[gavel] >> good morning, everyone. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the november 4th, 2019, meeting of the rules committee. i'm supervisor hillary ronen, chair of the committee. we will be joined shortly by supervisor shamann walton, who is the vice chair and to my left is supervisor norman -- what is wrong with me, gordon mar. excuse me, gordon. our clerk is victor young. i'd like to thank matthew and michael at sfgov for staffing this meeting. mr. include, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: silence all cell phones and electronic devices. speaker cards and any documents to be included in the file

should be submitted to the clerk. >> can you please read item number one. >> a hearing to consider appointing one member, term ending november 30th, 2020, to the ballot simplification committee. >> supervisor ronen: they have. i believe lauren is here. if you want to come up and say a few words. >> girardin. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. >> names this morning. it's a hard name. any time anyone gets it right, i'm more surprised than anything. i'm laurie green awe girardin. i'm in district 9. thanks for this opportunity to be considered for the league of women voters seat on the ballot simplification committee. i'm a self-employed communications consultant and writer. i help non-profits, foundation and others share their stories

and engage their communities. i have 20 years of experience in communications. in my work, i use plain language to make ideas and information more accessible to more people. i specialize in legal, complex, technical, medical information into writing that people can easily understand and use. as a consultant and writer, i must be impartial, bias and non-partisan. i have written articles about politically charged top licks about elections, regulations and public sector issues. and successfully put my own views aside and done the work. clients and editors who praise my ability to be objective, while also writing information that's highly relevant. i'm a volunteer on the communications committee. as a volunteer, i often create communications content, that complies with the non-partisan

mandate. my goal as a ballot simplification committee member will be to provide the people of san francisco with ballot measure information they can understand and then use to decide how to vote. i look forward to contributing my public communications skills to an important part of a long process, that makes elections more accessible to more people. thank you for your consideration. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. great nomination. i really appreciate your willingness to serve and your experience seems perfectly suited towards this role. is there any other questions or comments? thank you so much. i will now open this up for prompt. -- public comment. anyone who would like to speak, come forward. good morning. >> i'm betty, i'm chair of the ballot simplification committee. i want to echo everything that lauren has said and expound in the three years ago, she was nominated for this committee.

and experienced cancer. and had to take a sabbatical. and we're so happy she's coming back, because her dedication was such that she came in an entire certification and sat in every day for our whole session, just to understand what we were doing and what she was getting herself into. and she was such a valuable person, just as a sub member. i'm really excited to have her pack, her passion and her skills are wonderful. and i certainly applaud you and her and hope that you will move her forward. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. thank you for all your work. >> the school board is still sitting. [laughter] >> supervisor ronen: public comment is closed. [gavel] supervisor walton. >> thank you. i actually was just going to touch on the fact that i have been trying to get our

colleagues on the board of education to step up and appoint somebody to the ballot simplification committee. trying to get people to really understand the importance of the role that the committee plays. sort of the language that goes on the ballot, in terms of when you have a voter who reads the booklet, can make all the difference. and it really actually does. and so we need to make sure that the legislation and ballot matters that are put forth, people can understand exactly what they're attempting to do, what's going to happen in, you know, the ballot simplification committee is very thoughtful. you really read through everything. you really do everything you can to make sure that every voter will have an opportunity to understand the measures on the ballot. i appreciate your work. it is very important. thank you, miss girardin for stepping up and wanting to

serve, because this is important and vital for the voters here in the city. so thank you. i will continue to reach out and hopefully we can have a full committee, because it is important. >> we appreciate you coming. >> supervisor walton: thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thank you very much. do you want to do the honors? wall definitely want to move forward miss girardin railroad for seat 3 for the ballot simplification committee to the full board. >> supervisor ronen: and without objection, that motion passes. congratulations. thank you. [gavel] mr. >> clerk: , can you please read item number two. >> clerk: item number two, a hearing appointing one member, term ending february 1st, 2020, to the park, recreation, and open space advisory committee. >> supervisor ronen: so unfortunately neither mr. falino nor anyone from district 5

office is able to be here today. so they've asked to continue this item. so i will open this measure up for -- or this item up for public comment. please note i will be making a motion to continue this item to our next rules committee meeting of november 18th, after public comment. now is the time for any member of the public to come forward and speak on item number 2. seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] i make a motion to continue this item for the next rules committee meeting on november 18th. without objection, that motion passes. can you please read item number 3. >> clerk: item number 3, a hearing consider appointing two members, term ending november 21st, 2020, to the citizens' general obligation bond oversight committee. >> supervisor ronen: great. and is kristin chu or timothy mat hews here? please come forward. >> good morning. i'm kristin chu.

i am the current chair of the general obligation bond oversight committee. i think this is my third or fourth term, over 15 years or so. you can do two terms and then you're off for a little bit and then when i had moved to the east coast and moved back, i wanted to get involved again. i feel passionately about good government and citizens' role in good government. i also feel passionately about investing in our infrastructure. i think the bond funding is an appropriate investment in that infrastructure. since being chair, i have tried direct the people, the fellow members in our goal, it's very hard to understand bond funding and how to govern it. and so i try to simple it by saying is the project on time, on budget, and does it meet the needs of the voters. so we're undertaking some experiments in trying to understand what the voters'' expectations are when they

signed the ballot and to mr. walton's earlier comment, how this is written on the ballot is very, very important in the voters understanding what they're voting for. there's been a number of bonds that have come in front of the voters, that like the emergency bond, the emergency -- it's for fire people, police people, it's for hod podge of things. even the housing bonds that have come in front of the voters, it's really for a number of different initiative. it makes it very difficult to govern. so one of the challenges i think the governance committee has is trying to understand how do you, when the use of the bonds is not specified in the bond language, how do you determine your own budget and on track. the example i always give is the sf general rebuild, which was very clear what it was. it was clear when it was finished. you know, with the value to the voters were. that's something that i feel passionately about when i think of how do we govern this.

as you know, the bond oversight committee has oversight over the city services auditor division, and in particular the whistleblower program, which i also think is a very important governance aspect of the work that we do. and we have two members that are dedicated to that program in particular. >> supervisor ronen: thanks so much. any questions? no. thank you so much for being willing to serve again. >> i had one other. i'm up for both seat 1 and 3. the business seat and the community seat. i'm also a member of the league of women voters. and we tend to have trouble keeping those seats filled. and so -- >> supervisor ronen: seat 3. >> every seat. so i'd love to be considered for whichever one is a harder one to fill, that you think is appropriate. >> supervisor ronen: great. is timothy mathew here? i don't see him. our controller ben rosen feld is here. did you want to say anything? >> just here for moral support.

>> supervisor ronen: okay. great. great. then i will open this item for public comment. any member of the public wish to come forward and speak? seeing none, public comment -- oh, public comment is closed. [gavel] and timothy voters just got here. please come forward. >> i prepared a little thing. >> hi, good morning. >> good morning. >> okay. all right. thank you.

sorry, i was over at the p.u.c. with a new employee orientation. >> supervisor ronen: congratulations. >> yeah. okay. so good morning, board of supervisors. my name is timothy mathews. i have applied to fill the vacancy of seat 2 on the oversight committee. i believe that this committee plays a vital role in both maintaining the -- maintaining and building the public trust. i will be honored to have the opportunity to serve the residents of the city and county of san francisco. beginning with the passage of proposition f in 2002, voters made clear their demand for transparency and accountable with our bond programs. further, with the passage of each new bond program, the citizens have made clear that the work this committee does is a positive thing. and that they would like the city and county staff to continue to borrow money to improve our community. i've been a resident of san

francisco in district 5, on the same block as our mayor, since 2014. and plan to remain here. as for the requirements in seat 2, i work for the international federation of prediction professional and technical engineers, local 21. the union that represents your dedicated staff. i've worked for labor organizations for the past 14 years, with a brief hiatus to john edwards' presidential campaign. and let's see. over my career as a researcher for union, i've been deeply involved with the implications and connections of large capital programs, with respect to organizing, contract enforcement, bargaining and electoral politics. my experience includes small municipalities and special districts, with capital programs totaling the tens of thousands of dollars, to new york city transit's five-year, 50 plus billion dollar program, as well as here in san francisco. our ten-year, $39 billion program. so again i'd like to thank you for your time and

consideration my application. and it will be, indeed, an honor to serve, to have the opportunity to serve the city and county of san francisco on this oversight board. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: great. so you're still working for local 21? >> still working. i was conducting -- >> supervisor ronen: got it. >> three great new employees. >> supervisor ronen: fantastic. fantastic. got it. is there any questions for mr. mathews? thank you. >> thank you. >> supervisor ronen: i really wanted to appreciate you both for being willing to serve on this. it is extremely important. rely on those bonds for so much of our critical city infrastructure. and making sure the public understands that those dollars are being spent wisely, ensures that they'll be willing to vote for new bonds in the future. so the work that you do is critical and we really appreciate you for it.

and so i am happy to make a motion to forward with recommendation kristin chu to seat 3 and timothy mathews to seat 2, if that works for my colleagues. without objection, that motion passes. [gavel] can you please read item number. >> clerk: a hearing to consider the proposed initiative ordinance submitted by the mayor to the voters for the march 3rd, 2020, elections entitled onion amending the planning code to add back certain converted office space to make it available for the office development, establish affordable housing and small business priority reserve to make office space available for office developments that provide sites for affordable housing or include community arts, p.d.r. space, or neighborhood-serving retail and increase the cap for smaller office development projects.

>> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. >> ken rich with the office of economic and workforce development. could i have the overhead slides, please. so i'm here to briefly describe a measure submitted on the ballot for march 2020, by player breed, to adjust some of the mayor that the prop m annual office allocation works, in order to promote housing and small business. so, first, just some basics on proposition m. it was passed built voters in 1986. it is codified in section 320 to 325 of the planning code. and establishes an annual limit of 950,000 square feet of new office development per year, of which 875,000 go to what we call large cap projects of 50,000 square feet or larger. and 75,000 square feet go to small cap projects of 25,000 to

49,999 square feet. office additions of less than 25,000 feet are exempt. in years where less than the full allocation is used, may be banked and used in future years. supervisors, it's been rare in the history of prop m for there to be more square feet of office space in the approval pipeline than allocation in the bank. but we are currently in that situation. we are currently over 7 million square feet of office development that are asking for approval in the pipeline and only about 5 million square feet projected over the next five years, allocation available in that same period. so i'm going to through a few policy issues that underlie the proposed ballot measure. the first one is we don't have enough office space to meet demand. and what that does is by virtue of simple supply and demand. it increases the rents on office space. one point i want to get to a little bit, that does not

necessarily, by building less office space, does not necessarily translate to lower housing costs or less pressure on our housing market. san francisco has one of the lowest office space vacancy rates in the country. and we have historically high rents. increasingly as i think we all know, only the wealthiest companies can afford to rent space in the city. as these companies lease space in the limited amount of new office space recognized, we see rents in older buildings going up. the upward pressure on the older buildings means we risk losing companies that inhabit the older buildings, that tend to provide more of the middle class jobs and we tend to -- or we risk losing them to the east bay and the peninsula generally. if these jobs and office space move out of the city, which we are seeing a little bit of happening already, a portion of those employees will still live in the city. so we won't -- we won't -- we'll still have the pressure on our housing, at least some of the pressure that would have been brought through those.

this graph, and i want to direct your attention to the lower of the two charts here, shows that when the -- what class a office space, which are the brand-new buildings, when class amp office space rents increase, class c, and class b follow behind. when we see increase rents on our brand-new, fancy office space, rents increase across the board on the less fancy office space. so another policy issue is that office development has significantly been a -- has been a significant revenue source for affordable housing and transportation, as well as other important uses paid through -- paid for through fees and the property taxes paid by this development. the central plant alone provides $2 billion towards these and other community benefits. and with the increase in the job sizing linkage fee, which is expected to pass on second reading tomorrow at the full board, new office development will become a more and important

source of revenue for affordable housing. next policy issue is it's more difficult currently as things are set up with prop m to get approval for smaller office developments, which tend to have smaller companies as their tenants, as opposed to larger ones. as you can see here on the slide, i won't read all of the stats, san francisco is home to a lot of non-profits and a lot of small businesses. roughly one third of the small by thes are owned by minorities or women. and what we're seeing is as the vacancy rate on office space has decreased, the average small lease size more than doubled, rumming in having trouble for small businesses getting space in our office stock. and that has forced, according to our colleagues who look at, this many small businesses in coworking space, which costs a lot more money. and the last policy issue i want to go over is proposition m it was drafted as a ballot measure in 1986, did not clearly permit

office space that is converted to another use, to be added back to the bank. so the basic concept of prop m annual office limit is to meter, if you will, the amount of office space added to the city every year. however, the language that the voters passed, which is now housed in the planning code, does not clearly account for what would happen if existing office space is lost through demolition or conversion to another use. and, in fact, since '86, somewhere between $1.4 million and 1.8 million square feet of office space has been lost, mainly through conversion to residential space, occasionally to other uses. the common sense logic of prop m would be to add this lost space back to the bank, but the letter of the text, which cannot only -- which is locked in by the ballot measure, does not permit that to happen. so the goals of the ballot measure, and i'm almost done with my presentation here, are

to expand opportunities to build smaller office spaces, with some more small businesses and non-profit organizations. second to prioritize prop m allocation for office projects, which are building or facilitating affordable housing or providing long-term affordable p.d.r. or other community-serving space. so recapture, as i mentioned in the last slide, office space that was legally converted to another use, allowing the city to support more office projects, which will then generate more affordable housing and support for small businesses. then just generally accelerate the delivery of public benefits. this is my last slide, where i will just go over as succinctly as i can the actual provisions of the measure, responding to the things that i just went over. so the measure would adjust the prop m small cap limit from 50,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet. as you know, there's a separate bank in prop m that is used for projects that are currently

under 50,000 square feet. that bank is not as impacted. there's more -- it's easier to get ab alfrom -- get an allocation from the bank. a small office project can reasonably be considered 100,00e small cap bank to go up to 100,000 feet. second, the measure explicitly permits office space lost to conversion or demolition to be added back to the bank. the zoning administrator would determine how much space exists. that would be all of the office space legally converted to another use since 1986. as i mentioned, estimates range from 1.4 to 1.8 million square feet. the measure would place this previously converted or demolished space into a new, affordable housing and small business priority reserve, which would then be there for office projects to request from the planning commission an allocation from that reserve, if they include an affordable

housing parcel to be deeded to the city or include at least 10,000 square feet of affordable p.d.r. or neighborhood-serving space in the project. retail space that is. next allow the board of supervisors to make changes to prop m, under certain circumstances, by a two-thirds vote, the board will be able to make changes to prop m, as long as the changes didn't result in a decreased amount of allocation available overall. and then lastly, the measure has a clause in it saying it would take precedence over other marcn the same subject, if this one receives more votes. so with that, that's the end of my preparation. i wanted to mention i'm joined by john ram and cory teeing from the planning department. and we're all available for questions. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. any questions? >> supervisor ronen: supervisor walton.

>> supervisor walton: thank you very much for your presentation, mr. rich. just a couple of questions. one, and this question i would ask to anyone that is attempting to try to make changes to prop m. because i am trying to figure out what competing measures -- what everyone is trying to solve for. so my question, my first question is what we need right now is affordable housing. i mean, that's what we need here in san francisco. so how does -- how does this get us closer towards that goal? >> thanks for that question. so in two ways. so the general way is office -- all office development pays the jobs, housing linkage fee. the board has addressed that issue recently. and has significantly increased the job sizing linkage fee, subject to passing on second reading tomorrow. this measure would allow basically the entire 7 million square foot pipeline of office. you recall i mentioned earlier, we only over the next five years

have enough prop m to get about 5 million of that space through. there's 7 million waiting to get through. this measure would allow, under certain circumstances, which i'll mention in a moment, all 7 million of that pipeline to get through more quickly, so you would get that additional 2 million square feet times the job sizing linkage fee they owe you. i'm going to try to do this in my head. it would be, you know, many tens of millions of dollars for affordable housing that would come sooner. secondly, in addressing of how this gets us closer towards affordable housing. or actually there's three. the second one is that in order to get office allocation from this reserve, that the measure sets, the projects would have to give us space for either affordable housing or some other community benefits. so a lot of them probably will do that through affordable housing, through donating a partialel to the city for affordable housing.

thirdly, some of the projects that are likely to not be able to be approved for several more years, without this measure, come with a lot of affordable housing. a couple of those are in your district. if those come sooner, we will get a lot of affordable housing sooner. both of the projects i'm thinking of. the project that's being advanced by recology and the power station are very heavily affordable. so they would be able to come a bit sooner through this measure. >> supervisor walton: those are just concepts. >> well, they are projects that are being advanced. one of them is close to coming in. one of them has gone through the planning commission is going to be in front of the board, hopefully soon. the other one is a couple years out. they are what we call in the pipeline. they've been proposed, applications filed, all that. >> supervisor walton: and then i understand there's going to be a competing ballot measure. has there been attempts to have conversations to figure out whether it can be worked

together, so we don't have to have competing measures? >> i think those conversations did occur. but unfortunately they didn't really succeed. and i think that is where we are today. >> supervisor walton: thank you. >> supervisor ronen: supervisor mar. >> supervisor mar: yeah. thank you for the presentation, mr. rich. i just -- actually i had a question. i also wanted to reference the recent jobs, housing fit report that the budget and legislative analysts office issued, per my request, several weeks ago, that highlighted the extreme jobs, housing imbalance that we've seen here in the city over the last eight years. you know, there are 8.5 -- for every 8.5 jobs created, only one housing unit was produced. and the jobs housing fit, i think that's something we've all been pretty aware of and grappling with here in the city. the jobs housing fit analysis

really, for the first time, looked at the jobs -- that have been created by income level and the housing that's been produced by affordability level and really highlighted how we're actually meeting or exceeding or housing production needs of high-wage workers, that have been such a growing part of our city. we're failing miserably at meeting the housing needs of low-wage workers. and, in fact, looking -- projecting ahead over the next six years, less than 10% of the entitled housing units in the pipeline, are for moderate and low-wage workers. so i assume you're familiar with these issues. i guess maybe my question is how does this measure kind of address, you know, this -- the great challenges and in the balance between creating job

creation that this measure would further by increasing the prop m cap on office space, with the need to expand affordable housing, particularly for low and moderate-wage workers. >> i want to reiterate that this measure only makes the extra, if you will, prop m available to projects that perform on affordable housing or some other small business issues. but i think at a broader level, the thinking behind this measure is that, you know, we face a kind of double-edged sword as we look at adding more office space to the city. and on the one hand, it is not to be doubted that when we add jobs to the city, that increases demand on our housing and in our transportation, and some other things. probably those things primarily. but to restrict office development and see it go somewhere else, what we think happens -- as one job goes let's

say to the east bay instead of to the city. you don't lose one person's worth of demand on housing, because a significant portion of folks who work -- who work in the east bay in the peninsula are going to still live in the city. that's a demographic thing that we're seeing. and so what i think -- this is a balance and different people obviously have a different philosophy about how to balance. but the philosophy behind this measure, we're better off meeting to the extent we can, the demand for office so that we don't lose the middle income jobs. because the ones we will lose, if there's not enough office space, are not the high-income jobs with the large tech companies, they'll outbid others for space, when their leases come up. we will lose middle-jobs and the judgment here behind this measure isn't worth it, in order to save some stress on our affordable housing requirements. that's not worth it, particularly because a lot of those workers will live in the

city anyway. and what you do when you lose the jobs and the office spaces, you lose the fees and the revenue that come with them. so it is obviously a balancing act. it would be not true to say, oh, there's no pro. just keep adding office. there's no impacts. of course, there are impacts. i think this measure attempts to look at the balance and decide that the impacts of not having the jobs are worse than the impacts of having the jobs. >> supervisor mar: thank you for that. and i just had another question. you know, i actually support the goals of the ballot measure expanding, opportunities to build smaller bases for smaller businesses and non-profits. and also expanding funding for affordable housing development or sites that are tied to office developments, that could be used for affordable housing development. but is it necessary to achieve

these goals through a ballot measure? or couldn't this be done legislatively? >> so there's one part of this ballot measure that could be done legislatively the part that adds the converted space back into the bank, was actually an ordinance that went to the planning commission several months ago, passed unanimously, but has not gone through the board. but everything else in this measure to my knowledge must be done by the ballot. so expanding the small capsize to 100,000 feet cannot be done, except on the ballot. that's a sort of core tenant of the ballot measure that needs to be changed by the voters. >> supervisor mar: the creative of the priority reserve, that could be done legislatively? >> i don't think you could do it. this is maybe a question for the zoning administrator, who is here, or for the city attorney. i'll take a stab at it. i think that you could not do it

explicitly, but for the ballot. i think the planning commission do it more by establishing policies or priorities that did that. they would not be bound. when it's on the ballot, it's besiding. it has to be that way. so i would defer possibly to one of my colleagues, who is closer to the legalities of that also. follow up on that question. >> supervisor mar: thank you. >> supervisor ronen: mr. rich, so the way that i read the language, where there's -- the standards that you've set to receive an allocation from the new reserves, if a build build a single unit off site and dedicated it to the city for affordable housing, that would qualify. why is it so vague and the requirements so low? >> so i don't know if you can help me by pointing me to the

code section you're looking at. >> supervisor ronen: sure. page 8. you know, section -- subsection 3a. >> okay. i would point to a couple of things. i'll read it quickly. the project includes a parcel to be deeded to the city or deed restricted entirely. i think in theory that could be a one-unit parcel. but i would point out that the planning commission has to -- the planning commission has to say yes to this. they can't -- this is not an automatic right that the developer has. the planning commission may allocate. and it's been typical whenever we have allocations and it's elsewhere in the code, whenever we have parcels needed to the city, they must be signed off on by o.c.d. o.c.d. won't accept a parcel that's 75 or 100 units at least. >> supervisor ronen: why not put the minimum requirement in the law itself? >> we could have. i think it's operable anyway.

i don't think i'd worry about that. >> supervisor ronen: well, i do worry about it. toss it doesn't appear that -- because it doesn't appear the impetuous is the same preoccupation that the three of us have expressed up here, which is affordable housing. and the need for that. and just trust me isn't usually how we write or pass or endorse legislation. it's usually codified, so we don't have to worry about who is in power or what the administration, that it's laws that last over time and the stations and there are requirements. that's pretty standard in terms of every piece of legislation that we draft. so i'm just curious why so vague. and why not set a minimum, so that those of us, that include the majority of the city, who care so much about affordable housing, have some confidence that this could promote some additional building of affordable housing?

it's a glaring omission. >> so i think that -- i understand your point. i think that the framers of the ordinance or the ballot measure had no intention for it to be sort of abused. i don't know whether the zoning administrator or the city attorney can add any color to that. i -- you know, for what it's worth, and i have seen this for many years, i've never seen the city accept a parcel smaller than 75 or 100 units. i wouldn't expect or advocate that the city would do something like that. >> supervisor ronen: again this is a very problematic piece of this legislation for me. i -- whether the city has done something in the past. if we're going to give away, you know, anything, we should get affordable housing in return and we should know the minimum amount of affordable housing that we're getting. and to me it's very -- incredibly unprecedented that

something would be -- something this serious and dealing with something that is this much a priority to the city, would be written in such a vague way, with no minimums forgiving away a benefit in return. it's incredibly problematic. but i'll just leave it at that. is there any other questions? okay. we'll open this item up for public comment. any member of the public who wishes to speak, you'll have two minutes. >> good morning, supervisors. i'm john, manager at the consortium. everybody knows exactly why the mayor, with one signature, put this measure on the ballot. it is to be a poison pill to invalidate our valid measure, proposed via san francisco affordable housing, jobs, balance development act, that's going to be put on the ballot

with 60,000 voter signatures. that's it. that's what this is really all about. as the measure really doesn't do anything for affordable housing. the provision for the sites, that you just discussed, and that was a very good question, is actually along with the other provision that wasn't brought up for affordable small business space. virtually plagiarized from our measure, literally, almost word-for-word. most of that's been locked in, thanks not to the planning department, but to our litigation settlement that we have signed signed with several developers in the past month. that's actually what's going on here. but what's the worst thing of all is this measure, if it actually passed and when it goes into effect, would make our city's affordable housing situation much worse. the two million extra fee, the recaptured space, that mr. rich described, needs 1400 affordable housing units. the city's own study documented

you need 2,200 housing units, of which 700 need to be affordable. if you add the 2 million to the pot, which our measure does not do, that means you need 1400 housing affordable units somewhere, plus the additional market-rate units on top of that. and there's nothing in this ballot measure to get it done. our measure, which the part they plagiarized, includes developers that after own cost, provide all the affordable housing or project needs, not just one unit. but 709 per million can go. [bell dings] [microphone shut off] >> supervisor ronen: next speaker, please. >> hello. my name is emily abraham. i'm with the chamber of commerce.

thank you all for your time here today. the chamber supportive jobs housing linkage fees -- and we want that reflected through the ballot measure. because of this, we are supportive of the mayor's ballot measure. since the voters passed prop m in 1986, and limited gentleman to be growth -- we have seen dramatic changes in the real estate market. it is pastime for us to reevaluate this policy and do more for small business. the chamber feels this ballot measure is imperative, as you'll continue to see small businesses and innovation leave san francisco, if we cannot provide affordable office space. we'll become exactly what we say we do not want to be, a playground for the most well-funded business. large business has grown rapidly in our city, small businesses with fewer than 100 employees account for 95% of san francisco's businesses. and a third of these are minority or women-owned. this measure increases the office space allocations for small businesses, so that san francisco can be a welcoming

place for small business development and growth. as well as accelerating key projects that are delivering hundreds of millions of dollars of public benefits and thousands of units of affordable housing. we cannot continue to constrain our city's job growth. as we must be planning for the future. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. >> hello, supervisors. jay, the san francisco chamber of commerce, representing over 1,000 businesses, large and small in freelance. as my colleague stated earlier, you know, the chamber of commerce was very proud to support supervisor matt haney's job, housing, linkage fee. we believe it was a responsible and legal prop m policy. one of then reasons that we're speaking in favor of this ballot measure today, is also because how it's thoughtfully drafted. one of the last provisions allows the board of supervisors to amend it, even after the voters have passed it. which allows amendments to cover

the concerns with supervisor chair ronen brought up earlier, which was -- so any possible oversight made through the legislative process can go back and be revised again. the solution to jobs housing fit that supervisor mar brought up is not to stop job creation. it is to build more housing. one of the key components of this ballot measure is that it prioritizes office space development that also includes affordable housing space, neighborhood serving retail, and p.d.r. space. we think that kind of prioritization of that mixed-use development is key here. and it's where our office space allocation should be given. and so with that, we are proud to support this ballot measure. and we hope you'll give it its consideration. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thanks. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. cory smith, on behalf of the san francisco housing action coalition. we're getting brought into a lot of different jobs, housing,

balance conversations lately, which not typically kind of been our forte for the longest time. figuringout they fit together is really, really critical. as we continue to add jobs, not only in san francisco, but the region as a whole, we need to figure out how to house these people. last week or before, strike moving to south san francisco. and we personally, you know, as an organization we believe that those employees will continue living in district 10 and district 9 and in district 4 as well. the city of oakland is going through a downtown plan right now. they're about to approve 50,000 new jobs. they're doing it with about 35,000, 40,000 new homes to accommodate. to think about this holistically as a region is critical. to reiterate something that the previous speaker said, we can't attack this jobs housing impact, playing around with the jobs portion of it. the region is too big and not enough economic interdependency between the different

jurisdictions. we believe that we have to add the homes in order to make it happen. we have to provide homes at all income levels, low, subsized affordable, middle income and market rate. we also push back on the notion that we have built enough market-rate housing in san francisco. the arena floors we hit for the first time in decades this last cycle. but number one it's the floor, if we actually did accommodate the growth that we need and did build the amount of market-rate housing we needed in the region as a whole, prices loon lower. prices would be affordable for people and quite simply we're not there. as we go through the new arena methodology right now, the next meeting i think is next thursday, we're going to talk about that. we're going to talk about, haney, as a whole how do we want to, you know, dig our way out of this. so, you know, we realize there's competing ballot measures at the end of the day. we want more money for affordable housing. that's a priority. we need more homes all together. pell bell -- [bell dings] >> supervisor ronen: good

morning. >> irene broken, coalition for san francisco neighborhoods, here on my own behalf. here in strong opposition to the mayor's initiative as currently drafted. section 4 of the mayor's initiative states that if the mayor's initiative wins, the provision shall prevail in their entirety. and each and every provision of the other initiative shall be null and void. however, if the other initiative wins, the mayor's initiative shall take effect to the extent permitted by law. this is a double standard, not to mention a poison pill. the way the mayor's initiative is currently drafted, even if it loses for all intents and purposes, it wins. duelling initiatives confuse the voters and create cynicism in the electoral process. this type of initiative would be questionable, even in a recession. it is even more questionable and troubling in a booming economy. the mayor's initiative would exacerbate the city's jobs,

housing imbalance. it would also exacerbate the city's income quality, as it would benefit the top 1%. we need to address the city's housing issues first, before adding more office space. in 2019, the controller city survey found that a majority of residents said the city is moving in the wrong direction. the mayor's initial -- initiative is going in the wrong direction perform the occupant of room 200 should be the mayor of san francisco, not the mayor of wrong directions. thank you. [bell dings] >> supervisor ronen: next speaker. >> hi. rick hall from hill. a member of the cultural action network and president of liveable california, speaking for myself and for the mission district, where we work to oppose anti-gentrification

that's going on. we speak about supply and demand. and we never addressed the demand side. but we know we're overbuilt on market-rate housing. and way underbuilt on moderate and low-income housing. you know, we're essentially in a hole. and we do not need to -- the mayor's initiative to accelerate office development and exacerbate all of our city problems. office -- the people put prop min place. now it's just about to kick in, the mayor is undercutting it to accelerate high-end office production. no matter what it says about, well, it's going to do this for the little people, this, that and the other thing. the bottom line is we do not need accelerated office production in this city at this time. we have too many other problems to take care of, with regard to

affordable housing, our gentrification issues, our transportation system, it just doesn't work. and accelerating projects, office projects with the mayor's initiative is just the wrong thing to do. [bell dings] there's a huge plot of land, the recology project coming up. it is very, very controversial. and this just accelerates those problems and those controversies. i do not support the mayor's initiative. i do support john's poison pill. it's wrong. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. mary eliza here, speaking for myself. but i am the president of the east mission improvement association, which has members until districts 8, 9 and 10. and i'm hearing from people all

over those districts that they are very upset with what's going on right now. so it looks as if we're once again looking at a situation where we have our own set of priorities, but we're not allowed to have our open set of facts. and we seem like we are disagreeing on the facts. we'll have to see how the voters feel when they vote soon. and we'll have to see whether or not there have been -- they've been informed about what is really going on in the city. it's very hard to combat bad facts, when there's a lot of money pushing bad facts. so, okay, i obviously oppose this. and do support keeping the tap -- i mean, it took us years to reach the cap. so the whole point of the cap was we honor the cap. so the idea that, well, here we

are at the cap. now we've just got to expand the cap is sort of the wrong way, in my humble opinion. and i hope that this committee does not support this. i'm sorry. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: thank you. next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors. good morning, supervisor walton, good to speak with you again. i live in district 10. i live in dog patch. i live six blocks from pier 70, two of the largest developments in the city right now going in for both residential and office space. i have lived there for about 18 years. i support the measure that the mayor is presenting. here's the reason why. i need to expand capacity in the dog patch area for small business operations. we need to improve the

transportation both from the water as well as from the land, in the area. we don't have the resources to do that at this point. we believe that the mayor's measure actually helps with that, by encouraging the acceleration of the power plant project, as well as other projects in the area to pay for those. so i wanted to be brief and just kind of give you a neighborhood perspective, that delaying any of those projects actually undermines the neighborhood strategy of more complete neighborhood services. thank you. >> supervisor ronen: is there any other member of the public who wishes to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] if there's no further comments, the hearing has been heard and filed. motion made by supervisor mar. [laughter] taken without objection. this hearing has been held and filed.

[gavel] mr. clerk, any other items today? >> clerk: that completes the agenda for today. >> supervisor ronen: the meeting is adjourned. thank you. [gavel]

>> i'm going call this meeting to order. welcome to the november 5th, 2019 meeting. if you're a member of the public and want to speak, there are forms to fill out or speak into the microphone. please put your cell phones on silent. i want to thank sf move tv. gov tv. foul we'll start with a role call. (role call). >> the first order of buz