>> good afternoon. my name is ann moller caen. i'm the president of the san francisco public utilities commission. at this time i'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission. today's date is tuesday, may 12, 2020. roll call, please. >> president caen? >> here. >> vice-president vietor? >> present. >> commissioner moran? >> here. >> commissioner maxwell?

>> present. >> commissioner paulson? >> present. >> we have a quorum. at this time i would like to make a brief announcement. due to the covid-19 health emergency and given the public health recommendations issued by the san francisco department of public health and mayor brown have lifted the restrictions on teleconference. this meeting is being held virtually with all members and staff participating today via teleconference. this will ensure the safety of the commission, staff and members of the public. if you have not already done so, i am now going to ask all members of the commission and staff to mute themselves to minimize background noise. this meeting is being televised by sfu tv. for those of you watching live stream, please be aware that there is a 20 to 40-second time

lapse between the live meeting and what members of the public are viewing on sfu tv. we extend our thanks to sfu staff and sfu tv i.t. staff for their assistance. if you wish to make public comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452, and followed by pound and pound again to join the meeting as a participate. dial one then zero to be added to the speaker line. before i call the first item, madam president, i would like to make a note that item 17 is being removed from this agenda and will be rescheduled to a later date. and your first order of business, madam president, is item three, approval of the minutes of april 28, 2020.

>> excuse me, donna, this is francesca. i just wanted to say it's item 16 that has been removed from the calendar, and not item 17. thank you. >> oh, my apologies. thank you. >> commissioners, before you you have the minutes of april 28, 2020. are there any additions to this list? >> second. >> may i have a second? >> madam secretary, could you open this to public comments. >> members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 3, approval of the minutes of april 28, 2020, dial 888-273-3658, access code

3107452 and followed by pound, pound. then 1, then 0 to be added to the speaker line.

>> mr. moderator, do we have any calls? >> madam secretary, we do have one call in the queue. >> thank you. >> you have one question remaining. >> hi, speaker, go ahead. >> my name is francisco de costa, and you may be surprised that i'm still using my time for public comment. and the main reason being i follow all the project, and they are eight weeks into this pandemic and we have a major project that is a system improvement project, and we need to know, more or less, but i

know that there are some difficulties, how are we progressing on the project, how are we progressing on the outreach, and why do we have dwayne jones and juliet [indiscernible] still in charge of the outreach and they haven't been doing a good job? i know some of the managers, they are now considered essential workers, and we are seeing there's nothing happening at city hall and there's nothing happening at 525 [indiscernible] the public utilities commission. so again, we the public need to know how that project, the sewer system improvement project is

moving forward. and we need to be notified about a hearing, or at least a general gist of the program on the backside. thank you very much. >> mr. de costa, before you hang up, that was public comment on item 3, approval of the minutes. and i'm assuming you wanted to make public comment on item 4, which is general public comments. >> excuse me, what is happening? what is happening is on this tv, it said public comment no. 4. and what you are saying is the right things that you did not know what i'm observing, so now we've moved it to -- >> okay. >> -- item no. 3, so i do not want to make the public comment again because everybody heard it. >> okay. >> so that's [indiscernible]. >> okay, thank you.

we are doing our best. mr. moderator, do we have any other calls? >> there are no other calls in the queue, madam secretary. >> okay. given that public comment on item 3 is closed. >> could you take a roll call vote. >> commissioner caen? >> aye. >> vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> commissioner moran? >> aye. >> commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> and commissioner paulson? >> present. >> but do you vote aye on the minutes? >> oh, aye, i'm sorry. >> thank you. it's 5-0, madam president. >> president moller caen: please read the next item. >> item 4 is general public comment. members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the

commission's jurisdiction and not on today's agenda. members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 4 dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1, then 0 to be added to the speaker line. mr. moderator, please open the phone lines. >> madam secretary, the lines are open. >> thank you.

>> madam secretary, we do have callers in the queue and people can continue to queue up while callers are speaking. >> thank you. we have our first caller. >> one question remaining. >> hello, caller, go ahead to speak on general public comments. >> yes, thank you. i sent you a latter yesterday. i hope -- letter yesterday. you hope you had a chance to look it over. it provides suggestions on how we might respond to a very good question the commissioner vietor asked two and a half months ago. it essentially was if the 40% unimpaired flow is implemented or voluntarily adopted, how will the sfpuc respond? i'm very much looking forward to

having that conversation. i hope this item will be agendaized soon and i hope you get some ideas from the letter i sent you. thank you very much. >> thank you, peter. >> madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> okay. thank you. public comment on item no. 4 is closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, please read the next item. >> the next item is item five, communications. >> president moller caen: commissioners, any comments on communications? i do have a question on 5(c), the third quarter budget status report. certainly there weren't any surprises in it, but i was a bit baffled by the fact that our

power contracts could be reduced. i always felt that they were long term. so i would like a comment on that. do we have short-term power contracts? >> i would be happy to address that if the commission is comfortable with that. this is barbara hale, power enterprise assistant general manager. so i understand you to be asking specifically about the statement in the item president caen that says that clean power sf has been able to offset reductions in demand through reduced power purchase contracts, through reduced purchase of power. >> president moller caen: yes. >> yes, so our plane power sf supply portfolio is made up of a mix of contracts with varying durations, varying terms. some are as long as 20 years,

some three to five years, some as short as a month. we do not purchase power to meet 100% of our forecasted demand. so we purchase also in the short-term market up to a day ahead to close that open position since we're not procuring 100%. so it means one month and day ahead purchases that can be avoided when we project the decline in demand like we're experiencing with covid, and the clean power sf savings are attributable to these avoided short-term purchases. >> president moller caen: well, that's very fortunate. thank you for identifying that. i had no idea. >> you're welcome. thank you. >> president moller caen: are there any other comments on communications? madam secretary, could you please open to public comment.

>> members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 5, communications, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by found again. then dial 1, 0 to be added to the speaker line.

>> mr. moderator, do we have any calls? >> madam secretary, the queue is currently empty. >> thank you. given that, public comment on item 5 is closed. >> president moller caen: next item, please. >> madam secretary: next item is item 6, report of the general manager. >> good afternoon, commissioners. this is harlan kelly, and it's great to be here. i can see all five of you, and donna, which i think is a great improvement since our last conference. so i just want to give donna a

lot of respect and our i.t. team to make a change from one technology to another, and i think it's working well so far. with that being said, i would like to just share with you today all the support that sfpuc is providing to its employees, to our customers and to the city and county of san francisco as we continue to respond to this global pandemic. first, our workforce remains our top priority. employees remain split across three main areas. the first one is we have remote employees, which is about half of our employees are working from home. we made some major investments in new technology and equipment to ensure everyone continued to get their job done from their homes. the second group is on-site

employees. about half of our employees are continuing to work in physical locations, job sites each day. each of these sites we have their own clean protocols because we want to make sure the areas are safe and clean. we also implemented social distancing practices and are providing personal protective equipment. in fact, we are getting such a large supply now that we can actually, you know, use and discard them and use more p.p.e.s and not try to save them and wear them for multiple days. so i think that is something that we're so happy to have now. also we're getting more supplies more frequently working with the eoc, so that's great. also in line with the governor

newsom directive, we're filling up our ability to perform health screening, including temperature scans at our work sites every day. and then the third area is that we have disaster service workers, and dozens of our employees are staff at the puc departmental operations center. we call it the doc. and also the city's emergency operations center, which we call the eoc, each week. well over 100 of our team members have served in the eoc from the start of the city response effort. as i mentioned, we started the mandatory health screening a few weeks ago to protect our employees who continue to report to the puc work sites and facilities. each screening includes a health questionnaire and an in-person temperature check. employees who show symptoms are not permitted on-site and are

provided information on covid-19 testing appointments. mandatory screenings started at the southeast treatment plant, the city's distribution division. since then we've added other areas, griffin yard and oceanside treatment plant included, to the list. as more locations come back online, including our 525 golden gate headquarters, we will begin health screenings in the coming weeks. second, we have made sure our customers continue to have access to wider services. with the support of the -- from the mayor, we extended the suspension of water and power shutoffs due to late payments through july 11. we continue to postpone liens and collections and late fees,

and we have provided rental arrangement deferment for tenants who are at our facilities. recently we announced a new half million dollar grant program to support small and local businesses in the bayview neighborhoods that are being impacted by this pandemic. this is made possible for -- by our social impact partners, the mayor's office, supervisor walton and the city's office of economic workforce development. and this week we're launching an emergency customer assistance program which will help residents -- residential customers maximize their discount opportunities. this effort includes an online form automatically extending the program for current enrol fees

and new criteria for new enrollees who are experiencing financial difficulty due to this covid-19. residential customers who have been financially affected as a result of the covid-19 or shelter-in-place orders have a maximum household income under 200% of the san francisco area median income are eligible to apply. enrolling in this customer assistance program will provide a 15% discount on your water bill, a 30% discount on your hetch hetchy power bill and a 30% discount on your waste water bill. this goes all the way to september 4, 2020. we also are doing our part, and we are helping the city to address folks who are living on the street.

last week we installed six drinking water fixtures in the tenderloin, which we call man folds, and they are attached to a fire hydrant to allow drinking water access. as of now, we are looking at other areas where we can expand this program. and then finally we are moving towards recovery from this pandemic. so one of the themes that we are doing is refocussing on hiring our critical positions across the puc, and this effort has start started. we're studying the budget. we're identifying savings from the current fiscal budget and we are building out a revised budget for this upcoming year. we're collaborating on a future way of working because, you know, based on this pandemic, we

realize that people's work habits can change, and we've been working with the city and national groups like u.s. water alliance and others to collaborate on efforts to bring our employees back to work in a safe and healthy way. our employees are, you know, playing a lead role in the effort too. we are using our survey and technology to find out how employees feel about the way they are working right now and if, when and how they will feel comfortable coming back to the p.u.c. work site over the next months. i hope to share the results from this survey and our plans to bring our employees back to work. and then as another effort that is going on that i thought you may be interested in is that you probably have read in the paper

about a research that a lot of universities are teaming up with utility agencies, waste water, and they are looking at the waste from the communities to see if they have the covid-19 virus, and that's something that is sort of new and is very preliminary. we have been in conversations, and we are working with sanford, and they have been collecting samples from us and other cities. they have been freezing them for now with the intent to use them in the ongoing research [indiscernible] involved in this work, and the concept is, you know, to really look at the levels of covid virus and can it be used to track levels of community infection and

potentially be in conjunction with testing to provide early monitoring and detection of future outbreaks. and so that's something that we're participating in. we plan to talk to some other firms and there are some other universities that are doing the research, and hopefully we can engage dph as a partner and so that as we start rolling out tracing and also more testing, this could be another tool to help us sort of flatten the curve in the communities. and so that is the end of my report. and if you have any questions, i can answer them. >> president moller caen: commissioners, any discussion? >> i have a question for the

chair, or just a comment. i really appreciate you bringing up this question of i don't even know what they are calling it, community testing and tracing by utilities. i do think it's a really exciting and important opportunity for us to engage in, and i would like to be able to follow it and say, if you wouldn't mind continuing to keep us updated, i think that, you know, as public servants and as the utility of the future, i think it would be really exciting and, as i said, and important to be able to figure out if we can take a specific community in san francisco and be able to do a much more immediate testing response to a chinatown, to a bayview, to a neighborhood to be able to see what the level of infection is. the delays right now with the regular testing are not adequate

and we are not able to get the data that we need. at a minimum for our utility workers, and at best for city-wide, to be able to have that kind of immediate response, immediate data i think would be -- would really be a game changer, so i would urge you to continue down that path and working with the researchers at stanford and really look at what it would look like to create a discrete project at the p.u.c. >> great. >> president moller caen: is there any implication about safety of our waste water workers because of this? >> so one of the things i -- you know, and i kind of alluded to, as you know, that we were deemed, you know, essential workers, first responders and we had to make sure we continued to

provide water, waste water and power service, and so it was somewhat challenging because we had to, you know, come up with criteria that will help protect our workers, and so we worked not only with our own staff, but we worked with the construction industry that tim is very familiar with, and we came up with some guidelines that we feel that working with the unions, the industry, trade associations, with some robust protocols. and i think, you know, because of that, we had experienced little -- i think two positives, but the two positives were folks who were not at work. they were coming back from vacation. so we are trying to, you know -- you know like i mentioned in my comments, i said that we value

our staff and we want to make sure while that work, we make the environment as safe as possible. so we're doing things like the mandatory health screening. no other department, no other place that i know of any utility is doing that. >> president moller caen: well, now the mandate from the governor, is that for all utilities in the state? >> yes. yes, that was one of the criteria guidelines, essential workers and utilities act upon these guidelines, and one was make sure that we have temperature checks. and health screening. >> this is commissioner paulson.

if you're finished, madam chair? >> president moller caen: yes, i am, commissioner. >> okay. we have so many commissions and so many layers of government in san francisco, and as a p.u.c. commissioner, i'm extremely proud of considering the bulk of work that is done in our three general categories to the amount of safety that is being attended to. not just to the people on golden gate but, you know, throughout the multi-counties that we're responsible for the contracts on, and i'm just really proud. i know that the port and the airport and mpa and effective -- everybody else, everybody is struggling with a lot of stuff, but i just want to commend the staff for being so diligent on safety because there is nothing more important than safety, and that is part of the dialogue that's going on, not just locally and state-wide, but nationally about, you know, what

is more important. you know, economic health or safety, and the fact that safety has got to be number one on the list of what we should do as public servants in terms of being diligent, i am i guess just -- you know, this particular department has been incredibly diligent, and i just want to be on the record for that. and it's always been, even before the virus, considering the amount of work that has to be done to maintain these important utilities. thank you, madam chair. >> president moller caen: well, nicely stated, commissioner paulson. and well deserved. any other comment on the general manager's report? hearing none, madam secretary, please open it to public comment. >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 6, report of the general manager, dial

888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by found again. dial 1, then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ >> president moller caen: that's a nice touch. [jeopardy music]. >> i think there might be a copyright issue with that one. >> or we might have [indiscernible]. [jeopardy music]

. >> madam secretary, we have one caller in the queue. >> madam secretary: thank you. >> you have one question remaining. >> madam secretary: hello, caller. go ahead. >> commissioners, i heard the general manager give his report, and one of your -- one or two of your comments in general about really what our essential workers are doing. what you commissioners are not aware of is that regularly the mayor and basically the department of health and chief

of police give reports to the public, and not once has this so-called press conferences do we get a report of the sfpuc, the other essential workers who represent the other departments. so we are [indiscernible] county of san francisco. we have [indiscernible] we have the sfpuc, the upw, we have other departments, and each of these departments have essential workers, and what we need to do, commissioners, is have a

spokesperson or a report that can be read as to the contribution of our essential workers. and i want the general manager to note this, much like what one of the commissioners said about [indiscernible]. it's very difficult to get testing. you have to meet little requirements, even if you belong to an hmo. those are the things that the sfpuc can contribute because we do have some millions, maybe not billions, that we can apply to the general welfare of the -- [ buzzer ] thank you very much. >> madam secretary: thank you, mr. da costa. anybody else in the speaker

queue? >> madam secretary, the queue is currently empty. >> madam secretary: thank you. we're closing public comment on item 6, report of the general manager. >> president moller caen: next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 7 is new commission business. >> president moller caen: commissioners, any new business today? seeing none, the next item, please. >> madam secretary: the next item -- just one moment -- is item 8, the consent calendar. all matters -- >> president moller caen: item 9, i believe. >> madam secretary: we're on the consent calendar.

it's item 8. that's incorrect, madam president. it should say item 8, consent calendar. that's my mistake. item 8 is the consent calendar. all matters listed here under are considered to be retained by the commission and will be acted upon by a single vote of the commission. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission or the public so requests, in which event the matter will be removed from calendar and considered as a separate item. >> i make a motion to approve. >> second. >> president moller caen: i would like to ask if there's any item you would like removed from the calendar. seeing none, madam secretary, could you call the roll of the vote. >> madam secretary: would you want to open for public comment, madam president? >> president moller caen: i'm sorry, yes, could you do that,

please. >> madam secretary: yes. members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 8, consent calendar, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1, then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪

>> mr. moderator, do we have any speakers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 8 is closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please call for the vote? >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: there were five ayes. >> president moller caen: before we move on, i just have to say how thrilled i am on the fact that we're finally going to have the security fence around

moccasin. this has been a project of mine for many years, and, well, i'm just very excited that it's now going to happen. so thank you, commissioners, for passing that. the next item, please. >> madam secretary: the next item is no. 9, approve the [indiscernible] 192a and b and authorize the general manager to execute these amendments increasing each amendment duration by nine months for a total duration of nine years and eight months per agreement with no change to agreement amounts, and agm howe will introduce this item. >> good afternoon, commissioners. this is kathy howe, assistant general manager for infrastructure. this item is asking for approval to extend the professional service contract with two of our technical experts providing review for the -- project for an

additional nine months. although the construction is complete, we would like the experts to be available in case any issues arise during refill, and so that's why we're asking for the extension to their contracts for duration. i can answer any questions you have. >> president moller caen: commissioners, any questions? >> i move approval. >> second. >> president moller caen: what happens if paliveas doesn't fill by whatever date it was, march of next year? does it just continue on? >> we continually may come back to ask for another time extension, but it could be that we don't need them beyond this winter season. >> president moller caen: i see. okay.

madam secretary, could you call for open public comment? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 9 dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ ♪

>> madam secretary: mr. moderate orr, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 9 is closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, can you please call the role -- roll call on the votes? [roll call]. >> madam secretary: we have five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 10, approve amendment 2 to number cs310 and authorize the general manager to execute the amendment extending the duration by four years to nine years and increasing the contract amount by $900,000 for a total

agreement amount of $1.9 million, and this will be introduced by our customer services manager. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is marge viscara, director of customer services bureau. through this contract about 35% of our bills are delivered to our customers electronically, and over 50% of our payments are received over the web and over the automated phone systems. we seek for your approval to extend our existing contract with our contractor, kubra, for another four years, and increase the contract amount by $900,000. i would be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> president moller caen: commissioners? any question? discussion?

madam secretary, could you open it up to public comments? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 10 dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. mr. moderator, do we have any

calls? >> the queue is currently empty, no callers. >> madam secretary: public comment on item 10 is closed. >> president moller caen: could i have a motion on this item? >> i'll move the item. >> second. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please call the roll? >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: there are five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 11, approve amendment no. 3 to agreement number cs382a and authorize the general manager to increase the amendment increasing the duration by nine months for a total duration of six years and 11 months, nine days, with no change to the

agreement amount. this will be introduced by agm howe. >> good afternoon again, commissioners. this item is similar to item nine, and we're seeking approval to extend the professional service contract with one of our technical advisory panel members for the project. also just for duration and not for dollar amounts. so i can answer any questions. >> president moller caen: commissioners? may i have a second? >> second. >> president moller caen: madame secretary, could you call for public comment? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 11, dial 888-273-3658, access code

3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue at this time. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 11 is now closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please call the roll. >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor?

>> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: we have five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 12, approve the selection of bureau -- north america, the sole respondent to the request of proposals and authorize a general manager to negotiate and execute a professional services agreement for an amount not to exceed $3 million and with a duration of five years. and this will be introduced by agm howe. >> good afternoon, commissioners. once again, kathy howe. this item before you is to seek approval to award a contract to bureau viratas that provides witnessing of testing and

inspection services for the engineering design team as part of staff augmentation during the construction phase of construction projects. witnessing of testing and inspection is usually necessary for all of our larger mechanical equipment and significant electrical equipment at the factory site. and these factory sites are usually within the united states, but in the past it's also been out of the country where bureau veritas already has engineers or other staff. and i can answer any questions you may have. >> president moller caen: commissioners? any questions? comments? may i have a motion? >> i'll move that. >> [indiscernible].

>> president moller caen: thank you. i would like to call for public comment now. madam secretary? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 12 dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ ♪ ♪ mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are no

callers in the queue at this time. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 12 is closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please do the roll call vote? >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: we have five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 13, approval of green infrastructure grant to holy trinity greek orthodox church for a total grant amount up to $1.577 million and authorize general manager to execute the grant agreement for a duration of 20 years and disburse up to $303,750 in grant funds to holy

trinity at this time solely for planning and design activities. this will be introduced by agm norby. agm norby? >> agm norby, i don't think we're hearing your audio. agm, do you have a headset

plugged into your computer? >> this is commissioner paulson. i don't know if this is, madam chair, presumptive. i think we've looked at some of this before, and even though want to hear greg norby, i would, if it's appropriate, make a motion while we move forward and wait to see if he comes in for some extra updates. i make a motion that we approve this item. >> i'll second the motion. >> president moller caen: is there any discussion on this motion? madam secretary, please open it

up to the public comment. >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 13, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ ♪ mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue at this

time. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 13 is closed. madam president, would you like for me to call roll vote on item 13? >> president moller caen: yes, please. >> madam secretary: thank you. president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: i see we have five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: item 14, authorize the disbursement of $358,075 in remaining grant funds under the green infrastructure grant awarded to the san francisco unified school district on october 8, 2019, by commission resolution 19-0194 to

construct storm water management features at a middle school in san francisco. and if we have agm norby back, he will introduce this. >> do i have audio now? >> madam secretary: yes. >> okay. thank you. apologies for that earlier. i am calling in my cellphone this time. yes, same grant program, commissioners, and in this case this is one that is further along. you had previously approved the grant and disbursed funds for the planning and design phase. this has been completed by the grant recipient, the san francisco unified school district, and in this case they are ready to move forward with the construction phase, and that is the funding that will be -- you would be releasing with this action that's before you. and with that, i'll stop and be happy to answer any questions. >> president moller caen: commissioners, any questions?

discussion? may i have a motion, please? >> i move the item. >> i'll second it. >> second. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please call for public comment? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 14, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ ♪ mr. moderator, do we have any

callers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue at this time. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 14 is closed. >> president moller caen: would you please call the roll call vote. >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> yes. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: we have five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. next item, please. >> madam secretary: next item is item 15, approve the water supply assessment for the proposed san francisco gateway project. and this will be introduced by agm ritchie. >> good afternoon, commissioners. steve ritchie, assistant general

manager for water. this is a new assessment for your consideration. it is for the san francisco gateway project and it consists of two buildings in the bayview area. this water plant assessment follows the same pattern as the other water supply assessments that you have approved. we recommend that you approve it for [indiscernible] to the planning department as necessary legal information for their consideration of the analysis for the san francisco gateway project, and i would be happy to answer any questions. >> president moller caen: commissioners? any questions? discussion? >> yeah, i have a couple of questions and a comment on this one. can you just talk a little bit more about the [indiscernible] what's the percentage of reportability? do you know? >> i do not know that. >> so that's one question that i have. and then the comment, i had expressed some discomfort a while ago about continuing to

approve any water supply assessment proposals that come before us until we've made sort of progress on this question around water supply and meeting the demands, both of our urban users and wholesale contractors, as well as enough water for the fish. and i just would -- you know, you know that. i've expressed that publicly several times. and here we are again approving a water supply assessment recommendation for the planning commission. you know, i know that this is [indiscernible] i know there's need. i don't know that much about the nature of this project, which would make me more inclined to move it forward if it were indeed serving lower-income or affordable housing. but i'm wondering if you can respond to my question and concerns that we are again

approving a water supply assessment when we have not figured out that there -- the water available [indiscernible]. >> so this is harlan. i just wanted to let you -- i mean, my understanding, your role is to determine if there's adequate water supply. it's not about affordability and all that other -- you know, all the things that you mentioned. so maybe, you know, we can have teska talk about the role of the commissioners, to determine if we have adequate water supplies, and we work with the city attorneys to put the language in there to talk about the options and alternatives, and i think we talked about it before, that we didn't want to get into a position where the planning department role is to determine that and come here and then we also determine that. i thought we had that robust

conversation, and i just wanted to just kind of throw that out there so that if we need to have that conversation again we can do that now. >> well, yeah. if we want to back up to that question of adequacy of water supply, i'm fine to hear the response to that, but i'm not convinced we do have adequate water supply because it feels like we're making a choice between urban use and development and water for the fish, which i do believe is in our burden. >> so what we've done is we've worked with the city attorney, we've worked with the planning, we've worked with the commissions to come up with three options. one is that if we have a voluntary agreement, if 40% goes through [indiscernible] we have identified that, we're getting the planning, those options depending on what the outcome is, and that is, you know, our

responsibility. so that -- i can -- from our staff perspective, given the three options that planning department had communicated to us that they would need. i don't know if francesca, if you want to speak to that or not. >> i'm happy to answer any questions if anyone has them. >> this is commissioner paulson. our executive director had a question for you, harlan. >> i'm sorry, what is the question, harlan? >> well, maybe you can amplify, you know, what is the role of --

you know, that we discuss of our commissioners, what's our responsibility or the commissioner's responsibility, you know, what the responsibility is as it relates to determine the water supply and how we work with, you know, the planning commission, the planning commission's attorneys. we work with our attorneys to, you know, characterize the three options that are three likely outcomes, and that is sort of what we presented in all of the water supply, and we talked about, you know, our role is not if a project has adequate housing or low-income housing. that is not the role of the

p.u.c. commission. it is just to determine what the the water supply outlook, and so that's my -- i just want to make sure that if that is correct, you know, or if it's not, i just want to make sure that we're all on the same page. so can you speak to that, francesca? >> sure. i mean, right, as you're all aware, your role is to -- in adopting these water supply assessments is to make a finding as to whether the water agency has sufficient water to serve this project as well as other needs in your customer base over a certain projected amount of time and under different conditions. the planning commission then takes whatever you say in your water supply assessment, and that informs the environmental review process, which is obviously separate and which you do not play a role in. and so given the uncertainty that has been created around the bay delta plan amendment and the pending litigation over the course of the last year, the

water supply assessments even consider three different scenarios and lay out what the water supply availability would be under each of those three scenarios and then what are potential alternative water supplies the p.u.c. would look to if it does not have enough water to serve the project. that's been what we've been doing for the last year, as you know. >> president moller caen: i have a question. did the planning commission come to us about this project and would there be enough water? >> yes, the planning commission -- >> i'm sorry. >> go ahead. >> i was just going to say this is governed by state law, and it's any and all development projects of a certain size trigger a legal requirement that you must do a water supply assessment. so whenever a project meets that statutory threshold, planning

sends it over to p.u.c. and says please do a water supply assessment, so that's why you're having to do that for this project. >> also i just wanted to maybe, what's the word, bring up what we talked about. you remember, commissioners, that you were concerned about the planning department not understanding our water situation. i think, sophie, that's when you just started. we actually went to the planning department and we gave a presentation, so i understand that we've been very responsive to all the things that you've asked us to do because we wanted to let them know what our water supply, so they could understand what was going on. we did what you asked us to do.

we provided that information to them, and i just wanted to bring that up, to refresh your memory. >> i might have one thing. at the next commission meeting we are providing our next quarterly update on our water supply planning efforts, which are progressing as the commission has appropriated money for that purpose. we have three staff on board who are working on nothing but those projects right now. >> president moller caen: just to clarify, our current state of affairs right now is that we are basically under a state order that we're going to have to release 40% of our water for flow, and we're suing because of that, correct? >> that's correct.

>> correct. >> and we have not yet come up with the question that i did ask several meetings ago around if indeed we do not prevail in the lawsuit and we are going to have to give up 40% of our water, how are we going to both meet the needs of the fish -- [indiscernible] requirement as well as be able to approve these water supply assessments on an ongoing basis? we have not really answered that question yet, right? but we still continue to approve these projects. >> that's why the water supply planning process is proceeding, to be able to identify and acquire whatever necessary water, if it's only a little bit or if it's a lot of water, that's the effort. that's our obligation, is to meet all these needs, both in our service area as well as making up for our environmental

obligations. >> but rather than releasing water down the river, sorry to belabour the point, but i just want to really understand this, rather than the option of releasing more water since we have so few fish left, we are deciding in a vote like this to recommend that we approve the water supply assessment for development project? because that's a choice. >> i wouldn't characterize that. i think you're twisting what, you know, the issue is. the issue is that, you know, we have a flow schedule, and that is what we're living to and we're working on trying to talk about what's going on. meanwhile, planning department is moving forward with housing, and so they want us to make an assessment if we have adequate water. it's not to make a choice. we're just saying do we have

adequate water, and we're saying there's three scenarios and we're letting them know the three scenarios. and so we're not making choices. we're letting them know that there are three choices, and what we're doing is we're going out, and we recognize that if, you know, we don't prevail in the lawsuit, we have to come up with 40%, we're going to, you know, do all the efforts to try and close that gap with a water supply project. so we're not, you know, saying that we're, you know, if we didn't do this development we will give to the fish or -- i don't think it's a direct connection that you're articulating. >> madam chair, if i might. as we've considered this before,

it is seemingly a -- it's not an unusual spot to be in because you have this big item, the 40% flow requirement, that's so big and so destabilizing to our planning. what has helped me on this is the question of materiality, that the amount of water that we're talking about for this project is really pretty small, and given our current levels of demand, we will be able to meet this demand and also meet the fish flows that are part of the river voluntary agreement that we've been working on. so in that sense, if we can manage the fish flows according to the towalame river voluntary agreement, there is no conflict

between this project and fishery flows. if it turns out we have to do the 40% flows, that is so destabilizing to our water supply that the solution will have to be huge, and this will be a tiny, insignificant part of that solution. so again, it doesn't really present a conflict between these flows and any fishery flow. i think the situation we hope for is that we are able to conclude a voluntary agreement that has fishery flows that are adequate to meet our responsibility to the fish and will also be within the supply that we currently have, and that's i think what we're hoping for. if it turns out that doesn't work, then we're going to have to do major projects and we'll -- you know, this will not change. if we had to do a big project, this will not change the design of that project one little bit. >> madam chair, if -- this is

commissioner paulson. if commissioner moran is done, i'd like to make a couple comments, if i may. >> president moller caen: certainly. >> yeah, so there's a lot of moving parts right here, and as the youngest commissioner -- well, i don't even know if i'm the youngest commissioner, but as the commissioner that has not been around quite as long the times, i do think that there's not a fate decome plit about the various agreements. there have been tremendous amount of negotiations and discussions and lawsuits and collaboration with many different agencies and what have you. so you know, where we, you know, end up is not afait accompli

anywhere else. so despite connecting one to the other, that's probably true also. the second thing is i've been asked to be, and i will say this on my own, i have been asked to be a planning commissioner for the last 20 years. i refused it. i didn't want to be a planning commissioner. there's a heck of a lot of work to it, and i'm wearing a public utilities hat on right now and i'm trying to figure out the best ways that are moving in, and i have no desire whatsoever to weigh in on the issues, you know, as a commissioner of affordable housing and what have you because i don't want to be an activist person on the planning commission as a public utilities commissioner. so i'm going to absolutely not take that position myself. i think we have a lot of policy that we have to continue to talk about, and we will continue to do that. and so i'm going to move, you know, to move this thing forward

because i don't believe that it is our role to start talking about the [indiscernible] as it's been done by the professionals. >> commissioner maxwell here, if i may. i think it's important to have the conversations every time, and so thank you very much, francesca, for bringing it to the forefront. i think it's an important issue. people are talking about the fish and concerned about it, and i think it's important that we weigh in every time where we can to let people know what we're doing, where we are and that we are concerned and we are thinking about them. so i think it's important every time. thank you. >> president moller caen: at this time i would like to call for more discussion. is there more discussion on this item?

>> i'm going to say something. just one quick comment, if i could, to commissioner maxwell, you know, my colleague. it is important that we have these discussions, and not having them is worse. democracy is about having the discussions, so there's no desire on my part to not have discussions about everything. i don't want that ever to be placed on there, but knowing, you know, where we end up on this stuff is based on more than just discussions. it's on analysis, so thank you. >> president moller caen: that's a good point. we should always have discussion. at this time i'd like to call for a motion. >> i move that we move the

assessment forward. >> i'll second that. >> president moller caen: and may i have a second? >> i can second that. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you call for public comment? >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 15, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line. ♪ ♪

>> madam secretary: mr. moderator, do we have any calls? >> yes, we do, madam secretary. i will queue up the first caller. >> madam secretary: thank you. >> i'm encouraging the future to hear public comment before making a motion because there's a chance that it might change your thinking. i want to say i appreciate commissioners' questions and concerns, and in looking through this, what struck me is it's much shorter than they have been in the past. it's only six pages, and they used to be about 40 pages, so it seems like less information is available, and i'm concerned about poor communication between

sfpuc and the planning department and the commission. there was a presentation from staff to the planning department last year, but there's never really been any policy discussion between the two commissions. i would encourage a workshop. some of the things that were not in the staff report were proposed project description, and so there's a lump sum of development in a mixed use project, that there's no breakdown of jobs in housing, and that would be of concern to the planning commission because we have a terrible job housing balance and it causes a housing crisis and transportation problems. it's also an issue for you, because there are a lot more jobs than housing, eventually we're going to have to catch up, and that's going to be, you know, a lot more water. so there's cumulative impacts that aren't considered. other items that were not in the staff report, additional water supplies findings and communications from the planning department. so i also want to remind you

that you have a responsibility from fish and game code 59-37 that you need to protect fish in good health below dam, and the only time that these issues ever come up is every 50 years when there's re-licensing or every five years in the bay-delta plan. but those are ongoing. and the voluntary agreement -- all that right now, possibly even dead, we need to switch gears and not just wait for that decision to be made. so this is tied back to the letter i sent you yesterday. the design is very challenging. commissioner moran pointed out that there are complications from the bay delta plan, but i would say there are even bigger complications from the design drought. i believe it has never been formally been adopted. if i am wrong, i would love to see documentation, but i think there's a good opportunity to revisit it, and right now it's incredibly conservative, 50% rationing is based on a demand of 265, which is actually the

sales cap, real demand projections are much, much lower. it's the eight and a half year design drive gave you suggestions about modifying that, and assume no new supply will come online. so we don't want to invest in a lot of water that we don't need. i think it's really time to have that conversation that commissioner vietor queued up, and you might consider sending this -- [buzzer] >> madam secretary: thank you, peter. mr. moderator, do we have any other callers? >> madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> madam secretary: thank you. that closes public comment on item 15.

>> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please do the roll call vote. >> madam secretary: president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> no. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> no. >> madam secretary: and commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: you have three ayes and two noes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. madam secretary, i would like you to call both items 17 and 18 together. item 16 has been taken off the agenda. there should be no discussion on these settlement items. >> madam secretary: item 17 is settlement of unlitigated claim

state farm insurance company in the amount of $34,495.14. item 18, settlement of lawsuit sandra hernandez et al. in the amount of $214,000. >> president moller caen: may i have a motion? >> moved to oppose. >> second. >> i'm sorry, we need separate motions for each item, so that first motion will be for item 17. >> president moller caen: okay. >> i move 18. >> oh, one at a time. never mind. >> president moller caen: do we take public comment one at a time? >> madam secretary: we will do public comment combined for both. we just need a motion on item 18. >> may i -- >> president moller caen: may i have a motion on item 18?

>> move to approve item 18. >> second. >> i would like to make a comment. can i make a comment on 18, which is the sandra hernandez settlement, correct? >> [indiscernible]. >> yes. >> madam secretary: can you please answer? >> yes, so i would just like to extend sympathies to the family because, you know, in reading through the settlement, i just -- it sounded like quite an experience that the family had, and just wanted to extend sympathies to them as part of this settlement. >> president moller caen: that was very kind of you. madam secretary, please open to

public comment. >> madam secretary: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 17 and 18, dial 888-273-3658, access code 3107452 and pound followed by pound again. dial 1 then 0 to be added to the speaker line to be a. . ♪ ♪ >> madam secretary: mr. moderator, do we have any callers for these items? >> madam secretary, there are no

callers in the queue at this time. >> madam secretary: thank you. public comment on item 17 and 18 is closed. >> president moller caen: madam secretary, could you please take a roll call on item 17. >> madam secretary: on item 17, president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: and commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: there are five ayes. >> president moller caen: the motion carries. and then again a roll call of item 18. >> madam secretary: on item 18, president caen? >> president moller caen: aye. >> madam secretary: vice-president vietor? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner moran? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner maxwell? >> aye. >> madam secretary: commissioner paulson? >> aye. >> madam secretary: there are five ayes.

>> president moller caen: motion carried. that now concludes the business for today. this meeting is adjourned. at 3:05. >> mayor: i'm san francisco mayor london breed. i want to thank you all for joining us here today. i'm really excited about this small business forum that is so desperately needed for so many businesses in our city. this pandemic has had

not only a tremendous impact on our overall city and our public health, but it has also had a tremendous impact on our financial health, and especially many of our businesses in the city. the people who own these businesses, the work force of these businesses, it all will be very difficult as the few -- as the months to come, when we begin to look at ways in which we can open and provide new guidelines around opening businesses. we know that financially so many of our businesses are hurting now. they need support now, and also will need support in the future. some of the programs that we put forth here in the city, immediately, almost, was to defer the payment of business taxes until next year. we actually extended the deadline for fees, as well. we provided resources

for paid sick leave so businesses can extend paid sick leave payments to their employees. we provided grants and loan opportunities with no interest and flexible repayment schedules. we have also provided arts grants for so many of our artists who rely on performances and other events in order to take care of themselves. as someone who not only loves san francisco, but as someone who uses so many of our small businesses, whether it is the drycleaner that i have been going to since i could afford a drycleaner, or the person who does my hair or my nails or the musicians that play at the lounges and restaurants that i love to go to all over the city -- all of these very unique businesses are what matters to the people of this city. they are part of the

fabric of our city. and i want to make sure that as we propose more funding and more support on the local level, that we are connecting to the people who need these resources the most. and we are also making sure that federal and state resources are reaching all of you. so today we are here with the director of the department of the office of economic and work force development. joaquin torres, and if you want to look up some of the services we have, visit oewd.org. joaquin runs that department. and even before this pandemic, i have been really laser-focused on trying to eliminate fees that make it difficult for small businesses, in particular, to be in business in san francisco in the first place. so even though this

pandemic is challenging, i am so hopeful it will be an opportunity to provide some much-needed long-term relief for our businesses in san francisco. joaquin will be leading those efforts. we also have the president of the small business commission, cynthia huey, who will be moderating this discussion, and we have the director of the chamber of commerce here as well, native san franciscan rodney fong, who has been a business person pretty much his whole life. the wax museum -- i don't know about you, but i went to gallileo high school,and we used to sneak into the wax museum when i was a kid. so i owe you some ticket money, rodney. so between the wax museum, the restaurants and the hair and nail salons, the barber shops, the masseuse locations, all of these great things are really what make san francisco so special.

and we know that the sad reality is that because of the pandemic and because of the requirement around social distancing, it is not as simple as those institutions and those businesses can actually go back to work, number one. and, number two, when you go back to work, the likelihood that you're going to be able to make sufficient revenue to cover the expenses you haven't been able to cover for months is going to be challenging. so this is our opportunity to hear from businesses, to make sure that not only are we putting forth good options to support you, but they are affectively working to serve your businesses, and that we are doing everything we can to come up with the kinds of things that are going to help you in the long run. so with that, i want to turn it over to our director of the office of economic and work force development for a few words. and then rodney fong will say a few words,

and then we'll get to cynthia, and she'll moderate this discussion. thank you all for joining us here today. >> thank you so much, mayor breed, and thank you, again, for your leadership and the pressure you place on our office to make sure we're reaching the needs of our small business communities across the city and in our neighborhoods. and thank you for the idea of bringing us all together through this townhall so we can have an opportunity to hear from each other, and our answers about some of the most pressing questions facing small businesses, and the relief you have been driving us to deliver for our small business communities. whether we talked about grants or loan products or deferral of fees, it is all grounded in wanting to see our small businesses be successful here, not only with what the city can provide, but complementing the wrap-around efforts of the state and federal resources that both essential to our relief and recovery efforts.

a few things before we jump in, we know generally, based on some conversations that we've had, we've seen a 70% decrease city-wide. and certain areas and industries are hit even harder in terms of the sales that are out there. we know that we're already seeing 14,000 businesses being affected, 166,000 employees at this moment in time. we're expecting larger hits as time goes on. in addition to over 70,000 people that have already applied for unemployment in san francisco alone. we know that we are dealing with unprecedented challenges here in san francisco, but we, through our office of economic and work force development, and mayor breed, we're standing ready to support the small business community at this time, and especially with the partners we have joining us today and in our communities. both in the past and also in the present, and we're very much looking forward to the future. so looking forward to answering some questions here today. now, i'll pass it over to the president of the

chamber of commerce rodney fong. >> thank you, joaquin first of all, i want to say hello to everyone. we're in this together. we're all feeling the same things, we're all feeling the same frustration, the level of fear going on, but hopefully we'll get through this together and support our way through a great recovery. i want to thank mayor breed and all that her office has been doing, and joaquin has been working like a work horse over the last four, five weeks -- it seems like months, i'm sure -- but he and his staff are doing a great job. they have been working extremely hard. just a little bit of recap: over the last few weeks, the city and the mayor have deferred some of the business registration fees. and they deferred them until september. that adds up to about $49 million in cash flow to the city of san francisco. several fees that apply to storefront businesses have also been deferred until september, helping

to preserve another $14 million in cash flow. i want to be very clear that the mayor is clear about this, we are going to be looking at a significant deficit in the city of san francisco, the bay area, the state of california, and so we're talking about a million dollars out from the city that we won't have in revenue. we will have to all pitch in. we'll all have to figure out how we save and go back to san francisco in an even better way. if we want to start talking about recovery tomorrow, we've got to start planning it today. i'm happy and delighted to tell you that the recovery task force kicked off last friday. it is about an 80-person task force led by myself, carmen chu, jose gonzales and rudy representing labor. 80 seems like a lot of people, but when you look at all of the different sectors and industries and non-profits, it is a

good representation of a lot of people who have shared interests. again, we're going to have to all work together. it is not just one industry here in san francisco that is better than another. i want to also mention that we're going to have to rely on our public health department to lay out new guidelines. we are essentially reinventing ourselves in a great way, bringing in technology that might be able to help us in a better way and create a better san francisco. i want to touch on three points, though, if i can, pretty briefly. this is one where probably from a commerce perspective it doesn't emerlogicalseem logical. the public school system and private school system implementing guidelines to get kids and teachers safely back into the school affects the whole area. not until moms and dads feel safe, do we get a full workforce.

it is important because a busy downtown san francisco supports so many businesses as you know. all of the sandwiches get bought and kids get picked up at lunch, and it is important that somewhere e that wehave a busy . the second main point i want to make is small businesses will need to pivot. we'll have to reinvent ourselves, get creative, and we're going to have to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers that we naturally are. there is no greater test than this one to figure out how it will be different. restaurants may have to change their seating arrangements, going town to not a full house. here in san francisco and los angeles, it is very difficult to make money without a full-seated restaurant. and we're going to have to figure that out. that means takeout and maybe retail inside of a restaurant. maybe other clothing produced by someone related to the restaurant, creating a lifestyle. all of the pivots are

going to require us, the city, government, and private sector to be flexible with our permitting process. to look at permit streamlining, to allow change of use permits to occur. maybe temporarily, just as we get back up, and then we can tighten them back up, but we need to be in this all together and be flexible. the third thing i want to mention is public health. the mayor has disown such done agreat job in listenig to public health. and we'll rely on them to tell us what is best practices. i hope the departments listen to small business, and small business actually steps up and says, you know what? no one knows how to run this nightclub better than we do, and here are some suggestions we think we can voluntarily put down, something we can live with financially, operationally. we look at the changes and the way they're going to occur, they're very much operational.

there is one piece that has been floated around, and that is an idea of a certifcate of healthy places, voluntary standization, much like standization -- standardization, much as a food place has to have a safe handling permit. i, again, wanted to stress that creativity and ingenuity will get us largely out of this. and what will set one business apart from another is how safe and clean it is. if we can do that independently and collectively, san francisco can be a better city. so i'll stop there. >> mayor: all righ all right. thank you, rodney. commissioner huey, if you want to get some remarks, and then we can go right into the question and answer. >> sure. thank you very much. thank you, everybody, for logging in today. my name is cynthia huey, and i'm a small business owner in the city.

and most recently, as a commissioner on the small business commission. i just really want to express how grateful i am to be a san franciscan right now. i was just outside on saturday, singing with my neighbors, and it was an amazing feeling. so i'm incredibly appreciative of show everyone in our communities have come together to fight for and support the health of all san franciscans. you know, just a quick story i wanted to share. i was recently in a west portal merg merchant's meeting, with mayor breed as well -- you probably had no idea i was there. i was watching you during a meeting, and i could see you in your little zoom box, typing away. and i was just floored that this is our mayor. this is our mayor. you were in the chat to try to answer

everybody's questions and connecting people. and i was so proud of the fact that i live in a city where our mayor just digs in and is doing the work. and so i just wanted to say from the very bottom of my heart, thank you so much for trying to help us all through this. it is an incredibly challenging situation, time. i can't even imagine, but i know we're going to all get through this. and i believe in your leadership, and i really thank you. >> mayor: thank you, commissioner. >> so, i think, also, all of us have all of the programs and things memorized right now, all of the wonderful grants we can apply for and all of the loans and all of the different things that i think have been mentioned already, but i also wanted to highlight the work of the office of small businesses. they've been fielding hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and e-mails every week, trying to get business owners connected with resources, and really doing a lot of

one-on-one counselling. so i wanted to thank them. and thanking everybody on the panel. rodney, your expertise today, and also leading us into the recovery. and joaquin, i don't know how you do this. you're in every single meeting, and somehow you're in 20 places at once, but thank you very much. so at this point, let's -- i just want to move into the questions, if that's okay with everyone here? >> yes. >> great. just to give everyone some context about the questions, the vast majority of people who are c.p. for today's talk are also c.p.'d with a question. and these are questions that have been asked over and over again. starting with joaquin, what is the status of the city's grants and funding programs for small businesses impacted by covid? >> yes, thank you very much for the question. as the mayor said, for

up to date realtime information, please go to oewd.org, and click on covid covid-19, and it will list all of the resources available, and what is implemen complementary from the state and local levels, ready to reach out with you online, connect with you on the phone to guide you through the process and help you navigate this very difficult time. in addition to that, also private resources available, newly-announced grants that are accessible to you. please do frequently visit that site. it's where we try to put everything we have available. we started out with a million dollars before we had the shelter in place, to support small businesses with grants, up to $10,000. since that time we have doubled that grant pool so we could serve over 200 businesses through that effort, with grants up to $10,000.

we also heard that some of the resources were not reaching some of the soul proprietors. and we'll be publicizing that on our website. we have a little over 127 grants from that first allocation. and secondly, the mayor introduced the gift to s.f. fund here in san francisco, so we could coordinate, and, mayor, thank you so much for the leadership there. so we will have private resources available to support us with a loan program, a zero percent interest program. we have a partner surntlcurrently that accepted applications. we received over 4,000 businesses who submitted that application. we want to reinforce that the resources we have able right now, from a city's

perspective, are greatly exceeded by the demand. which is why it is so important that today, if folks have not been aware -- i'm sure everybody is in the small business community -- thae federal sba program -- those applications opened up this morning at 7:30 a.m again, go to our website for more information there. where you can learn about additional partners, financial institutions, who can also help you in getting those applications filled out. why is that important? because many banks are only working with their clients, and prioritizing them on a first come, first serve basis. there are billions of dollars being held for other smaller lenders, other smaller banks and cdcdfis, and making sure thethat the public knows they are there. please do take the

initiative right now, reach out to our hotline, as you mentioned, cynthia, and get realtime information from us, with any questions you may have, you will get a response and talk to a person when you reach out to us. so i think i'll leave it with that. as a final piece, the mayor also introduced a neighborhood mini grant program on friday afternoon. it is also meant as another fill the gap in some of the most underserved neighborhoods. given the fact we do have a financial crisis, we wanted to make sure we're finding those resources as we have them available, and delivering them where they are needed, again, focusing on those who may not be able to access other resources in other ways. and also ensuring that women entrepreneurs, from a city-wide perspective, had access to those grants as well. thank you so much. >> thank you. so many of the fees and

fines that small businesses have been experiencing have been deferred now, i think, until september, is what you mentioned? are there long-term plans for small businesses to be able to navigate those fees beyond that? since many of us were already struggling to pay those before this. >> mayor: definitely. thank you, cynthia, for the question. that is one of the areas that i'm laser-focused on. because the fact is some of the businesses that are being required to close under our ordinance are not generating any revenue. and the fact that we would expect businesses to pay these fees during times that they're not even open and able to generate revenue is not right. so we are working to

figure out how we can deal with the fees overall, and what it would mean to reduce, or to eliminate, certain fees for a time period, or what have you. we are definitely looking into that because as what was said by rodney, what we've seen, we're talking about somewhere around $49 million. the city is facing a significant budget deficit, but we also can't balance our budget on the backs of businesses that won't be able to reopen if we continue to burden them with even more city fees. so that is something that we're definitely focused on. it is something that i care about. i care about dealing with that, to try to remove that barrier. but i also want to be clear -- i think, first of all, we have so many businesses that are going to be struggling even after we begin to reopen. there are businesses

that are having challenges now. they're going to have challenges after this. but then there might be businesses that are okay. and we want to make sure that those businesses that are okay, that they continue to pay what they owe, if they can afford to do so. because there are going to be a lot of businesses that can't. we want to be fair because this impacts all of us. when the city is not able to generate sufficient revenue, it makes it more difficult for us to provide more resources to those businesses that are struggling the most. in fact, we mentioned gifts to s.f., where i'm actually raising private dollars to support small businesses. there are only three categories in our give to s.f. program, and one is food insecurity, one is for housing and to help with people that might be facing eviction, and the most important category here is small businesses, and making sure that we have

more resources. we need to maximize the amount of resources we're able to provide in order to help carry businesses that need it the most through this pandemic. so it is definitely something that i'm committed to addressing. and this is where i'm going to count on the business community as i try to propose legislative changes through the process. we're going to need people to be supportive of that. because it is really going to be -- it's going to hit our budget hard, but i think the benefits of supporting our small businesses outweigh the need for us to collect these fees from our already suffering businesses. >> thank you very much. this question, i think rodney would be the person to direct this to. along with the fines and fees, i think one of the things top of mind for small businesses is also

commercial rent. so what programs are there, or what types of resources do you have to help some of our small business owners with, to negotiate rent changes, rent relief, with their commercial landlords? >> that's a good question and it is a tough one because at the moment, there is not necessarily any relief for landlords. in san francisco, a very old city, many of our landlords are small businesses, too. they have mortgages, insurance, and their own obligations. so i think the battle is they want to not have vacancies. i don't know any land owner who wants to have a vacancy. if you're a tenant with a small business, you should begin a dialogue with your landlord, if possible, to see if there is any kind of deferment. i stress to you they are also under the same pressures, with mortgages and such. but there are private arrangements, and those

kinds of conversations would be very helpful. >> okay. thank you. mayor breed, many small business owners have not even heard back from the sba jet o yet on their loans. do have you an update on the federal assistance program? i know this morning there was new funding added to that, but do you know anything beyond, or how the city can help advocate some of the small business owners who haven't even had a chance to -- >> mayor: yeah. and joaquin can provide some insight into that. his office is working on trying to get access to that. >> absolutely. that is one of the biggest questions for us, in terms of where is accessibility happening. almost immediately we were on the phone with financial institutions when we were getting questions across the city about what does this program look like? everything was rolling

out so quickly, everyone was scrambling to understand -- even their own lenders, who they had a relationship with, would provide them guidance or even a response. what we're monitoring very closely now, both treasury sisnaros and the recorder, cameron chu, reached out to the financial institutions to ask, how are you communicating with your clients? what is the process by which you will be processing applications? what is important to know right now, is based on those conversations, the mayor asked us to make sure we were submitting those concerns from the general politics to the speaker's office, part of our federal advocacy. that's why we saw this funding that was reserved specifically for smaller lenders, so folks had many outlets to access though federal relief funds at the same time. so as we see that program roll out today, we'll be monitoring it

in realtime to find out what the responses are like. the silver lining for us that we're seeing right now, but we'll still be watching closely, is the fact that there are those dollars that are held for smaller institutions, and we can see what relief is provided to the small business owners that take that path, as they begin to work with their financial clients, the large banks and the sba around their own applications. i do encourage every small business owner that has an application to reach out to their lender with some followup questions, in terms what have will their process be? we'll also be feeding that back on our website at well. we'll have that additional information, too. but we're looking forward to monitoring this and seeing how this new version of p.p.p. is going to be administered, and what we'll need to provide. >> and just a followup question about the

p.p.p. how will small businesses reach the levels so that we're eligible to receive those loans from the federal government? >> mayor: and i will say that one of the reasons why i created the economic recovery task force is so that when we're able to provide a window of opportunity for a particular industry to open, we want to make sure that before that happens they know what the requirements are going to be. and so that they can get ready. so on day one, they know what to expect. we have been talking to the speaker about that particular requirement because when you think about it, with restaurants, if we're going to be looking at reopening restaurants and changing their capacity, then there is no way that they're going to not only be able to afford to bring back all of their employees, but the

likelihood that they will even be able to afford their rent and other expenses is going to be really, really challenging. and so i think that part of our goal with the economic recovery task force is to look at ways, working with the department of public health, to provide guidance for these industries, to help people to get ready, so on day one they know what they're going to be able to do. but the speaker has been absolutely incredible, and is aware that this could potentially be a challenge in light of the need to impose new restrictions on businesses that may make it difficult for them to be able to bring back their employees. the other thing that the economic recovery task force will do is also look at ways to ensure that our workforce adapts to what our new normal is. we have folks from the academic world who many of our institutions were

asking them to look at their classes and what they have available, in order to retrain people for maybe a new opportunity that they may not have thought was possible. because they're not able to return to their job. and so we're looking at other industries. we're looking at how many contact tracers we're going to need, because until a vaccine is found, there is a need to identify when someone has a virus, who have they been in contact with? not just in their immediate family at home, but others in other parts of the community, along with more testing. this is going to be necessary for us to open and to remain open so that we don't see a significant surge in the number of cases. so it's going to take a major effort to start thinking differently about things won't necessarily go back to the same. but i think that there is an adjustment that we

can make, if we're prepared to make it, and our economic recovery task force is going to play an important role in helping us do that. and i'm going to continue to advocate not just the speaker, but our senators as well, we have a great relationship with kamala harris and other. we have con tact contact with te mayors about what adjustments need to be made because we'll all be in the same boat. >> i'm going to kind of backtrack a little bit into a question that was asked many times. many small business owners are reporting seeing an increase intents and street, unsheltered homelessness in commercial corridors and other in other words. in otheother neighborhoods.whao help the homeless, who are at a greater risk of

contracting coronavirus? >> mayor: if you own a business, you know the challenges of homelessness don't go away because there is a pandemic. in fact, they've been worse for us. although we've been able to get close to a thousand people into hotel rooms, the ability to address homeless in the age of social distancing has been so difficult. and so what you're seeing is we are ramping up our hotels, but we also have to have staff and meals and cleaning and services and management of these hotels to ensure that staff and the folks who work there are safe, but also the people who are located in those hotel rooms are safe as well. it is a massive undertaking, requiring a significant increase in our capacity. and it is really taxing on our workforce. and when i say our

workforce, is no it is not just people in the city and non-profits, all of the employees that are disaster workers -- we've had to retrain librarians and rec and park staff and other people who have not hired to do these jobs, to work with this population in these capacities. we are not going to be able to place our entire homeless population into hotel rooms. but what we're trying to do is get creative around how we're able to provide them help and to find safe locations where we can divert the tents off of the sidewalks, off of the streets into larger areas and larger parking lots. specifically we're looking at everett middle school as an option, and we're working with supervisor mandelman on that. and we're looking at other locations in the bay view. we have trailers that we received from the state and that we also purchased, that we plan to place at pier 92, to

move people out of tents and into the shelters, people who are residents of the bay view. we're trying to get creative to try to get as many people off the streets as we possibly can. it is challenging and will continue to be challenging. but we're going to continue to do the very best that we can. and i cannot, you know, commit to seeing this major change around the removal of tents if we don't have places for people to go. we have to make sure that we have restrooms, wash stations, and other things when we take responsibility for any of the folks that are housed intents at this time. we're going to continue to get creative and provide informal locations and work with the department of public health and the department of homelessness to do just that. and i will say, as much as we've been able to

do, not only providing meals to our shelters, meals to these hotels, and meals to people who are in tents, and cleaning services and other support, it continues to be a challenge to ramp up to the number of staffing that we need in order to meet what we see a significant population of homeless people in our city. >> just to kind of start talking a little bit more -- to talk a little bit more about recovery and reopening, what do you think will the new standards look for operating a business in this city? we have different types of needs for different high-contact industries, such as restaurants, hair and nail salons, like you had mentioned, dental offices, things like that. what are your thoughts

on that? >> mayor: so i'm glad you asked that question, because, again, part of our goal with our economic recovery task force with a lot of the different industries, we want to work together to provide those guidelines. so, for example, most of what we see happening with the department of public health and the decisions that are being made are centered around what we need to do to protect public health. so it focuses on trying to keep people apart from one another in order to avoid getting the virus. and what we're experiencing with our economy, and what we're seeing with the numbers, they have real concerns about opening up too fast because we still see the number of hospitalizations have gone up. we still see, every day, an increase number in the number of people who are positive for covid-19, and we've had 23 deaths, over 1400 cases, and about 85

people who are hospitalized. so they are not comfortable we are out of the woods because those numbers continue to rise you say flattening the curve, but it is pretty flat, relative to most other major cities, but it has not dropped. and what we've done today, for example, in extending the stay-at-home order for an additional month, during that time or goal is to not sit around and wait until direction is given from the department of public health. we are going to provide the guidance for how we can get back to opening up some of our businesses. so, for example, just think about it, the restaurants have delivery and pickup services. we have non-essential businesses that possibly, with the right kinds of guidelines, could potentially be open for the same pickup and delivery services as well. the place where i buy my

candles, you know, where they have, you know, all these knick-knacks and things that i like to buy. why not make sure that those small businesses that serve our communities have the pickup and drop-off service. and what we have to do, and what i'm hoping or economic recovery task force will do with these various industries, are what are some new guidelines for various industries? because i'm not going to wait around for the department of public health to say, okay, yes, it is okay to open our hair salons and our barber shops. what i want to do is get ready for that and provide for them the suggested guidelines, get them to agree and to allow some of these places to start to reopen. because that's where we are now. we have to start working on this now. so, for example, if we set up guidelines today, that three weeks from now, or four weeks from now, this is what a

beauty salon needs to be doing in order to get open, then they can get prepared for that. and they can start booking appointments and working with their costumers. if they can only have one person in the shop at a time -- what does that mean? i'm not suggesting that that is going to happen, because part of it is contingent upon what happens with our numbers. what happens with the number of people who are infected. and so we are open to suggestions from our business community. if you have a unique business and you don't necessarily interact with the public, but you have items that you sell and your not online, but there is a way you could provide pickup and delivery, what does that look like? i think we have to start having those discussions now, so that we can get people ready. if they're going to need to wear gloves and masks when they're doing certain services, we need to get people ready so they have the supplies that they need.

that is a continued conversation i'm hoping we will focus this additional month of may on those kinds of solutions because when we reopen, it will not be business as usual. things are going to be a lot different, especially in light of not having a vaccine. there are going to be some challenges with large-scale events. there are going to be challenges with nightclubs, with hair and nail salons, but it doesn't mean that we should not look at ways we can reopen and make sure that we're practicing certain techniques or requirements that will help limit the number of people that would be infected. >> this is our last question, maybe for rodney. how can small businesses and small business

owners be leaders in the recovery efforts? >> yeah. i think the mayor spoke well about creativity and ingenuity. we want everyone to figure out what they want to do next and how their business is going to shift. i will share that there is one website, where there is a public survey put out by the recovery task force. 1san francisco.org francisco.org/covid-19 recovery. we want to have more students foopportunities for pee to give structure. hopefully we'll have a playbook. there will not be an exact plan, but a whole list of plays that we can put into play, that she can pull from that will have a matrix of. as this changes, it is very different -- in fact, maybe an

earthquake recovery would be somewhat easier than this recovery because it may have some start and stops. we'll try to have as much information with regard to making opportunities from the public. >> thank you. i wanted to thank everybody for being on this panel today and sharing advice, encouragement, all of these things, for all of us because we need it right now. mayor breed, would you like to close this off today? >> mayor: yeah. first of all, thank you, commissioner huey, for your work with this. you mentioned in the beginning that you had a number of people who registered and provided questions. so i want to ask you to make sure that joaquin gets that list with the questions, and he and his team will respond to those questions to try to do what we can to make sure that we are answering them. you can also e-mail

joaquin or e-mail me at mayorlondonbreed mayorlondonbreed@sfgof.o rg. it is better if you reach out to me by e-mail, not on social media because i'm not allowed to get on official media because my staff, they are trying to -- they won't let me do stuff. [laughter] >> if you respond to me, we'll get back to you as quickly as we can with your questions. joaquin and his team have been great with providing resources for small businesses. i'm on the phone regularly, not only trying to raise private dollars to support our small businesses, but also trying to redirect funds and figuring out creative ways to support our small business community. i also just want to repeat one of the things

i've said. as we start to propose policies that can help our small business community, we're going to really need the small business community to rally around those policies because we know that it's a matter of whether or not you will be able to even reopen as we start to open our doors here in the city again. so it is important that we hear from you, that you, of course, are paying attention to what is happening around the policy discussions, that you're contacting your board of supervisors and making clear to them what is important to you. again, i know it is a real struggle. it is a real struggle. and what we want to do is make sure that we are helping to meet the needs of people who need help now. and we want to get to people, and we want to be as supportive as we possibly canment and we can. and we know that we are all going through it, whether it is our business or in our

personal lives, as all of us are required to stay at home. i just really want to express my appreciation to so many people in this city who have just followed the orders and have put us in a situation where our numbers, in comparison to other major cities, are absolutely remarkable. we're not out of the woods yet. we can't let up just yet, but what we can do is start to look at creative ways to get back on our feet again, to get back to opening businesses or industries with certain guidelines that are approved by the public health department. that's really where i want to get to. so send us your suggestions. send us your comments. send us your love. no complaints, please, because (laughing) -- you can send complaints, i'm just kidding.

send us e-mails with what you suggest that we do to help make things better for you because we really are in this together. and it is going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of patience to get through it. we appreciate you all being with us today. and hang in there. and, you know, make sure that you do everything you can to bring our businesses back to our city. and i'm going to do everything i can from the mayor's office to support you in doing that. >> thank you. thank you, mayor breed. >> i want to thank all of you for joining us here today. we know that this is a very challenging time during this

pandemic, especially for many people who have not only lost their income, but have had their hours reduced at their various employment sites and also lost their jobs completely. as of today we've had over 83,000 people in san francisco apply for unemployment. what that says is that even though we locally are doing everything that we can to provide resources to the public, we know that there's so much more that needs to be done. we can't wait for a federal stimulus check in many cases, people who are living paycheck to paycheck and need money to pay their bills. and we know, especially our hairdressers and our nail salons, our barbershops, they're probably suffering the most. because if they don't work they don't have any income. so this is a very challenging time for all of us. and as we deal with the protecting of public health, we

need to always protect the financial health of our families and communities. after we're able to reopen what is that going to look like? and how will we be able to continue to make sure that everyone has a decent paying job with benefits? that's the foundation of our city and it's necessary for us to figure out ways in which we can help to support one another and uplift one another. just a few things that we have been doing here in san francisco include providing additional sick leave for private sector employees and also making available funding that employers have paid into our fund that establishes the support for health care benefits and we're able to give that back to the employees to use for important things like rent or food, finding creative solutions to give to s.f., where we're using those resources to help to pay for food for low-income families

and undocumented families. we know that may not qualify for other benefits that are available. making sure that people who are very concerned and will not be able to generate revenues that they're able to get some resources and some relief to help to pay rent. for their ability to stay housed, our small business community is the foundation of our city and we know that, sadly, what's happening now is that people are impacted financially, but we know that there's going to be a real challenge in the future. and it's important that we make smart decisions, that we make investment in the people who work so hard for our city so that they are able to get over the very challenging time and are able to emerge from this in a way that moves our city forward. so today what we wanted to do was to take this opportunity to have a webinar specifically for

workers. because even though we have made a lot of announcements here in san francisco about various programs that are available, it can get quite confusing because there are local programs, there are state programs, there are challenges with unemployment and other things. and we wanted to provide this as an opportunity to reach directly out to workers. and to talk to the community about ways in which we want to be as helpful as we possibly can. and also to solicit feedback because we may not have all of the answers, we may not know exactly what's going on in every sector of every part of this city, and we want to be a resource to make sure that we're investing the dollars in the right programs that are going to directly impact people's lives. so today i'm joined by a number of folks here who are here to serve employees of san francisco. the workforce director josh arce works for our office of

workforce and economic development. and for more information about what we're doing and if you have any other questions or concerns, not only can you call josh directly and he'll answer your call. but go to oewd.org or call 311, and he is available. he is very dedicated to helping workers and to helping people find job opportunities. so that's one of his roles here with the city. and we're so grateful for his commitment and service to the city. we are also joined by rudy gonzalez, the executive director for the san francisco labor council. and as you know the san francisco labor council represents all organized labor here in san francisco, but they don't just fight for the groups that are part of their collaborative. they fight for better wages, they fight for better benefits so that people have -- can live with dignity and can take tear of their family take care of

their family. i have a uni union family that m blessed to be part of and we know that organized labor in san francisco is critical to the safety net of many of our low-wage workers and people who make san francisco strong. and i want to thank you, michelle, who -- michelle lenard-bell who is agreeing to moderate this conversation. and they have been my go-to for employment opportunities since -- i mean, it's been -- they've been around longer than this, but it's been over 20 years. when i have someone who is struggling and needs an employment opportunity, and they provide the wrap around supportive services and the training necessary to get people on their feet and back to work. so we're glad to have an incredible network of people who are here to help to guide this conversation, help us to answer some questions, and the goal is to make sure that we are

connecting our resources to the people that we know that need it the most. that is why we're here. and we want to thank you all for joining us. at this time i want to join it over to josh arce, with oewd. >> thank you, mayor breed and thank you for convening us here and for everything that you're doing for workers. i want to say at our department under our director, we are a team of 54 men and women who are committed working with at this point 48 community-based organizations to support workers out there at this time and to prepare for our recovery. so as you said, so we can emerge from this even stronger. thank you. >> mayor london breed: so, thank you, josh. and rudy gonzalez, the executive director of the san francisco labor council here in the city. and also i want to mention our economic recovery task force, because not only do we need to help workers now, and what

happens in future when we start to re-open the city, he's a co-chair leading that charge on the san francisco economic recovery. so, ladies and gentlemen, rudy gonzalez. >> thank you, mayor breed and director arce, and michelle, it's great to be in your community. we're grateful for the opportunity to be part of this discussion and bringing together not only organized laborer but as you said, mayor, ways to lift up all people. so we're happy to get to work on our recovery right now. >> mayor london breed: all right, michelle, we can turn it over to you so we can get started. we probably have a lot of folks on the line who have a number of questions and that's what we're here to do, to answer the questions. and also to take feedback on just suggestions that people who are in the middle of these experiences might have. so i'll turn it over to you. thank you so much again. >> thank you, mayor breed, thank you.

i'm michelle leonard-bell and i'm the general manager of mission hiring call. we have been putting people in san francisco to work with quality employment since 1971. so we're going to get started here. mayor, thank you so much for everything that you're doing. we believe that lives here in the city and the region around the city have been saved because of your decisive action and your administration's work. thank you to all of the participants who sent in questions. we received many, many questions around workforce. what we're going to try to do is to select the questions that were asked more than once. and also to request the diversity of the things that you would like to know. our first question was one that was very common. and i'll share this one with mayor breed and then with josh. so many people are frustrated with the challenges of applying for unemployment. what is the latest status on the state and federal unemployment resources? mayor breed? >> mayor london breed: well, i'll turn this over to josh

because he has a lot more detail. but, you know, again, we've had 83,000 people in san francisco alone and over 2.5 million in state of california, of people who applied for unemployment. i know that the governor's office is working to increase the capacity in order to try and be as responsive as possible to people because we know that people need their money now. we don't have direct local control over unemployment insurance in general but we're definitely partnering and working with the states to be as aggressive as we can to get unemployment in the hands of people right away. it has definitely been a challenge. and i'll turn it over to josh. >> yes, thank you, mayor breed. and we work very closely with the state employment development department, or e.e.d. and they have an unpri unpreceds

only 50,000 who had applied for employment and three million ever since. and so as the governor and the labor secretary julie siu increased staffing to the unemployment phone lines and emails, what we've been doing is running a hotline. we have been working closely with the human service agency, community partners including self-help for the elderly, and the mission economic development agency. and a whole lot of the staff to answer phones. our team takes calls seven days a week in multiple languages. and it's really around whatever supports that we need during covid-19 and, of course, most of the calls around unemployment. many of our community partners are doing the same. so in nearly 2,000 calls that have been received to date since march 16th shelter-in-place order, and independent contractor questions, and what we do is that we gather information from those callers and the staff works directly with us. we're grateful for that to get

the answers and to call folks back and email them with those updates. we do twice-a-week rapid response virtual online webinars to get a group of folks and workers laid off in a room to share those resources with the state, with the labor council, with cover california. and that's about an hour-long process that we do twice a week. as the mayor said, we're just here for you and we want to stay connected. our website is www.oewd.org. and the phone number is 415-70 415-701-4817. and go to our website www.oewd.org and that's a great way to get the number and all of the resources that we'll talk about today. thank you again, mayor breed. >> thank you, mayor and josh. of the nearly 350 calls they recently provided services to, unemployment questions were the main questions.

so thank you again for this. oewd.org and you can get assistance around unemployment. and the next question here is for rudy. rudy, before people go back to work, they are understandably concerned about the safety and ensuring safety for themselves and their families. will the city be providing guidelines and giving back to the office -- back to the office to ensure that people are safe when they return to work? >> thank you for that question, michelle. the short answer is -- yes. the department of public health, the county health officer have been working diligently to provide clarification and guidance where we've needed it. i think that a good example of this came to the city administrator's office and the mayor's administration with respect to industries and the construction sector. so, yes, the city is providing that guidance. it's something that is a top priority for the economic recovery task force in our effort to support not only jobs

and jobs and businesses and small businesses, but we also want to support workers by collaborating around what those safety protocols are. they're going to look and feel a little different in various industries. but we trust that the department of public health is going to provide us, you know, timely guidance on those things. and i think that it's also important to recognize that the situation is fluid. and so we have to be dynamic in how we respond to these concerns. this is an area that i'm particularly interested in developing feedback through the recovery task force, their community engagement team. i'm very interested in what some of the specific needs will be from some of our small and medium-sized businesses along these lines. but, yes, we'll continue to work with the city partners and the industry partners to develop clear guidance that allows people to get back to regular work, to continue the essential work, and to do so in a way that promotes public health. >> thank you for that, rudy.

our next question is for mayor breed. will more people be eligible for testing as more people return to work, mayor breed? >> mayor london breed: oh, definitely. the only way that we're going to be able to get back to life as we knew it in some capacity is to ensure that testing is available to people. and the good news is that we announced that all essential workers for the city or even in the private sector, you are considered an essential worker, whether you exhibit symptoms or not, you can be tested. so, please, reach out to us. you can go on to sf.org/citytestssf. or call 311 if you would like to be tested and you're an essential worker. but the other thing is that we will test anyone who exhibits symptoms, whether you have insurance or not. i think that is important. because we never want testing to be a barrier.

if you are not an essential worker or just a san franciscoian or anyone, you know, from our immigrant community or anyone -- you don't have to have insurance to get tested. if you are exhibiting at least one symptom, we will test you. so you can go online or call 311 and we will get you tested. so i think that the good news is that we expanded our testing casity. scapacity. so we're able to provide the opportunities more than we ever had before. so there's no reason for anyone in san francisco to not get tested right now if they need to, if they exhibit at least one symptom of covid-19. and i also want to be clear that our essential workers can get tested in general. so what we want to be able to do is that we want to expand that even further. because ultimately the goal is to make sure that as people get back to work that we have testing capacity to get people tested. in general.

because even if i get tested today, it's negative. well, i'm around people tomorrow, and the possibility of me getting the virus is possible still. so it doesn't just go away because of a test. so we have to make sure that testing is readily available at any given time for anyone. so i'm really excited about our testing capacity. so, again, no reason that anyone can't get tested who exhibits symptoms or our essential workers for any of these reasons. >> thank you so much for that, mayor. one more follow-up question as well -- with schools remaining closed through the rest of this academic year, will more child care services be available as more people return to work? >> mayor london breed: yeah, and i believe so for sure. the good news is that we're offering child care for essential workers right now in our health care industry and our public safety industry. and our goal is not only to expand that as we have space available, but it also is to expand it as we have more

testing. and so right now we're having conversations with our public health department about what does it mean for summer camp. what does this mean for things that we want to be available to kids but we also want to not only protect the children that we want to have these opportunities, we want to make sure that the workforce and their parents and others have access to this testing. testing, contact tracing, those sorts of things are going to be key when we start to allow various industries to reopen in san francisco, along with the guidelines, just like what we're doing with construction, just like what we're doing right now with outdoor services like a number of flower shops and nurseries and kiosks and outdoor businesses, setting guidelines in place and allowing those industries to open. we want to do that with more industries. but that happens as we have also more testing capacities which we are seeing occur. and i'm really excited about

that for the future. >> thank you, mayor breed. director josh arce, would you like to add anything? >> you know, i thought that, mayor breed, this might be a good place to say to any students or parents that might be watching that you can apply for the mayor's opportunity for all summer internship program which is preparing to launch again in june and taking applications for online internship through the human rights commission. should we share that link with everybody? >> mayor london breed: i hope that you know the link. [laughter]. >> and from director davis it's www.opps4allsf.org. and we'll have these links posted at the end of the video feed. >> mayor london breed: and then also i think that, you know, if you have questions and there's a lot of information overload, you can always call

311. >> thank you, mayor breed. we have had several questions around skills and training programs which are going to be essential to getting folks back to work who have lost positions in this crisis. let's start with this question with rudy and then josh. how are we preparing people who have lost their jobs for employment opportunities when the city reopens? and it's going to be such a tight market. >> thank you for that question. the first thing we're doing is identifying where the greatest needs are. and in some industries the road will be longer to recovery. so it's important that we get into those workplaces and identify who needs re-skilling or up-skilling and different forms of training. and i think that it's important to note that some of the existing models that the city has worked very closely with organized labor and our public education institutions like city college and departments like josh's and city build, provide a

good framework for us to start modeling this. in fact, just recently director arce and i were part of a collaboration and the city was able to directly address some workers at munch sconi center that will have a longer road to recovery in the trade and show sector. they accessed funds through the state of california and set up a collaborative model where we'll be partnering with a high road union apprenticeship training to help hundreds of workers at musconi to transition into viable career paths in the construction industry. so i think that unique to this recession is that we are going to have certain sectors of the economy continue. some will even thrive. and it's going to be up to us to collaborate to make sure that we deliver those training programs directly to the workers who need it. i'm particularly excited about this opportunity of musconi,

because i think that it shows a great partnership not only the city and organized labor who have these training programs already set up, but it also highlights the importance of san francisco's role with respect to the governor's administration and the e.d.d. without those partnerships, these kind of models wouldn't be possible. so we're really excited to think through how do we provide some of those skills in a new virtual setting and how do we model then so they can be rolled out at scale. while some workers are just kind of waiting for the next round of orders to come out, we know that others will face a much tougher road and will have a longer ways to go. so we want to get into that segment of the workforce and many industries so that we can provide not just new skills or certifications, but real career paths. so that people can recover, you know, in their own family life. >> and, thank you, michelle.

this example that rudy mentions, because mayor breed has in so many ways primed the workforce for this moment. and i think back to not much more than a year ago when the chariot drivers lost their drivers and mayor breed convened our office and m.t.a., teamsters union and mission to meet these workers who had been driving private shuttles and to train them through a new program, city drive, to become muni bus operators and commercial drivers. when we got the call from rudy it's a logical next step to have that coordination and to connect with the workforce development board and e.d.d. and to really think of options here. it's only at the end of last week that we -- i think that 10 days ago is when we started this conversation and just at the end of last week, as rudy said, the state e.d.d. announced they're awarding one million dollars to train several hundred of those men and women to become union

construction apprentices through city build. so that kind of work with labor, community partners, to think of new training programs is something that i know that we're focused on every day, non-profit service provider partners are out there. and most community partners that we support are still operating virtually. neighborhood job centers, i have mentioned some already, as well as success center and the young developers, and hospitality house in the tenderloin, and the inner city youth, you can connect to these great organizations through oewd.org. and they're working through the service agencies right now to hire on-sight monitors at $24-an-hour each which is a great opportunity and our hospitality is working with one fair wage and the state of california to support high roads to kitchens and working to support restaurant workers in partnership with our human services agency. the cannabis industry is hiring and they really need our help,

but, again, it's just about most importantly that we're connected and that our website is oewd.org, as mayor breed said, you can call me, call any of us, we're just here to support you and stay connected as we have been charged by our mayor. >> yes, thank you so much. another thing that i'd like to add is that during this time is that you felt that you were underemployed or just existing in employment, this could be a perfect storm for you. and when we say underemployed we mean if you were working full-time and partners in your household were working full-time and you were not making ends meet with the employment that you were in, this could be a great time to go to oewd.org and check out the training. most of these trainings are not over 18 weeks and it will land you into quality employment. next question i'll ask of josh. given the changing landscape of work, what sort of re-training and re-educating programs is the

city developing to equip people for jobs? >> thanks, michelle. mayor breed has spoken of the need for us to adapt our workforce to the new normal. and the fact is that we get notices from employers laying off workers. and since march 1, we have received nearly 300 of such notices of companies laying off employees in san francisco and that impacts more than 33,000 workers out there. nearly half of these companies are in the accomodation and food service industry. so we know that these are areas where we need to focus and we have talked about some of those ideas and we'll look forward to connecting with our partners to do even more of that. health care and tech are still hiring and we think that those are going to be key industries that we'll hear through the economic recovery task force where we will see opportunities. and health care academy partners are signing up and there's tech s.f., and it's still taking applications to train in the tech industry. and there's free training thanks to linkedin learning and zen

desk where you can certify for free and their platform, which opens up more opportunities for you in recovery. and opportunities for all that we mentioned is a really important way as mayor breed has said to plant seeds for our young people. both in an ordinary economy, and certainly post-covid. and apprenticeship, not just in construction but tech and health care and commercial driving, we expect to be a key to our workforce strategy during recovery. and, again, our community partners are out there doing the work to support you. we have received an additional $675,000 from the state e.d.d. for general supportive services to support workers that are laid off to be able to do these kind of trainings and that's something that you can learn more about, again, to up-skill or re-skill and to really prepare for this through our website oewd.org. >> thank you, josh, for that. and also if you go to mission

missionhiringcall.org you can apply for city build at that website. and you can apply for the construction administration and training and professional services academy. this is an answer for folks who do not wish to put on a tool belt. you can work inside construction companies. and the training is just 18 weeks. and we also security guard training free of charge. and we also offer placement into hospitality positions. this question, the next question that we have here is about the impact to our most vulnerable workers. i'll ask this one of everyone. starting with mayor breed and then josh and then rudy. how is the city helping workers in sectors like arts, non-profits and other fields where the workers may have already been struggling before the coronavirus pandemic? >> mayor london breed: i'll tell you the one thing that we've been able to do, fortunately, with not just our city workers, but with many of the non-profit workers that the city has contracts with, we have been able to honor our commitment to those contracts

which have allowed us to continue to pay many of our non-profit providers. and so that has been incredible. we have not had to stop funding even though our city faces a $1.1 billion to $1.7 billion budget deficit. we actually repurposed -- i think that i can't remember the exact amount -- but i think that it was around $2 million or so for art support to give to arts organizations and to give to artists. because, you know, these musicians and people who this is their livelihood and they don't have the ability to get by. if you, for example, play live music once a week and that's how you make ends meet, and now you're not playing live music anywhere anymore, these artists are suffering. there's a number of arts organizations that are suffering. so we have re-purposed some of our dollars and grant money that

were not directly committed and we are digging deep to find more to support artists and people in our arts community. and, in fact, give to s.f., they may qualify for, give to s.f., we started to partner with both -- to partner with the private dollars and the public dollars for food security, for housing, and for small businesses. and we work with many non-profits to try to distribute the resources available to get the money in the hands of people right away through some of these particular programs. but it continues to be a challenge because we have had money that we put into these pots and it runs out quickly. and we have, of course, wait lists of people who need resources, which is why i'm constantly not only raising money, but trying to scrap up

city money in order to combine those resources to provide that to people that we know that are already struggling. so we'll continue to do that. >> thank you so much, mayor breed. these are all great resources. keep in mind that the small -- the community-based organizations all over the city are working hard and they're ready to go to work as soon as we unshelter to help to you access every one of these services and trainings that we talked about here today. >> mayor london breed: well, a lot of the non-profits, just so you know, are still working. they're still helping us in various xa capacities. definitely those managing our shelters and those working with the homeless population, they have not stopped working. they are putting themselves in harm's way in order to take care of people on a regular basis. so there are some organizations, even before the pandemic really hit our city and they were out doing the work around outreach and educating people about what is -- what the coronavirus is and some of the recommendations

and things to do or not to do and who to call for resources. so our relationships with our non-profits is really important in not only communicating but distributing the resources that we have through give to s.f. we're working with organizations to identify the people who are most in need and who to contribute those resources to. so we appreciate that. and we're hopeful that we can maintain it. but we are looking at a very challenging future for this city with our anticipated budget deficits. >> thank you, mayor breed. we have time for one last question and it's about economic recovery. i'd like to go,a round to al, af the panelists, starting with mayor breed. how can we ensure as the city begins its recovery that every san franciscoians has a chance to succeed in this new normal. >> mayor london breed: i'm sorry? >> how can we ensure that every san franciscoian has a chance to

succeed in this new normal? >> mayor london breed: well, unfortunately, that's going to be very challenging. it's going to be challenging, sadly, because of our deficit. because of what's happening with our economy, and it doesn't mean that we don't try to come together to figure out ways in which we can really focus on, you know, making sure that exactly what josh and what rudy talked about is looking at people in various industries and making sure that if their industry is going under or those job opportunities are no longer available, and then how do we help them to shift what they're doing. and that's going to be really important. that's how we're going to be able to ensure support for our city workforce. it's going to be tough. there are no plans in the near

future. tourism is going to continue to be very challenging. so when you think about it, the people who work at the convention centers and the people who work at the hotels and the folks who work at restaurants where we'll need to make changes to the restaurant industry. a lot of folks are going to suffer. what we have to be prepared to do, exactly what josh talked about, when the chariot drivers lost their jobs, well, they could drive one of those big vans for chariot, they can drive muni. so what a great -- and they get paid more. so i think that that's a lot of what we're going to be doing is helping to make it easier for people to shift whatever industry they might be working in and making sure that the programs match what is available. so, for example, we're not going to be out of the woods on the coronavirus for some time until there's a vaccine. and contact tracing along with

testing will be a critical part in trying to help to keep people safe. well, we need thousands of people to do contact tracing. so training people and getting them equipped with what that entails could be a stepping stone to another opportunity. but it's the kinds of things that we'll need to do in order to try to support everyone. it will be challenging, but we are committed to this, and that's why i'm -- i have a lot of confidence in the economic recovery task force with a number of people from labor, people from academic world, folks with the city departments, folks from non-profits and from the communities and from the arts communities. like, the goal is to come up with the right plan of action for people in various industries so that we make it less challenging on people than i'm sure that it already is. and that's what we're committed to. >> thank you, mayor.

josh, would you like to chime in? >> yeah, thank you again, thank you again, mayor breed and to the panel because a few of the ideas that we talked about here and then we have heard in the questions are some cues for what we can think about in recovery. 10 years ago we had federal stimulus dollars and economic stimulus resources that we may see again, i know that we're all advocating under the mayor's leadership and to our speaker and governor to make the case for any resources that we can. the mayor's example of sick leave fund was a partnership between our office and human services agency. and with the $10 million fund we saw applications to support nearly 21,000 different workers giving us a framework to think about. if we could have those stimulus dollars again to implement those programs, and it could be built out again. supporting our immigrant workers, and families that give to s.f. dollars that mayor breed

has helped to secure that will soon deploy to those workers who may not be eligible for any other form of relief because of immigration status, working with partners such as the human rights commission and latino task force and the labor council and others wh that are some of e ways to do what mayor breed charged with us each before this started -- to leave no one behind. we were just starting a collaborative right before this started under the coordination of hospitality house and joe wilson, his team and tiffany jackson with the homeless advocates and workers -- advocates of formerly homeless job seekers to really create a new system, a multi-departmental system working with the community that we've got to return to that too. and it was also policies and our local hiring policy for construction started 10 years ago. and ideas that we can obviously catalyze a return to the economic prosperity that we had, and we will have once again.

but using these policies to truly make sure that no one is left behind because by the end of that moment of prosperity we saw disparities such as unemployment within the african american community disproportionately low compared to everyone else in this city. and many of our women of color, and public housing residents who are not able to share in that income and that wealth as we rebuild. and it's going to be tough as the mayor said. but as we rebuild we've got all of the right partners from community, labor and businesses and mayor, and the supervisors and the agencies and everyone coming together to do this through the task force to do these kind of policies, to come together and we'll look forward to that hard work to get us back. >> thank you so much for that, josh. rudy, would you like to chime in with a closing statement on recovery? >> sure, thanks, michelle. in terms of the economic recovery task force, i think that the frame here is that we have to be deliberate.

so if we're going to talk about a recovery that serves everybody and provides opportunity, you know, we're going to have to focus energy on that question. and the recovery task force framework, there's sort of three areas or three work areas around job and business and a work group dedicated to that, and economic development and a work group dedicated to that. and i'm proud that there's a vulnerable populations work group to think about these questions and these issues, through an equity lens, right and to think about how do we lift people up. i don't think that it will happen on accident or by chance. it's going to happen because of political leaders, of community leaders and overall a level of engagement that brings everybody into the conversation. i want to say that i think that it also counts on some of the outcomes that we're seeing at the federal level. i'm very proud that our national aflcio is mobilizing our 12.5 million members to lobby and to push to make sure that local government gets taken care

of in the next stimulus package. all of the extraordinary efforts from p.p.e. to testing, to making sure that non-profits and vulnerable community groups are being taken care of at the city level requires that the federal level of our government recognize that and then to provide resources, funding, money. so we're fighting for that very hard as an organized movement. and i also want to say they think that our local government will play a key role in defining what recovery feels like for all people. our local government really has an opportunity, not only as the representatives of the people, but as the largest employer in san francisco, we'll have an opportunity to speak our values in this recovery. and i think that it starts with health care. i know that the city has been a leader on that. the mayor has been working diligently as she said with the ahcao and money and there are policies that we can look to

really make sure that everybody recovers in san francisco. so we're excited and we're ready to get to work on the economic recovery task force and thank you again for the opportunity to participate in this panel. >> thank you, rudy. and thank you all who have participated in this today. mayor breed, thank you for having us. and one last thought on recovery. as we go back to work and everyone else joins the others now working, let's keep in mind our safety. this isn't the kind of skim over emails from our employer and advising us of policy and procedures. we've got to keep safety as paramount and at the utmost top of our minds while we go back to work. because we've got to keep families safe. as the mayor said we're not through this yet but we've got to keep working together. thank you, mayor breed and i turn this back over to you. >> mayor london breed: thank you. and let me say, michelle, i know that you have a lot of questions and i want to make sure that we're able to answer them. so feel free to turn them over to josh.

and he'll follow-up. we want to be a resource for people and so if there's any questions, please reach out to us. the website is oewd.org. call 311, and we understand that it is probably frustrating to go through this process of applying for unemployment on your own and needing documents and not getting a response. though we don't have direct control over this particular state agency, we want to be helpful. for example, if you're struggling for unemployment and you're waiting for a check and if we have a resource to provide support or food or something of that nature, we don't want you to have to wait for unemployment to get help. if there's something available in our city we want to help as much as we can. and so we appreciate the opportunity to be here. we'll continue to do everything that we can to support our workforce. as we go through the challenges of our budget, keeping people

employed and making sure that people have employment options is really so important to taking care of the people of this city and also our economic recovery health. that is so desperately needed. so we're counting on all of us to do our part in providing information as well as getting information and making the decisions based on what's best for the people that we're here to serve. so i really appreciate all of you and all of the work that you're all doing on the frontlines. we really are in this together. and i want to see us emerge as a stronger, better city for our workforce more than ever as a result of this unexpected pandemic. and i think that by working together we will. so thank you all so much. >> thank you. >> thank you, mayor. >> thank you.

>> mayor london breed: we are on day way too many of this covid-19 shutdown. i want to just start by thanking sf gov tv and those who are