>> so, first of all, thank you for all the press for being here today. we're going to start on the chinese lunar new year parade public safety press conference. to begin this, we're going to kick it off with director mary ellen carole of the department of emergency management. >> good afternoon. and happy lunar new year. we're so happy to be here. i want to thank all of our media partners for being here and we want to get the message out of public safety in advance of the safety and public celebrations coming up this weekend. i want to thank the chinese

chamber of commerce, president kenny c. you will hear a lot of helpful information here coming up from a number of city partners and we're going to start in a moment with our supervisor president norman yee and the mayson lee from the mayor office london breed's office and sheriff myamoto and police chief william scott, our fire chief jeannine nickolson, and dr. grant co fax. the purpose again is to promote public safety and accurate messages and the whole city has

been working together for the past few weeks to get ready for lunar new year and at the department of emergency management where i am the director, we will have staff on site at the parade site and probably most importantly our 9-1-1 dispatchers will be staffed up and ready to take calls. if anyone needs a police officer, a firefighters or a medic or ambulance, you should call 9-1-1. it doesn't matter what language you call in, if you do not speak english, simply state the language that you speak or the dialect, just one word and we'll be able to connect with the translator so that we can provide service and fast response to your needs. one of the ways that we work to make sure everyone will be safe for the lunar new year. so, at this time, i'm very happy to introduce our president of the board of supervisors for san

francisco norman yee. >> thank you, director carole. happy new year, everybody. i'm norman yee the president of the board of the supervisors and i represent everything i say today. the sentiment of the total board. first of all, i want to thank the department heads and community leaders to be out here on this press conference to stress the importance of our celebration that we have every year, year in and year out. it's something that i grew up with in chinatown. i'm chinese hospital-born kid. every year i look forward to the celebration. it's one of the biggest, most colorful celebrations in the united states. same thing for chinese new year. it's the best in the world outside of china. so, i want always to could

continue being able to have that enjoyment. now, we have many different celebrations throughout the last week and so fourth and the one that's going to come on saturday is the biggest, of course. i myself had a lunar new year celebration last week in my own district. it grew from 500 people the year before the first time i did it to last saturday where over 1,000 people came out to celebrate the lunar new year. we have safety people there we rewinded people to make sure you wash your hands. it's really important. so, i'm talking about the coronavirus. something that has been in the media in the last week two. rightfully so. sometimes the media makes too

much -- or emphasize the wrong things. the emphasis is that it's dangerous in some were in china. it's like any flu symptoms that we get and there's more people catching the flu than this coronavirus. one of the things i keep on stressing is you really need to wash your hands. wash your hands. so you don't catch anything. and, it's one of the things where i'm wondering how bad it is in the u.s.? hopefully it won't get any worse. certainly there's more chance of catching the "here & now" rightg else. i want to emphasize that. sometimes we create fear. sometimes it's rightfully so but in this case in the united states, in san francisco, in the bay area, the creation of this

fear is unfounded. there's more people getting hit by a car right now than people catching this. so, i just wanted to send a message out to the community. we need to continue to celebrate and honor our cultures and for people that take this opportunity where fear is going around and basically being racist about it and coming up with attitudes that i don't know where it's coming from. especially in san francisco. we have such a diverse population and respect for each other's culture. every so often when people do this, i say well this is not the values of san francisco. we need to tell people this is not right. when you basically betray a

whole group of people as something that is contagious. that's not what it is. what it is is we have to ask people where they have traveled to and regardless of the race. there's a lot more people here in san francisco and where they're chinese american or any ethnic group who has been in san francisco much more than anybody traveling from china or coming back here. racism is contagious. coronavirus is contagious but we don't have the same level of concern as wuhan, china. and that celebrations, as i proved last week, people are still coming out and supporting our businesses and supporting our culture and please do the

same. i urge all people that have come year after year to continue coming to this parade on saturday and have the fun that they always have and that we continue supporting not only our community at large but in particularly the a.p.i. and chinese american businesses so thank you very much. >> thank you president yee. at this moment we'll hand off to mayson lee from mayor breed's office. >> i'm here to represent san francisco mayor london breed and the mayor just want to what preston yee said and the mayor wants to thank the department of public-health and the department of emergency management, police department, fire department and the sher defer for insuring safety of our parade on saturday. as the mayor emphasized before she wants to make sure that everybody comes out also for us

to embrace our diverse toe in san francisco and i want to thank har band and parade and sitting here and for the logistic information and the offices and departments need. let's make sure we celebrate and have a great time and be safe and healthy. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> at this point, we would like president kenny to say a few words on behalf of the chinese chamber. >> good afternoon. i'm kenny with the chinese commerce. first of all, i would like to inform everybody that all our chinese new years celebrations activities will be performed or conducted on schedule. later on, our city official and medical experts will share with you tips on public safety and i would like to, on behalf of the chamber, i look forward to

seeing you all at all our celebration activities including this saturday, the chinese new year pa trade. thank you. we have president dang lee from the chinese six companies. >> happy new year and good afternoon. i'm so grateful of the city, governments, fully supported of our community to do the chinese new year celebration safe and let the people feel happy right here. and urge the people to come to chinatown, shopping, eating, and help us to celebrate the chinese new years together. have a good time. thank you, very much. >> at this moment, sheriff. >> >> good afternoon, everyone, ire sharif for san francisco and happy to be here. i wanted to reassure everybody that as we approach the weekend, and the festivities not just

with the parade but also the festival that we'll be hosting in chinatown, all of the many different things we do that make this community very vibrant, in terms of what they do to celebrate the lunar new year, i want to say that everyone should be reassured that we are safe and prepared in dealing with anything that should arise. we have a partnership in collaboration with the police department right now. as you see behind me, the people that i want to recognize right now are the officers and the deputies who are out there actually doing the job to keep people safe as we go through these festivities. we partnered and we're outstanding side by side with our public safety partners and making sure that we all stay safe. we ask that you help us help you in keeping everyone safe and we make sure if you see something say something. if we have situations make sure that they're reported right away through 9-1-1 or our other abilities to talk to people in the community. please, feel safe, rest assured that we stand ready to make sure everyone has a very happy new

year. also, if you see something say something. thank you. >> thank you, sheriff. next up we have chief bill scott sfpd. >> thank you. good afternoon, everybody. couple of tips for the lunar new year and happy lunar new year to everyone. it's also a time where it's family time. we celebrate lunar new year. a lot of festivities and the parade but it's also family time. with that though, we know that certain individuals come in our town and city and take advantage of people. we want to make sure that we pass out a few safety tips to not be taken advantage of and not be a victim of a crime. here are some tips for us to always keep in mind but particularly during this festive time of year. we want to remind everyone, including our merchants and residents, that you have to be vigilant. and we've seen certain crimes

that occurred in our city where we believe certain individuals have been targeted. people who may have large sums of cash. people that might have expensive jewelry. people that thieves believe might have something of value. so, if you are going to go to the bank and go shopping, if you are going to wear your jewelry, make sure you keep your eyes open. make sure you stay vigilant and look around and be aware of your surroundings. couple of other things, during the season, we've seen extorsions, robberies and scams. our scams can be prevented through awareness, we believe and here are a couple of tips. be aware when strangers ask for money or jewelry. don't follow strangers anywhere. don't bring strangers into your home. and don't bring a stranger with you to withdraw money or take out valuables from your safety deposit bo box or your home. before withdrawing large sums of money, talk to your family first. give it a cooling off period

because a lot of times these scams are built on emotions and sometimes people play on human emotions so they get you all worked up about the opportunity maybe to have more money or to have nicer jewelry and then we get the bait and the switch so, take a rest period and if someone approaches you with something that sounds too good to be true, talk it over with the family member or friend to make sure you are not being scammed. also, i want to personally reach and thank our media partners. you all spreading the word and making people more aware does a lot of good for our see the so i want to thank you to chinese media for helping us spread the message of prevention and safety. we have a lot of good news to report in our city in terms of crime and our homicides are at the lowest rate since 1961. violent crime is down. car break ins are slightly down. so there's a lot of good news to report. if you have been a victim of a crime, that one crime you probably not interested in the good news. you want something done about

what just happened to you and we understand that. one victim is too many. personally responsibility, park smart, don't leave your valuables out. make sure you don't fall for something that sounds too good to be true. and as sheriff said, if you see something, please, say something. i can't stress enough how important it is to report crimes. to report what you see. if you see something suspicious, there's not enough calls that go out that probably crimes could have been prevented if you just make the call so please, make the call and lastly, we encourage everyone to get to know our officers, the deputies here and our officers and officer ma from our foot beat unit. get to know them. we are here to help. we're part of the community and we are here to help. so thank you very much and i encourage you you all to come out and enjoy the festivities this weekend at the lunar new

year parade. thank you. [applause] thank you, chief. next up we have fire chief jeannine nickolson. >> hello, everyone. happy lunar new year to everyone. i am your fire chief. i am excited and grateful to be able to celebrate the lunar new year with everyone this weekend. i will be there as will many members of the fire department. a few safety tips. fire safety, medical safety, fireworks. we know we always see a lot of fireworks around chinese new year. i won't get into the legality part, it's my law enforcement partner there, but, every year we see fires that are caused by fireworks from small to large and injuries that are caused by fireworks. so, please, be safe. keep your communities and your

community members safe and happy lunar new year. >> next up dph director dr. grant cofax. >> good afternoon, everybody. director of health. i'm looking forward to a wonderful, safe, and healthy parade this year. i hope to see you there. i want to also acknowledge dr. araagon our health officer from the health department and dr. pack our medical director of chinatown health center which is one of the many primary care clinics within the health department. i have been asked to make some remarks around novel coronavirus and i just want to assure everybody the department is working 24/7 for preparedness with preparedness activities, working both within the department and our community partners and with other city agencies to ensure is that we

are as prepared as possible in this potentially rapidly changing situation. i want to emphasis that right now, in the united states, there are a total of 12 reported novel coronaviruses, six in california, a total of four reported in the bay area. at this time, there's no you knewly diagnosed novel coronavirus in san francisco. in the event that there would be a case newly discovered in san francisco, you would hear it from the health department first. there were two patients from a neighboring county that were transferred for medical care to ucsf hospital. they are receiving state of the art medical care and represent no threat to the general public. it is flu season. and as the president yee said, there are -- the risk for the flu is also high at this time. so we are recommending, as we do

every year, standard public-health, good public-health practices to protect yourself and to take care of yourself if you are sick. if you become sick, stay at home. don't go to work or school. make sure you wash your hands. if you cough, cough into your elbow. and also, to protect against the common flu, get a flu shot. it's not too late to get a flu shot. make sure you do that as well. we are coordinating our local response with our other regional partners. we are in constant contact with the cdc and our federal partners as well as the state health department. so i'm really looking forward to a great parade this year. happy new year and dr. aragone and dr. pack and i are available for questions after this. thank you. [applause] thank you. we'll wrap it up with closing statements by director carole many of.

>> thank you. just want to thank everyone for being here. it really does take the whole team. whether we're doing what we do every year which is prepare for a great, amazing lunar year parade or we are dealing with the new problem which is the novel coronavirus. just know that we have, we work really hard on behalf of the city and folks in san francisco and i think most of us are going to be out on saturday so we hope to see a lot of people out there. thank you. >> questions from the press. >> yes, over there. >> are you already seeing some of the merchants are saying an impact on this in chinatown, people maybe have fears about the virus? >> we do hope that all these chinese new years celebration activities will bring more people and more tourism to san

francisco in such a way that you will also have out on the business in chinatown area. there's our hope. thank you. >> has there been an impact already? leading up to the parade? >> >> there was a little rumor from a newspaper. it's not true. but we have to collect it already. a little bit impact. yes. it's just a fact. >> other questions? >> >> i was wondering, do you plan to increase the security on the parade because of the fear around the coronavirus in the possibility of cena phobic attacks it can cause. >> we have a robust for the

parade. you will see officers along the parade route. a lot of police presence in and around the area. there's no additional staffing that's been added because of the virus and again, i would pay close attention to what the medical professionals are saying and we just want people to be safe and practice good public-health policies as dr. cofax stated but it doesn't effect the security >> what about people who are concerned about bringing their children because of the coronavirus and whether masks are playing a role. do you address just the concern, whether it's not well founded or not but it is out there? >> >> i understand that people are concerned and fearful and again, i think the key thing to remember right now is that there's no newly diagnosed novel coronavirus in san francisco. i would say that follow the standard flu precautions that i already mentioned and if you want more information, you can

go to our dph website or the cdc website. there's no indication for the general population to be wearing masks and if you develop symptoms of upper respiratory infections, see your healing care professional. >> people should be encouraged to come to the parade? >> i think across the -- with our partners at cdc, federal and locally, there's no indication for changing anything that we would normally do with regard to public events at this time. >> have the staff had any training on coming in contact with the coronavirus? >> we have protocols that are normal infectious disease protocols and would only be if

it's not for general population and it would be for to travel. [ off mic ] you spoke about racism at the top of this press conference and we're getting reports of drivers refusing to pick up people with asian last names. what do we have to say to people who think this is related to anything other than travel to wuhan, china? >> well, i believe that 99% of the people in san francisco aren't racist. there's always going to be a small, small, small percentage of people that, whether they outrightly express it or have it within them or use excuses like

the coronavirus to bring out those issues and all of us need to stand up and say this is not acceptable and our communities. if you do this, there's going to be consequences whether you work as a driver that gets fired. i'm glad the companies that are hiring some of these people take it very seriously in terms of how we feel about it. it's acceptable to ask people whether you travel to china. but it shouldn't be just -- when i go to china, there's a lot of non chinese that travel through china. you are going to ask, you ask everybody. any other questions? seeing none. that concludes our press

conference and if we have any one-on-one interviews we'll take it to the side and take a group photo for the print media for our chineit. >> shop & dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges resident to do their shop & dine in the 49 within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services in the neighborhood we help san francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so we're will you shop & dine in the 49 chinatown has to be one the best unique shopping areas in san francisco that is color fulfill and safe each vegetation and seafood and find everything in chinatown the walk shop in chinatown welcome to jason dessert i'm the fifth generation of candy in san

francisco still that serves 2000 district in the chinatown in the past it was the tradition and my family was the royal chef in the pot pals that's why we learned this stuff and moved from here to have dragon candy i want people to know that is art we will explain a walk and they can't walk in and out it is different techniques from stir frying to smoking to steaming and they do show of. >> beer a royalty for the age berry up to now not people know that especially the toughest they think this is - i really appreciate they love this art. >> from the cantonese to the

hypomania and we have hot pots we have all of the cuisines of china in our chinatown you don't have to go far. >> small business is important to our neighborhood because if we really make a lot of people lives better more people get a job here not just a big firm. >> you don't have to go anywhere else we have pocketed of great neighborhoods haul have all have their own uniqueness. >> san francisco has to all in this san francisco office, there are about 1400 employees. and they're working in roughly 400,000 square feet. we were especially pleased that

cleanpowersf offers the super green 100% clean energy, not only for commercial entities like ours, but also for residents of the city of san francisco. we were pleased with the package of services they offered and we're now encouraging our employees who have residence in san francisco to sign on as well. we didn't have any interruption of service or any problems with the switch over to cleanpowersf. this clean power opportunity reflects that. i would encourage any large business in san francisco to seriously consider converting and upgrading to the cleanpowersf service. it's good for the environment, it's good for business and it's good for the community.

>> president yee: okay. good afternoon, and welcome to the february 4, 2020, regular meeting of the san francisco board of supervisors. please call the roll. >> thank you. supervisor fewer not present. supervisor haney not present. supervisor mandelman present. supervisor mar present. supervisor peskin not present. supervisor preston present. supervisor ronen not present.