's are supposed to be for low-income bracket people. you further demonstrate you're not dealing with good faith. by the same response, you never had intentions of reaching a legal agreement on this matter, because you take a female that is hispanic, latino, mexican descent be your pitch person on

tv commercials pertaining to proposition d and have her explain she would love to be a tenant at mission rock. and then you have her daughter parade around with balloons and act like they're going to be eligible to live in that mission rock apartment building complex. then you take it a step further by having the female school teach say she would love to be a tenant. the female i spoke about is living in a boarding home. and the teacher doesn't have a high enough income to live in that mission rock apartment building complex. and you know that as a fact. and then you turn around and claim low federal tax credit as if you're putting low-income bracket people in the building, but when you read the fine print, the lowest income is higher than all of the people on the low-income -- [bell ringing]

>> supervisor mar: thank you. any other members of the public who wish to testify on this item? seeing none, public comment is now closed. any additional comments? >> supervisor peskin: i would make a motion to file this matter. >> supervisor mar: can we file without objection? done. mr. clerk, any further business. >> there is no further business. >> supervisor mar: this committee meeting is now closed.

>> shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their business in the 49 square files of san francisco. we help san francisco remain unique, successful and right vi. so where will you shop and dine

in the 49? >> i'm one of three owners here in san francisco and we provide mostly live music entertainment and we have food, the type of food that we have a mexican food and it's not a big menu, but we did it with love. like ribeye tacos and quesadillas and fries. for latinos, it brings families together and if we can bring that family to your business, you're gold. tonight we have russelling for e community. >> we have a ten-person limb elimination match. we have a full-size ring with barside food and drink. we ended up getting wrestling here with puoillo del mar.

we're hope og get families to join us. we've done a drag queen bingo and we're trying to be a diverse kind of club, trying different things. this is a great part of town and there's a bunch of shops, a variety of stores and ethnic restaurants. there's a popular little shop that all of the kids like to hanhang out at. we have a great breakfast spot call brick fast at tiffanies. some of the older businesses are refurbished and newer businesses are coming in and it's exciting. >> we even have our own brewery for fdr, ferment, drink repeat. it's in the san francisco garden district and four beautiful muellermixer ura alsomurals.

>> it's important to shop local because it's kind of like a circle of life, if you will. we hire local people. local people spend their money at our businesses and those local mean that wor people willr money as well. i hope people shop locally. [ ♪ ] >> i went through a lot of struggles in my life, and i am blessed to be part of this. i am familiar with what people are going through to relate and empathy and compassion to their struggle so they can see i came out of the struggle, it gives them hope to come up and do something positive. ♪ ♪ i am a community ambassador.

we work a lot with homeless, visitors, a lot of people in the area. >> what i like doing is posting up at hotspots to let people see visibility. they ask you questions, ask you directions, they might have a question about what services are

available. checking in, you guys. >> wellness check. we walk by to see any individual, you know may be sitting on the sidewalk, we make sure they are okay, alive. you never know. somebody might walk by and they are laying there for hours. you never know if they are alive. we let them know we are in the area and we are here to promote safety, and if they have somebody that is, you know, hanging around that they don't want to call the police on, they don't have to call the police. they can call us. we can direct them to the services they might need. >> we do the three one one to keep the city neighborhoods clean. there are people dumping, waste on the ground and needles on the ground. it is unsafe for children and

adults to commute through the streets. when we see them we take a picture dispatch to 311. they give us a tracking number and they come later on to pick it up. we take pride. when we come back later in the day and we see the loose trash or debris is picked up it makes you feel good about what you are doing. >> it makes you feel did about escorting kids and having them feel safe walking to the play area and back. the stuff we do as ambassadors makes us feel proud to help keep the city clean, helping the residents. >> you can see the community ambassadors. i used to be on the streets. i didn't think i could become a community ambassador. it was too far out there for me to grab, you know. doing this job makes me feel

good. because i came from where a lot of them are, homeless and on the street, i feel like i can give them hope because i was once there. i am not afraid to tell them i used to be here. i used to be like this, you know. i have compassion for people that are on the streets like the homeless and people that are caught up with their addiction because now, i feel like i can give them hope. it reminds you every day of where i used to be and where i am at now.

>> i view san francisco almost as a sibling or a parent or something. i just love the city. i love everything about it. when i'm away from it, i miss it like a person. i grew up in san francisco kind of all over the city. we had pretty much the run of the city 'cause we lived pretty close to polk street, and so we would -- in the summer, we'd all all the way down to aquatic park, and we'd walk down to the library, to the kids' center. in those days, the city was safe and nobody worried about us running around. i went to high school in spring valley. it was over the hill from chinatown. it was kind of fun to experience being in a minority, which most white people don't get to experience that often. everything was just really within walking distance, so it make it really fun. when i was a teenager, we didn't have a lot of money.

we could go to sam wong's and get super -- soup for $1. my parents came here and were drawn to the beatnik culture. they wanted to meet all of the writers who were so famous at the time, but my mother had some serious mental illness issues, and i don't think my father were really aware of that, and those didn't really become evident until i was about five, i guess, and my marriage blew up, and my mother took me all over the world. most of those ad ventures ended up bad because they would end up hospitalized. when i was about six i guess, my mother took me to japan, and that was a very interesting trip where we went over with a boyfriend of hers, and he was working there. i remember the open sewers and

gigantic frogs that lived in the sewers and things like that. mostly i remember the smells very intensely, but i loved japan. it was wonderful. toward the end. my mother had a breakdown, and that was the cycle. we would go somewhere, stay for a certain amount of months, a year, period of time, and she would inevitably have a breakdown. we always came back to san francisco which i guess came me some sense of continuity and that was what kept me sort of stable. my mother hated to fly, so she would always make us take ships places, so on this particular occasion when i was, i think, 12, we were on this ship getting ready to go through the panama canal, and she had a breakdown on the ship. so she was put in the brig, and i was left to wander the ship until we got to fluorfluora few days later, where we had a

distant -- florida a few days later, where we had a distant cousin who came and got us. i think i always knew i was a writer on some level, but i kind of stopped when i became a cop. i used to write short stories, and i thought someday i'm going to write a book about all these ad ventures that my mother took me on. when i became a cop, i found i turned off parts of my brain. i found i had to learn to conform, which was not anything i'd really been taught but felt very safe to me. i think i was drawn to police work because after coming from such chaos, it seemed like a very organized, but stable environment. and even though things happening, it felt like putting order on chaos and that felt very safe to me. my girlfriend and i were sitting in ve 150d uvio's bar,

and i looked out the window and i saw a police car, and there was a woman who looked like me driving the car. for a moment, i thought i was me. and i turned to my friend and i said, i think i'm supposed to do this. i saw myself driving in this car. as a child, we never thought of police work as a possibility for women because there weren't any until the mid70's, so i had only even begun to notice there were women doing this job. when i saw here, it seemed like this is what i was meant to do. one of my bosses as ben johnson's had been a cop, and he -- i said, i have this weird idea that i should do this. he said, i think you'd be good. the department was forced to hire us, and because of all of the posters, and the big recruitment drive, we were

under the impression that they were glad to have us, but in reality, most of the men did not want the women there. so the big challenge was constantly feeling like you had to prove yourself and feeling like if you did not do a good job, you were letting down your entire gender. finally took an inspector's test and passed that and then went down to the hall of justice and worked different investigations for the rest of my career, which was fun. i just felt sort of buried alive in all of these cases, these unsolved mysteries that there were just so many of them, and some of them, i didn't know if we'd ever be able to solve, so my boss was able to get me out of the unit. he transferred me out, and a couple of weeks later, i found out i had breast cancer. my intuition that the job was killing me. i ended up leaving, and by then, i had 28 years or the years in, i think. the writing thing really became intense when i was going through treatment for cancer

because i felt like there were so many parts that my kids didn't know. they didn't know my story, they didn't know why i had a relationship with my mother, why we had no family to speak of. it just poured out of me. i gave it to a friend who is an editor, and she said i think this would be publishable and i think people would be interested in this. i am so lucky to live here. i am so grateful to my parents who decided to move to the city. i am so grateful they did.

>> can you please rise for the pledge of allegiance? i pledge allegiance to the united states of america, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. call roll. >> yes,