which is five years ago. we were the second city in the united states to pass a vision zero policy to end traffic fatalities. now we're joined by dozens of cities nationally. and i'm really heartened to see a national regional statewide conversation starting about traffic safety. i think many don't know how adversely it impacts our society and our neighborhoods, but you know, when you're kind of in the thick of it, you hear how many people know someone hit by a car and how that has impacted their lives. san francisco, we've been tracking how many fatalities we have annually for a century. and this represents -- this grab shows 15 years. and you see the highest number of fatalities at 41 in the year 2007. we adopted vision zero in 2014, a year that we had 31

fatalities. 2017 was our least fatal year in the history of our record keeping. with still far too many deaths at 20. and we had 23 deaths last year in 2018. i'm saddened to report that currently to date we have 11 recorded fatalities and three probable that will be by the end of the month, so we're certainly trending in the wrong direction, but we're hopeful that the strategy, it's not a panacea, but it is a blueprint for the place we want to get. vision zero is guided internationally and nationally by core principles of number one, saving lives, that we want to get our fatalities to zero. that we as government can prevent deaths. that we need to think about how we do prevention in an equitable way so we're making sure the outcomes are best for everyone, not just some. the speed is the predominating

factor in whether someone litsches or dies when hit by a car. and the ways to improve the outcomes for people is reengineering our streets, and by doing communication, education, enforcement and improving our vehicles, whether they're a car or a scooter, to ensure when a collision occurs that they are not -- that it is not fatal. throughout vision zero as a core function of our program, we have a really robust engagement community process and i'm pleased to have nicole participating. we have a lot of active seniors and people with disabilities in our processes. as part of our strategy update that we did last year, we engaged hundreds of san franciscans across the city in the neighborhoods through coffee talks and tea talks at rec centres, pools, ymcas, just talking about our policy goal

and asking for new ideas about how we can achieve vision zero with their help. and we've had some really strong community processes within the city and engaging most vocal advocates to make sure that our actions reflect the needs of the communities that we serve. so, we passed the vision zero policy, and they adopted the resolution we get to zero by 2024. so the obvious question is what will it take to get to zero? our answer is in this graphic that i'll talk about. so one is strategic actions. so we're going to talk about those toward the end of the presentation, which is the steps that the city and city government will take to get to zero through engineering, education, and enforcement activities. next is our transformative policies. to the right of that, our

complementary goals. and lastly, everything we do, whether it's a strategic action or goal, is rooted in equity. i'm going to talk about that in a second. number one, the complementary goals. so this is the idea, one that we're trying to advance, ending fatalities is intersectional to other city goals, that it doesn't stand alone and we need other goals of the city to advance for us to achieve zero. that includes housing and especially affordable housing. the further out people have to live in the region to get to their job here in san francisco, the more likely they are they're in a car, the more likely they're to be involved in a collision. and that is related to the number of vehicle miles traveled, which is a wonky transportation term, but how many people are driving in a car on a daily basis.

having housing near your job or near any of the other activities that you need to get to, whether it's a supermarket, a senior center, a pool, heavily implemented how safe our streets will be. also, because i work for the sfmta, when people make a transportation choice, they need to make a sustainable transportation choice. we need to see muni being reliable, efficient, effective and a great choice for every san franciscan to make. and the nice balance of that one is related to mode shifts. some trips can be taken by muni, some trips by walking or biking. we want to encourage those trips and make them desirable and not a last-ditch choice because your car happens to be in the garage that day. and all of these also relate to our climate goals in the city. every single one of these steps is toward a sustainable future

and so is vision zero and so is our climate action goal. what we've been thinking about along with the community, how can we advance these intersectional goals to get to our safety goal and how can the safety goal advance these goals? and that they're one and the same. we can't people not on muni. we can't see trends towards biking be reduced in order to get -- and get to vision zero. it's not going to happen. they have to move together at the same time, so we're encouraged by the work that our colleagues across the city do to advance these goals. the second sort of pillar of our work is the transformative policy agenda. thinks the question we guest -- this is the question we get most frequently. there are shackles that i can do. these four policies are regulated at the state level. they come from sacramento.

unless we can advance some of those policies which are all proven tools to reduce traffic fatalities, there is a limited number of things i can do in my seat in government in san francisco to do my work. these four goals are automated enforcement. this is advanced heavily through prior legislation in sacramento, but we were unsuccessful. pricing, the number of vehicle miles traveled. urban speed limit setting. there is a wonky engineering tool that defines how we set our speed limits across the state of california. and it doesn't leave any room for engineering judgment. and so we cannot reduce speed limits unless the cars that are traveling on the street are moving slower. which is crazy. so we would like to change the state law. i will tell you that the federal government just changed how this

rule, called the 85th percentile rule, so california will be lagging behind the federal government at this juncture. and lastly, the local regulation of transportation network companies. those are regulated at the state level, meaning that the city of san francisco can't require vehicles, driver testing, driver training, anything related to über and lyft. and as a result, we have no power over how they choose to operate in the city. so the ask is for some version of local regulation here in san francisco, not in sacramento. all of these are rooted in equity. what it means, none of these should disproportionately if we change these laws impact the most at-risk communities. i think seniors and people with disabilities are those at-risk community. i heard time and time again

specifically around pricing, that there is a perception it's regressive. and it certainly can be regressive in it's implemented in a way that it is implemented in the london. that's where we need san francisco solutions for san francisco problems. i really believe if we use an equity lens to develop a pricing policy, we can find a way for it not to be regressive and disproportionately impact communities. but currently, we can't even use that tool because we're forbidden by the state. i'm going to pass this to macon, who is going to talk about how we're thinking about equity in general. >> thank you so much. good afternoon, everyone, thank you for the opportunity to be here. i'm with the san francisco department of public health. and as said, with respect to vision zero, we know if we don't

lead with equity, if we don't prioritize vision zero actions for our most vulnerable communities, we'll never achieve vision zero. and people with disabilities, seniors, communities of color, are particularly vulnerable to traffic deaths and severe injuries. and thus, are a focus of the vision zero work. that means deepening our community engagement, prioritizing and monitoring improvements throughout the city to address the population. and ensuring that any policies don't have unintended consequences. -- on our vulnerable communities. and also, i work in the health department. we partner with zuckerberg san francisco general hospital to develop more comprehensive surveillance system. that includes capturing people with disabilities in our data to better understand and address patterns. so now we're going to do -- of course.

now i'm just going to do a deeper dive into the actions that are in the action strategies and really highlighting a subset of actions that really focus on issues raised through our community engagement that were of particular interest to people with disabilities. under our safe streets, or engineering category, that includes completing near-term improvements. we have a new traffic calming program that is focusing on areas where we've seen injuries, people with disabilities. also, implementing countdown signals and audible signals on the high injury network. improving accessibility and bikeway designs. encouraging a curb management pilot project, with respect to über and lyft, and center that occur, so -- accidents that occur. and doing work with the guidance on outreach and engagement.

safe people, that encompasses things like education and enforcement. we'll be talking about our action to convene city and community stakeholders to better identify needs of people with disabilities and secure funding. dph currently has safe street for seniors program that engages seniors and people with disabilities through multilingual presentations and community grants, and that is included grants to senior and disability action as well as lighthouse for the blind. we're also creating a driver training program for transportation network companies. again a real focus on über and lyft and how their drivers can be safe drivers in our city. and then also focussing on emerging mobility. so as devices like e scooters and ebikes enter our city's network, ensuring that users and

people on the streets alike understand what the rules are with respect to the safe use of these new devices. under safe vehicles, we're also doing work with across the city on autonomous vehicles, so understanding the opportunities and challenges of this new technology with respect to safety. looking -- working with our other city agencies on how we can better incorporate safety features in the new vehicle purchases. so what are the opportunities with new technology with respect to safety. and then also, again, with respect to again the focus on über and lyft looking at, what do we know about safety on our streets and what are recommendations that can advance safety for those companies? we have a data system that links police and hospital data that we'll be using to refresh our network in 2021. my team is working with the hospital to issue annual briefs

to better understand the needs of vulnerable populations and how we can address them through vision zero. releasing annual reports on severe injuries and again the focus on emerging mobility. our whole action strategy is available online and i'll forward that if you're interested, you can look at it in detail after this presentation. and in 2019, we're really focusing on advancing actions, interactions, strategy. as i mentioned, dph will be working with the mayor's office of disability to convene city and community stakeholders on the actions and what are opportunities for a deeper coordination. and broadening the group of agencies. right now, we definitely have mod, dph, mta and the department of public works, but what are other agencies less involved that we could engage to better coordinate and leverage and then reaching out to the community stakeholders to ensure that as the actions that we described

here are implemented, that we are really doing with respect to the needs of people with disabilities in mind. so that concludes our formal presentation, but i wanted to give the floor to nicole to speak regarding her work. and thank you, again, for your leadership on the task force. >> nicole: my pleasure. it's very important. project and goal. i was going to add that one of the things that we're finding is that there is a lot of work being done that is impacting the disability community around better practices with our public right-of-way, and things that we've been hearing about through the department of aging and adult services. there are things that we can coordinate better, i think, and then also apply those efficients to what -- efforts to what we're

doing through vision zero to get a better picture of what we need to be doing for overall improvement. that is speaking to coordinating and one of the things that the mayor's office on disability will be doing in the coming years, is dedicate particular staff time to be really helping to more directly monitor and achieve some of these accomplishments that are pertaining directly to vision zero. and looking forward to that. and i really would like now for us to use the remainder of this section time for questions, feedback, areas where you would like more information. because really the emphasis that we have on disability, although we have very concrete things we want to be working on, is also

open for community engagement and feedback. so we want to hear those things as well. >> thank you. i'd like to open up to council member, questions? reminder respectfully of time constraints. we're going to go in order. so council member orkid? >> council member sassouni: yes, i have a few things. i'm a survivor of a pedestrian accident, which you didn't mention about children as well. i'm wondering about that, because i noticed that children have been victims of these accidents as well. and then driver's behaviors. i see people taking very quick right turns. that is not safe. especially, you know, when people are in the crosswalk or a person with a vision impairment.

and people making these quick right turns are not paying attention to the pedestrians, and as a person who is deaf, i'm not hearing the vehicles that are approaching. i'm following the light and the right-of-way. how do we educate drivers? how do we change their behaviors as pedestrians? who are trying to cross the street. and i understand people are in a hurry, but it only takes one to be fatal. people who run red lights. another person who was a deaf woman who was a deaf senior citizen, she died as a result of someone running a red light. so the point is, the drivers. i think pedestrians are more aware and we're being careful, but i think there needs to be a pushback in effort on changing the driver's behaviors and habit. i want to emphasize that.

i think it's an important area that you need to be focused on. >> we heard three excellent comments. your comments were absolutely echoed in all of the outreach that we have. and i really appreciate that you say that it's really, the onus is on drivers and that is something that vision zero agrees with, because the drivers are operating the heavy vehicle, the one most likely to do damage and kill someone. so just to talk about turning vehicles. those are two of our most dominant collision factors. that is borne out in our data. and our action strategy is a data-driven document. so we have specific actions that are 100% related to that data. so number one, we are launching this year a safer intersections

project that is 100% related to reducing the speed of turning vehicles. and you said right-turning vehicles. in this case, we're focussing on left-turning vehicles which is more likely to result in a fatal injury, but overall we're going to use different platforms, including a media campaign, to speak with all road users about turning vehicles. and we're going to use engineering treatments to see if with we can influence how fast cars are going when they do turn. a second question was about children specifically. i'm going to let meagan answer that one. >> we're grateful that children are not as disproportionately impacted in traffic injuries and facilities relative to the population in san francisco, but children are also a focus of vision zero. we coordinate closely with our safe routes to school, a program as part of vision zero.

children and also their parents are an important focus of our work. with respect to driver behavior, the other important thing to -- something we constantly emphasize through vision zero is the importance of speed. so speed impacts your ability to respond, your ability to brake. how your visibility of people, your field of vision. and so for all of those reasons, our state transformative policies look at speed enforcement and slowing urban speed limits. fundamentally, speed is one of the strongest predictors if someone is able to survive a crash. as a driver, the safest thing to do is go at or go below the speed limit. that will save lives. >> council member sassouni: in terms of enforcement, i've noticed -- i haven't seen a lot of enforcement. i'm not seeing police on the

street pulling people over for speeding in the city and running red lights. >> we do partner with the police department. and we have seen the volume of tickets they have issued reduced. there is a lot of reasons for that, but the mayor recently called on the police to increase the number of tickets they do issue around the top five citations that are related to resultant severe injuries and fatalities. even though we do have to wait for the state to change laws, we are working very hard at educating everybody about traffic safety roles. if you go to youtube, if you're sitting in the city and county, there is a good chance you get a lead-in that talks about driving in say's sf. -- today's sf. many of us took our test 20 years ago and there is a lot of new changes on the road. we're going to be talking about the new traffic control

device,s, the new markings on the street. 4 seconds. go to youtube, everyone who is watching and you'll see our media campaign. that is out there for the next few months. that's the kind of reach we're trying to get to, even as we work at the state to change policy. >> council member sassouni: thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: council member alex madrid. >> council member madrid: thank you for coming. a couple of questions. one is that i know that you guys bring -- you told us what to plan for the next five, six days, but are there any new

data, or new updates that you have done to minimize and change it? i didn't quite hear that. ed second one is that -- the second one is that you mentioned that you work for the government, right, the mt -- >> right, mta. >> council member madrid: san francisco muni department, right? so my question is, i know that state law are changing the policy to help you guys work with city policymakers to

maximize to change some laws that you're trying to implement instead of waiting for this date. so that's my questions. >> i think we wanted to clarify the first question. it was -- >> council member madrid: so my first question was i know that you been around for five years. i didn't quite understand or hear anything that you guys have

done within five years to minimize some of our fatalities. disability and accidents. >> so, one of the things that san francisco was the first in the country to do was to link police and hospital data to inform the vision zero high injury network. and that's the map, 13% of city streets, where 75% of severe or fatal injuries are targeted. that was completed two years ago now. and that map is what -- i'm with the health department. we work with them to develop the map and then shares it to inform capital planning. so now i think over half of the miles on the network have received targeted improvements

to promote safety. that map is also informing the sfpd efforts on the most dangerous driving behaviors. last year, i shared the map we created with that data, that identifies seniors and people with disabilities where injuries are concentrated. and also key attracters, so we were able to locate libraries, para transit, and other factors, and we shared that map and that traffic-calming program is part of our new action strategy. we also have been tracking, in addition to fatalities, that trend chart, also severe injuries. so again, that is more from a monitoring perspective, but so we can see, you know, are we having an impact? we have analyzed that data through 2017. and for our most critical injuries, we're seeing a decrease in pedestrian injuries.

we're hopeful that will continue. we're also seeing increase in driver-related injuries. so again, this is data that we use, as, you know, to see in general where we're going and where we need to go more deeply with respect to that work. so those are some examples of the data piece. >> co-chair senhaux: one more council question. >> council member williams: thank you so much. i may not be popular when i ask this question, but i'm talking about sheer number of cars on the streets, particularly in san francisco, with 40,000 to 60,000 über and lyft cars, you say you have no control. san francisco can't limit the number of lyft and -- >> no. >> council member williams: you cannot? >> no. >> council member williams: with increased number of cars on the street, there is a lot of frustration on the street. we talk about our drivers in cars, our public transportation

has gone down 30% because people are using lyft and über. our streets are packed with über and lyft. i'm not popular when i say it, but i see this as a huge issue of having our traffic congested. i wonder why we can't control the number of cars coming into the city. >> so if you're not popular, i'm not either, because i'm saying the same thing. you're preaching to the choir. so the state regulates über and lyft. that's because they're considered livery. i am not the expert on why the state is, but as a city and county, we cannot do anything about the number of providers -- the number of drivers, the number of cars, but our transformative policy agenda absolutely does. we ask for two things 100% related to the issues that you just raised. number one would be local regulation of tnc, which may

come out in the form of capping the number of vehicles on the road which is what new york city just did. they have a cap. but we cannot do that unless we change state law. the other would be, it's called congestion pricing and new york also just passed it. it comes in really lots of forms, but the goal is to say, if you're traveling more miles and you're traveling them at the most congested hours and traveling them in the most convested -- congested places, you should pay a fee. we haven't developed a clear policy around what that is, and we're hoping to inform that agenda, but even if we had an informed and something that everyone in the city supports, we couldn't implement it without changing state law either. >> council member williams: thank you. >> long winded answer, but we're with you. >> council member williams: just to clarify if i may, the city is

engaged with california public utilities commission on this, right? >> yeah. i mean, it's kind of a loaded plate there. i'm not privy to those conversations, but i would say that the outcomes -- we have not had any different outcomes. >> co-chair senhaux: i don't have a question, but a quick comment because the rules apply to me, too. i appreciate with regards to enforcement you're listening to our concerns around driver behavior. and second thing you're doing education awareness around, you know, safety rules for people on scooters, you know, safe streets. and on bikes. because we all share the right-of-way, we all share the sidewalks and everybody has to be respectable. we all have to share these areas. so people with disabilities and, you know, seniors sometimes get overlooked. i'm not saying one population is more important than the other, but we should all be able to travel the streets safely. so i think everyone needs to be considerate of everyone using the streets and cars and bikes.

because without any type of enforcement or education -- and i commend you in the work you're doing -- i don't think the goal is going to be reached. with that in mind, that's my last comment. i'm going to open it up. thank you very much. >> i think you had a second question. >> co-chair senhaux: i'm sorry, with time constraints, i need to close it and open it up to public comment at this time. >> can we, before we do that, would you mind to give your contact information to the group. >> it's up on the left. so if we can go back to the -- there we go. >> nicole: great. >> thank you very much. i'm going to open up to public comment. i want everybody to know that the interpreters are only here until 4:00 and we have one more presentation and i want to give everyone a chance to speak.

so please let's be mindful of the time. so i understand we have public comment on this agenda item. >> yes, from zack. we have a bridge line participant as well. >> co-chair senhaux: okay. thank you. >> hi, thanks for your time. i have a couple of things i want to say. i want to commend kate williams for her statement. i agree with that, with the problems with über and lyft. i've lived in the city for ten years and as a wheelchair user, i've noticed an increase in my own safety. i want to point out in 2017, british parliament in london, the regulatory agency of transportation banned über for "a lack of corporate responsibility". that ban was overturned in 2018 and, of course, this is not british parliament, but i would like to appointment out there is -- point out there is cities taking measures to ensure that pedestrians are safe. i would like to point out that i

have friends that work for über and lyft and they do not pay their employees a livable wage. there is a lot of document documentation. driver are not paid enough to drive slowly. they're paid to drive quickly to get from point a to point b to make enough money to live. if you don't pay them a livable wage to do that, yeah, they're going to drive dangerous and we're paying the cost for that. for vision zero, i think this is a great idea. i think we can all agree that pedestrian safety is super important. i wanted to throw out ideas i just came up with, you know, maybe they won't happen tomorrow. but we can think about them. one is i can only travel as fast as as this scooter will take me. a lot of times that is not enough when the light counter starts counting down. what would it look like to increase the counters or a button for disabled people to

cross the street safely? second idea. what about lights on crosswalks? i know other cities actually put lighting along the asphalt so that cars can see visibly, especially at night. the third, is what would it look like to create some funding for people with disabilities to afix reflective pieces of material on our mobility devices? the city could have a budget for that. led or other types of things that would help mobility devices. i have a black chair, it's super dangerous at night when i'm crossing the street. lastly, i'm a driver. i'm a california state driver. i went to driving school. i learned almost nothing about disabled people getting my driver's license and things i should look out for and the different types of disabilities. i think there could be a conversation with people on the state level about that. and lastly, i want to make sure that vision zero also is taking care to look out for communities

of color and at-risk communities. not just affluent communities when we're talking about pedestrian safety. there is something that died at a crosswalk near my house and nobody did anything about it for ten years. now that my block has a porsche and a tesla and a land rover, now all of a sudden we're getting a traffic light. i would like to see those changes happen before millionaires live in the neighborhood. >> co-chair senhaux: our next public comment. >> helen walsh. >> i am helen walsh. i'm from the berkley commission on disability. i also am an advocate on areas of inclusive. listening to the presentation, the zero vision is also something we're working on, vision zero in berkley. so in regards to the state issue, i'm wondering if municipalities would work together so that maybe we can do

something about the issue looking at it more outside of the box instead of exclusive. it's a full area problem. so i want to emphasize consideration in those areas if all our different municipalities and different areas of disability meetings i've gone to within layers of city areas, which in other municipalities, if we could share our information, maybe we would be able to target this in a way where we could move forward with more inclusion and voice of the disability community as well as how different cities are conquering some of these issues. my other bit of -- other comment would be, outreach and educational materials reflective

and being inclusive of seniors and persons with disabilities as pedestrians or as drivers or as bicyclists in terms of your information so that we have a way to communicate considerations to the large community of diverse individuals with disabilities out there in our communities. and i'm speaking about senior citizens when i'm speaking on this. i think i'm just going to leave it to two. i have a lot more, but i think consideration of information and being inclusive and working together in our municipalities might help with state areas, thank you. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you very much. any other public comment on the bridge line? please go ahead, bridge line. >> okay, i have a comment. my name is richard rothman. i'm talking about fulton street.

while vision zero is fine, but it's time for action. why do things take so long? 43rd and fulton, somebody died there at least five, six years ago. and they still haven't upgraded the lights there. you know, it's a shame. and fulton is a speedway. a number of years ago i asked the vision zero staff to put the electronic speed radar signs on fulton street and nothing has been done. i don't know why they can't get the mta staff to get things done. all the reports you do are fine, but if they don't have action and help lives, they don't mean anything. the other thing i'm concerned about, the mayor wants to have all these protective bike lanes. there is one on polk street. my wife and i go to the eye doctor and my wife has a hard time walking. if there is a protected bike

lane in front of the eye doctor's office, how is my wife supposed to get there? are we supposed to park the car in the middle of the street and then walk across the bike lanes to get into the doctor's office? we all have to live in this city and work together and the final thing is i don't think mta muni should have a veto over pedestrian safety issues. i found out they're being blocked by muni staff and i don't think that's right. and thank you for having this hearing today. >> co-chair senhaux: thank you, richard. thank you for your comment. i'm going to go ahead and close public comment. we're going to go to item number 8, informational item, san francisco recreation -- i'm sorry. my apologies. staff, any comments? okay. i'm sorry, information number 8,

san francisco recreation parks department, disability access and inclusion services. i want to welcome and thank you, mr. lucas tobin, for his patience waiting to appear. he is a supervisor for inclusion services. and i want to welcome the ada coordinator -- i'm sorry -- recreation and parks department and anthony, who is sfu intern for park and rec. thank you for waiting. we look forward to hearing your presentation. go! [laughter]. >> thanks, i'll try to be speedy because i know we're running short on time. >> we want to hear what you have to say. >> co-chair senhaux: trying to make light of the situation. take your time. >> i'm supervisor for therapy recreation and inclusion services with sf rec and park. i'm also ada coordinator.

she's with our capital division as well. like you mentioned, anthony is here, he's an intern who is going to present his project on children's play area accessibility. so i want to get through mine, because his really the great exciting presentation for today. but, the council sent some great questions. here we are. looks like they're coming up. so the council sent great questions. i'm going to use that to guide my part of the presentation and do it as a q&a, reading the questions and answering them. so the first question was a great one. the first question, what are rec and parks philosophy and how

does rec and park make it happen? i thought that was a great question. the first part of that, i'm going to list off our programs. and so for summer programs and camps, we have camp mather inclusion week. for our day camps, we have everybody plays, everybody travels, everybody chills, which is a 2-day camp to fill the gaps of summer school. team city which is -- teen city which is a teen camp. inclusion at eco camp and inclusion at silver tree. next we have for our year-round programs, we have our access academy, which is programs for the access program. and those are six programs. and also swim times that are available for the access students. sfusd access students.

we have the adults programs which includes the american sign language art program, for adults who have disabilities. we have the v.i.p. expressive arts for adults blind and visually impaired. tactile exploration for deaf and blind. and social network program for adults with developmental disabilities. and more programs for children. and teens with autism during the school year. we have our everybody plays day. our teen time which is for children and teens with autism. our swim. and our brand new program starting this fall, which we're really excited about, which is called astep. after school therapeutic enrichment program, it's a program for children with developmental disabilities. the next part of the question

was what is our mission? the san francisco recreation and park department is to provide enriching recreational activities, maintain beautiful parks and maintain the environment for everyone in our diverse community. i'm happy to say in 2015, we added the everyone to the mission statement. to continue with rpd philosophy, i'll just read that, it didn't get on the slide. so we promote a person-first philosophy in our language planning and our attitude at rec and park. we strive to do that and that people with disabilities, just like everyone, should have the right to choice, which is why we offer therapeutic and adaptive

programs as well as inclusion services so people have access to both. and then the last part of the question, actually there was one more slide. our department's motto is get out and play. part of our philosophy is that everybody should have the chance to get out and play. with recreation and parks. and how does rec and park make it happen? well, i ask myself that question every day i think. we make it happen because we have a great team of staff to help out with our therapeutic inclusion services. we have a supportive executive staff and general manager. and also because of partners, like the mod and the mayor's disability council and other partners, like support for families, lighthouse for the blind. and also with all the families that we work with who use our services.

last one is how is rec and park including kids with disabilities? so we do that through our specialized programs which i've already listed, using our inclusion services. and we do that because of our great staff. we have two certified therapeutic therapists who work with us, as well as two recreation specialists who actually do the direct services for the programs. and dozens of part-time staff who work day-to-day with the kids and other people in our program. and we have an inclusion process in our certified therapeutic recreation specialists manage that process for inclusion services. next question is, are there any kids who are considered too disabled to be included? what is rec and park's policy around kids with multiple disabilities? we don't look at it that way, that anybody is too disabled.

we have limitations with our staff as far as personal care and administering medication. sometimes the parent will provide somebody if they need that assistance, but we don't look at it as anybody being too disabled. if we can include them, we will. we have a lot of children and people in our program with multiple disabilities. who does inclusion services serve? and how many people with disabilities? so our biggest numbers really, autism, we have a lot of kids and young adults with autism in our programs. we also have a big population of people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing and people who are blind and visually impaired. but we haven't broken up our numbers by disability yet. but, we have started to really look at numbers overall.

and the numbers that i'm putting up here are people with disabilities who are actually registered in our programs. and have self-disclosed, that they have a disability. this does not include people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. we started this in 2017. in 2017, we had 112, but that is not complete because we didn't start until summer of 2017. so this really only includes summer and fall. and then 2018 was our first complete year of inputting those numbers. but still not totally complete because that is when we were actually catching up with inputting the numbers. and so far this year, we have 127, but that is only up through winter. so that doesn't include our spring and of course, we're just putting in the numbers for summer camp right now.

what percentage of programs participants require disability accommodation? again, that is not something we've tracked the percentage of people who have requested a disability accommodation. our biggest accommodation requests are for support staff. sort of like what the school calls para professionals or aides, one-on-one aides. we have a huge number of requests for those accommodations, as well as sign language interpreters. so those are our biggest requests that we get. but part of the reason that we do our specialized and adaptive recreation programs is because accommodations usually are not an issue with those programs. the adequate staffing is built in. if it's a program that is run in american sign language, we don't have to worry about interpreters and providing accommodations, so it can be a more efficient way to provide our services.

do you think you serve everyone? that's another good question. and no, i wish that we could. and we're continually trying to serve more people. and we'd like to serve a bigger range of people with disabilities. one of my personal goals is to do more for -- with disability sports and we're working on that. we recently purchased two state-of-the-art standup and play golf chairs that are going to be available at our golf courses. and we purchased a lawn bowling chair and got 10 basketball chairs. so we're working to try to increase those opportunities. what programs are available for sal users? i didn't list those earlier because this is a different question. we have the american sign language after school, our

summer day program, our leader in training program. explorations, which is an asl class, but that's with a recreation side to it, so people come and learn the signs and they do an activity like cooking for playing games or something like that. we have a program for adults who are deaf and hard-of-hearing and also have disabilities. and a program for people who are deaf and blind or visually impaired that we partner with the lighthouse for the blind to provide. and we also offer inclusion services for asl users. for any program that they're interested in registering for. all right, this is a big question. why are the camps almost always full when registration begins on a specific day? often the announcement seems to be closer to the due date. last-minute. and may not give parents time to look over the camp schedules.

this may be a little challenging trying to work with other camp sessions if the camps at rec and park are completely full. camps filling up really fast on registration day is a huge issue for everyone across the city. we do have a lot of camps that are really popular and everybody is going online at the same time and try to sign up. that is a big issue. there are tips and tricks that people do. they have both, the husband and wife, on different devices trying to do it, and you can put things in your shopping cart ahead of time to try to register, but it is an issue, just the number of slots available across the board. but also i think one thing that might be confusing for families with kids with disabilities is that we send out our e-news letter a couple of weeks before registration to remind people that registration day is coming up. we also want to make sure that our families know what they need to do if they're registering a child with a disability.

but our actual -- i'm going to show -- i brought the date here for when registration dates are announced and when the actual catalogs come out. and for summer camp, it's actually a couple months before. so our registration started on march 16, but the catalog came out on january 25. our summer program registration is actually begins tomorrow and the catalog came out on april 8. so it's usually about a month before that the actual physical catalog comes out. it comes out online usually a week or two before, actually the printed version comes out. so there should be time to prepare and figure out what you want to register for. and the best way to find out about these dates and know ahead of time is to sign up for our general e-news. so that you can see when the dates are coming. next question is, if a person is

on a wait list for a camp session, why does it take so long for the parents to get information on if there is an opening? and that -- each situation is different. but sometimes nobody drops out of a camp and so there is no space in the camp. or sometimes it happens last-minute that somebody drops out. but the best advice i can give, that people should check in with our office or the registration office to find out what is happening with the wait lists. next question is, if one request support why do you say first come-first serve? how will we know if support is available? we do not do -- i'm assuming this question was about support staff, like a one-on-one aide, or a para professional, we call them support staff. i'm assuming that is what this

question is about, but it's not a first come first service tt basis, but because the demand exceeds our administrative abilities to hire staff and train them, by the time summer comes around, we have to put a deadline so we can get all the requests in and then try and set up all the staff people to work with the kids. so it's not that it's first come-first serve at all. everyone after the deadline goes on waiting list and we figure out how many support staff we provide. i'm sending out e-mails. we've been short staffed. i've been working on those. and letting families know there will be some weeks where we have to -- we may have to do a lottery, because we have so many requests in addition to our camps that we're running for support staff. finally, i think this is the last question i got. how long should a person expect

a response back from staff if they're trying to communicate via e-mail? what is rec and park's rules with replying back with requested information? i hate this question, because sometimes things do fall through the cracks and then i have to admit that. that sometimes there is more of a delay than we would like. and sometimes it's just because staff have to communicate with each other. sometimes somebody -- the sdim decision-makinger is out of the office, but we strive to respond within 24 hours, but i have to admit that sometimes we don't follow up with that. we really do try to respond as quickly as we can. and please, you know, we want people to be proactive. if they haven't heard back, please follow up with us. we try to do as best we can with that. so that is the end of the

questions that i had from the council. so now i'd like to bring up anthony who is going to be presenting on his children's play area project. hi, everyone, i'm anthony. i'm a san francisco state intern with the park and rec department. under my supervisor lucas tobin. i'm here to present my project, it's a children play area accessible features project. just to give you a brief overview what my project was. it was an assessment of the current accessibility features at san francisco rec and parks

children play areas throughout the city. this information has been compiled onto the website which has a user-friendly platform that gives you visual and descriptive information on amenities and features. and so we want to provide the most polished product and we did run into certain time constraints, so we weren't able to evaluate all 135 children play areas, but with meetings with nicole bohn, john paul scott of department of public works and members of the rec and parks capital division, we were able to select 55 children's play areas to showcase, due to the quality of the features and amenities. the other children's play areas are going to be added at a later date. through research of other organizations and having meetings with the different

departments, we were able to create an accessibility criteria. to establish what information should be displayed to the public. so going from left to right, we have a ramp that connects onto the play structure. accessible picnic table. accessible parking spots, accessible fountains, sensory play elements, play structures, adaptive swings and transportiers. for the need for my project came about due to the lack of easily accessible information on the website. so this is how the page -- this is how you would access any accessibility information on the website currently. so at the top of the page, you have the disability questions section. once you press that, it will lead you to this page.