perfect. sorry, dominica. >> okay. sfgov tv, we are ready to start

the meeting now. this is a special meeting of the small business commission. the meeting is being called to order at 11:05 a.m. small business commission thanks media services and sfgov tv and the department of technology for televising this meeting, which can be viewed on sfgov tv 2, live streamed at sfgovtv.org. members of the public, who will be phoning in, the number is (888)363-4735. and the access code is 413-4030. when prompted, dial 10 in order to be added to the speaker line. the auto prompts will look at caller's entry. the question-and-answer time.

but this is the public comment period. if you call in before public comment is called, you'll be added to the queue. when you are called for public comment, please mute your device that you are listening to the meeting on, when it is your time to speak, you'll be prompted to do so. public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker, unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting. speakers are requested but not required to state their names. sfgov tv, please show the office of small business. >> today we'll start with the reminder that the small business commission official public -- is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. and that the office of small businesses is the best place to

get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone. as always, our services are free of charge. before item number 1 closed, i'd like to thank media services and sfgov for coordinating the live stream. a special thanks to tom, shawn, jim, and corwin for their assistance. >> commissioner adams? >> here. >> commissioner dooley? >> here. >> clerk: commissioner huie? >> here. >> clerk: commissioner laguna? >> missioner william ortiz-cartagena?

>> clerk: commissioner yekutiel? >> here. >> clerk: mr. president, you have a quorum. >> wonderful. please call item number 2. >> clerk: item 2, approve of draft meeting minutes. action item. >> anybody want to make the motion? >> i motion to approve. >> second. >> clerk: motion by commissioner adams to approve the draft meeting minutes, seconded by commissioner dooley. roll call vote. commissioner adams? >> yes. >> missioner dooley? >> yes. >> commissioner huie? >> yes. >> commissioner laguana? >> yes. >> commissioner yekutiel? >> yes. >> clerk: motion passes 7-0. >> please call item number 3.

>> clerk: item number 3. small businesses forum. impacts related to the covid-19 emergency, opportunity for business leaders and community service providers to present on economic response to the covid-19 local emergency and provide recommendations for recovery. discussion and possible action item, presenters are carlos solorzano, mark trim -- please mute yourselves. >> okay. >> clerk: wait. not done. sorry. there's feedback. everyone who is not muted, please mute yourselves. presenters are carlos solorzano, northern regional chair, hispanic chambers of commerce. mark quinn, adviser and former

san francisco small business administration district director. laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. jen dasilva, executive committee chair of freelance economic development alliance. and founder and executive director of start small think big. and rodney fong, president and c.e.o. of san francisco chamber of commerce. >> okay. today we have invited a number of business leaders and community service providers to provide us with their perspective on the economic response to the local emergency. as we head into the second month of sheltering in place, it's imperative that we hear from these groups and businesses themselves and put in perspectives to inform recommendations of the recovery effort. we know that there's not going to be a quick fix for turning the economy around. that's the unfortunate reality. but we do know that the economy

will come back and that any effort to support our small businesseses should be developed with their voices and diverse experiences in mind. for that reason, we've invited everyone. we want to hear what you have to say. we're particularly encouraging members of the public to call in and provide their input and voices. we received a number of emails. so with that i'd like to introduce carlos solorzano, north region chair for hispanic chamber of commerce of san francisco to kick off our discussion. welcome, carlos. you should unmute yourself, carlos, if you're muted. >> hello.

can you hear me now? thank you very much for the city, the mayor, the small business. i'm the c.e.o. of the hispanic chambers of conference of san francisco. and the chambers are the american, the american caribbean. also the chair for the california hispanic chamber and northern region. i'm proud to be part of the economic task force. which is something that's really important. this is my third meeting today. the main reason is because we believe, as all of you, that every latino professional and every professional should be morally obligated to support the community. thank you. the main concerns that we've been having are several. one, although there's been opportunities for loans, there's

been opportunities for access to small capital, they have been really not enough to support a small business, especially the independent contractors or independent consultant or small businesses that are not -- that doesn't offer tangibles. they offer services like tax preparers, like real estate, like immigration consultants, like business consultants. so our concern has been that it hasn't been that much. the other concern is within the community. there's really no -- what i do want to express in between them that, i thank the office for the workforce development -- because they are making an effort. but we still need more in terms of communication through the spanish-speaking and for the other minority communities. you know, the mission is very

diverse. we have asian parts, we have american, we have latinos, we have african-americans. it's a good conglomerate. the point on is that with all of the efforts that they're doing, we need to make extra support for small businesses. that's why i was happy when the small business commission invited us to participate in this, because, you know, when you don't have presence, it's like somebody once told me, if you're not sitting at the table, -- that is because, you know -- that's what's been happening for us. you know, i know that the supervisors have a lot of good intentions, urn. but a lot of times you need to do more than good intentions, especially with the small business community. people forget that we're part of the community. people forget that we need to advocate and get together. people forget that we need to make a plan for having a

community for the local stores, support the local stores. we know that -- the taxes and the registration. that is all good things. but if we don't have access to the money, you know, and just right now a little while ago, i have one of my members, who was one of the first moving companies, latino-owned, he said, carlos, i've been applying for this. i applied for the emergency loan. i applied for the personal protective equipment. what happened with that? well, thank you for your interest. at this point you have not been selected. when you heard that one, two, three, four times what do you do? or the hispanic chamber joined with the california hispanic. they do not have enough people. so we join them and to help them, to guide them with that.

and so we're becoming a certified with the small business development. since we were to guide them, the commune sayings is really -- communication is really important. i do want to commend the san francisco chamber, the filipino-american chamber, the african-american chamber. and all of you for doing the work you're doing. but we need to have more communication. we need to have more access to information and access to the capital, access to the money. i know that now it's a lottery because, of course, the applications. so much money. we've been attending meetings. but to promote that, it's very important. that it's there right away. not when the money has been gone, not when the applications are gone. so for us, you know, thinking about that, being part of an obligation for us, the moral

obligation. being a part of the task force. thank you for the small business commission. i do want to give kudos to you guys. i have worked with william, i have worked with miriam. i have worked with you. you know, it's really important that this is the time. because the new normal is -- it's nothing. and it will not be part of the old normal. you know, if we don't work united, if we don't communicate and provide support with the economic support, we don't provide information, you know, help -- remember thinking about the small business they are landlords, they want to rent rooms, they want to rent. so many things that we can do together. it is very, very important that we work. i cannot stress it enough. work together. be safe. my time is coming up. i do want to thank you all. we're available. we're processing information. like i said we thank you guy,

the small business commission. excellent work. i know you'll keep doing better. we have a lot of work to do. the mayor,. >> commissioner haney: -- the mayor, let's keep going. it's important. i wanted to expression the positive that we have. the positive energy of our people. the positive energy of san francisco. that's who we are. that's what we need to do together. thank you. >> thank you. commissioners, do we have any questions? all right. a reminder, commissioner, i'll recognize you. a reminder, commissioner, if you could put your name in chat so that i can all in order. commissioner yekutiel? >> hi, carlos. it's manny. how are you doing?

my question for you is whether or not you're hearing from your members, if you think that the mission and specifically latin-owned small businesses are accessing and receiving less funds than maybe other parts of the city and other communities? and if so, why do you think that might be? >> okay. first of all, manny, i had -- you're a new commissioner. congratulations. you represent us well with all of the businesses, especially with your small business. i want to give kudos to you in that direction. yes, the latino community, i use the term latino. i'm sorry. but the latinos, you know, we still need to have that access. we need to have the information. we're not getting enough of that. because by the time we find the information, it's already done and gone. okay. so that's the problem we have. i urge you and all of the

commissioners to make sure that -- there's something with money available, by the time it gets to the latino community or to the minority communities, it's already done and gone. you know, so it's not really original. we have a lot of young people with small businesses in the mission district, right where you are, right in valencia. all of the small businesses that need help, okay. we need to get the support and the access as fast as we can to them. because by the time they come out, it's already done and gone. like i said. so, yes, we do need the help. we do need the communication. >> great. commissioner ortiz-cartagena. >> thank you. thank you, carlos for your time. thank you for your feedback. thank you for highlighting the issues that our latino communities are facing, not only in the mission, the region, the state and nationwide.

i want to concur and say, yes, all of the resources typically evaporate by the time they hit the latino community. wondering, carlos, what are your suggestions, what we can do as a commission to make sure the information gets at the same time to the latino community. and also in our language. because so much of the information, the applications come out in spanish and then there's the capacity issue. even if they get the information on time, if they don't understand it, what's the point. >> yeah. thank you, commissioner ortiz. thank you yekutiel. i forgot sometime there. so excited about being part of this. you're in the superviseory position, i need you to treat you with the praise you deserve. one of the things that happens is this. there's a budget. i don't know if you could reach out. i know we're talking about the

hispanic chamber of commerce. everything we do receive with marianne and regina, everything that we receive we right away put it on. the communities that don't have access to records, the wi-fi, the internet or they're not savvy enough for that. so once you have that, it's important that we have the sense of communication through the app all of those that are reaching out to us. more than happy to help, if you need it in spanish, i know that you translate over there into spanish. but also needs to be connecting with them. i know you do a good job on that, because i see you in the mission district walking around. you know how we have suffered. you know how many businesses they have closed already in the mission. and valencia. and with this new abnormal normal with covid-19, we're losing more of that. what can we do?

we need to get your communication right away and have it that we can understand it. and we need to reach out from the city. recreations with creative ideas. all of those people -- we need to reach out directly to them, not just in general. okay. more than happy the hispanic chamber of commerce in san francisco, continue providing, promoting and supporting everything that you do, both communication that's power. when you do it and you do it fast, you allow our communities to join and get more support. >> okay. carlos, we are out of time. but i'm going to extend the time a little bit. because i did have one quick question for you. you mentioned the laurie. in expect to the resiliency fund or is that -- were you talking

about some sort of federal aid? >> well, you know, in part it's the fund. so are the other ones. you need to be -- we don't need to have -- we need to have equal access. we don't have need to have a fair access. we need to have equal access. okay. >> let me -- i'm sorry. just because we're short on time. but on the resiliency fund, do you -- do you think a lottery is the best approach to that or would you recommend a different approach? >> well, you know, it would be great if it could be awarded equitably. some money for this, for this, for this. it's not going to work that way. why? because the more savvy, they'll be moving fast on in that direction. if you do a lottery with all of them, at least -- maybe you get the same. maybe you get one from each one.

you know, it's a little bit closer solution for the time being, until we find something better. >> certainly my feedback on, that we should make sure there are funds available in each and every tier, you know, to break up the fund into smaller pieces. we'll have to continue that conversation later. and i may follow up and reach out to you later as well. because that's an important issue. and i want to make sure that the city gets it right. and that the commission supports you and the hispanic chamber and your mission. we're honored to have you here today. thank you. >> thank you, carlos. >> thank you very, very much all of you. thank you for the good work. i get back to my other meeting. have a good day. >> bye. >> all right. thank you. >> bye, everybody. >> now i'd like to introduce mark quinn, adviser to cameo and former san francisco small business administration district director. welcome, mark. >> thank you.

am i live here? i want to make sure my sound. everybody mutes and unmutes. first off, nice to hear from my friend carlos. i can't compete with his passion. but it's always good to hear from him. i wanted to cover a few things. a brief intro from my background. i've been with the city -- in the city of san francisco as a district director of s.b.a. since the late '80s. in the last couple of years, i've been working with cameo, which is a california association for microenterprise opportunity, which is really the umbrella for the network of microlenders and technical assistance providers, who are in the community throughout california, but in san francisco we have a real rich mix of technical assistance providers, microlenders and other ways in which small businesses can get assistance. so i wanted to do two things. one, briefly talk about the experience that we have -- i had seen while i was at s.b.a.,

during other downturns, the great recession and other downturns and disasters. how the city -- what the experiences were and what the responses were that were working. and a couple of suggestions about to consider in this current situation, which is unique and beyond anything that we have experienced in the city before. so as i said, i think i've been around s.b.a. and in san francisco for a long time. and a number of the things, particularly that we saw in the last great recession, really affected small businesses was the real loss of a lot of the microbusinesses, that really were already challenged in a lot of ways running their businesses. san francisco has a lot of real great assets, but it's an expensive place to do business. a lot of tiny businesses are really -- always on the edge of being able to stay active and successful in san francisco, because the margins are pretty

small. and the costs are pretty high. on a variety of levels. some of it is the market, some of it is the city. but the combination really has always given me the sense that small business people are just remarkable. and those of you who are commissioners, that are small business people, it's remarkable that you get to be able to do what you do, as successfully as you do, given the challenges that you have to work in san francisco. so a lot of those businesses were particularly challenged. what we also saw, s.b.a. -- the largest type of business that s.b.a. makes loans to are restaurants, in terms of the number of businesses that actually s.b.a. lends to, for a lot of reasons that totally make sense. they're riskier from a bank's point of view. they're successful and they do well. but there's a real volatile market and it's a challenge for businesses. a lot of restaurants are ones that we saw particularly in the neighborhoods that were challenged, when the great recession happened, and they had to come back from a really tough

time. the other part of this was really the -- particular impact on neighborhood corridor businesses. some of the businesses in the neighborhood corridor, they were providing retail service, particularly challenged because while their markets changed, their rents did not. so many of those businesses really had a real tough time recovering. so i think that those are things that we saw ten years ago or more. and we're going to see those even in a greater degree going forward from this point in time. a couple of things that i would suggest to kind of keep in mind, as commissioners and as a city, number one is really to recognize and rely on the network of technical assistance and microfinance organizations in the city. there's a tremendous number of organizations that do great work in san francisco. and i always really look at those organizations, those

non-profit organization as really backbone of microfinance and the success for tiny businesses. i think one of the things that everyone should realize is that the city both supports directly and then also sees the motivation of getting federal support, it's something that's really important piece to be able to continue to rely on. market to those people, make sure that the city, small business community knows about them. and make sure that everybody takes advantage of that network. it's a broad network. it's multi-ethnic, it covers a lot of the types of businesses in the city. san francisco is one of the few cities that has a commission, of course. one of the fewer cities that act the as the host for the small business development center, the only one in california that's the host for the small business development center. so we have unique assets in san francisco in and amongst the organizations. the first thing is really making sure that we lean on them to

provide the assistance that people need. the second is really considering things that you haven't done before. in particular on the microfinance side. one of the things that seeing a real challenge is, i've been working with a lot of organizations on s.b.a. programs, the paycheck protection program and economic injury disaster loan program. both of which have run into gigantic problems and part of the problem, especially with p.p.e., it's not very well targeted. it's not targeted to the microbusinesses, it's not targeted to neighborhood businesses. it's apparently targeted to the lakers and other big businesses. and we really do feel like that program, while it has some good intentions, really hasn't done the targeting. so that is something that we should learn from this, if you will. the stakes of that structure and recognize that a better targeted program is important. but the one thing that has been

brought up in the program, that's important to consider, the concept that we really have not really used the -- that's for loans. effectively grants. but the idea is that the city has had loan programs and has used loan programs, microloan perhaps, -- programs through a couple of good organizations in the city, and san francisco has really a great microlenders, working solutions, opportunity fund, all based here in san francisco. all are organizations that really could use additional capital to be able to expand what they do. but the one part that hasn't been done is really using what -- what is used in the p.p.p.p. discussion is forgivable loans. if it's a targeted loan, the ability to be able to use targeting and forgive the loans for businesses using those loans in a targeted way. it's to leverage the organizations to be able to do those programs through that.

and i recognize the challenges, the economic challenges that all cities have. the idea of trying to find ways to really deal with those tiniest of businesses, particularly the businesses who get turned down by p.p.p. and san francisco businesses, that are not eligible for s.b.a. loans, particularly with issues -- whether documented individuals, entrepreneur is one that does not have a green card, so they'll not get an s.b.a. loan, because of that. that's a market that we should recognize is a market that the state can reach, whereas the feds cannot. i think that's an important piece. really it's -- non-profits and using forgivable lending is a means to do that. and the last -- the third piece is really recognizing the highest risk is the neighborhood businesses in retail locations, where rents, prior to covid-19, were already challenging for

businesses and trying to figure out a way in which you can incent the landlords, if you will, craft the loans -- craft the rent cost that those businesses have into a debt situation, that allows the businesses to -- instead of having to pay rent, while still trying to keep their operations going and margins continue to be cut because the customer base has been challenged, to be able to turn some of that rent cost into debt, if the city can back the debt. essentially thinking of it as the way the s.b.a. approaches lending with banks to have, in this case, the landlords be able to allow a business to convert rent to debt and have the city back the debt in the same way that s.b.a. backs the debt through guarantee from banks. really be able to find a way to work with both the landlords and incent them to be able to allow

their tenants to stay and figure out a way the tenants can have their rent cost deferred until they are able to see the business get to a level that they can sustain those kind of costs. i think a couple of ways in which to think about that are important. because i think that the biggest challenge is going to be in the neighborhood. the rental costs are high. those are fixed costs. the variable costs of small businesses can handle is the fixed costs that will be a challenge. >> thank you, mark. commissioners, do we have any questions? commissioner yekutiel. >> surprise, i have a question. is it john mark or just mark? >> i go with either one. >> okay. my question -- is there any precedent for municipality

backing debt for something like this in the past? >> not that i know of. i haven't seen this kind of structure before. i think, though, the thing to keep in mind, though, is that if -- if a landlord is able to make the rent cost per se a potrero, six -- per se a period of time, a debt to the business and they can pay that back over a five-year period of time, it allows not to have the fixed costs right now and defer the fixed costs. the city would be looking to step in in the circumstances of a default of that loan. so basically convert your rental costs to a debt, to the business owner, and then defer those costs and allow that to be paid over a period of time. at the same time i know the city has talked about vacancy costs

to commercial space. this would be a way in which you can say to those businesses, or those landlords that have space that's vacant, a way in which we can keep the tenants in the occupiable spaces and not lose the tenants. i think from the neighborhood, i live in noe valley. the idea that we want to make sure that we don't lose the services, the neighborhood services that are really key to the character and the fabric of the neighborhoods. >> thank you. and this is commissioner manny before. >> you're fine. >> mark, not seeing any other commissioners and questions, a couple sort of brief observations. one, so i think i read that most small businesses, certainly this is more than true of my own, have less than a month of cash

reserves available to them. , in other words, if there's a downturn, they only have a runway of at most a month. i know in our case, it was about three, four days. so i guess the question i have is, you know, when we talked about deferment or we talk about loans to businesses, that they have to repay back, how do we imagine that that works and to the framework of a business that's already running on narrow margins to begin with. now you're introducing another debt that has to be serviced. do we -- you know, i guess my concern is, you know, if we're talk diagnose deferring something like rent, if it's just a month, deferring that over -- frame the payment out over two years or three years or four years, probably pretty workable. but if we're talking about, you know, six months, eight months,

a long period of -- longer peri. it eats further into the profit margins. i'm wondering what your thoughts are on that, as to how we can guide the city into making decisions that actually promote, not just getting through this period, but a sustainable aftermath. >> yeah. it's a good question. i think the challenge really there is that recognizing that from the landlords' point of view, you know, in many cases they have debts that they have to pay. they have fixed costs that they are responsible for. so i recognize there's really an ecosystem of players here. anything that is at the expense of one is really something that's a burden to the other. i also recognize from the city's point of view, being able to step in and subsidize those costs on a continuing basis, on a scale of san francisco, is probably fiscally not possible. so it really is the case, what we need to do is to try to have a balance of trying to figure

out a way in which we can do this. there's a variety of incentives, they can be positive or negative to landlords and to businesses. i generally feel that the negative incentives, to landlords, are probably not as valuable as positive ways in which we can say to a landlord, that you'll lose a tenant if you are not able to -- if you have to say that you can't pay the rent, you're going to be out. you lose a tenant. and the city will lose a service. you'd be better to take it as a deferred payment, owner financing of that tenant, rather than trying to lose the tenant and try to deal with it otherwise. i also recognize the fact that, a landlord has a set of financial obligation of their own. asking the commercial rae market to bear a little bit of the

burden of dealing with small businesses in the meantime. at the same time i feel that the city and i think they're doing that well, to make sure that everybody that's a small business in san francisco knows of and takes advantage of the federal programs out there. i know there's a lot of information and makes sure everyone knows about injury disaster loans and the p.p.p. program as well. making sure everybody gets access to the tools, external costs, that could be covered is part of it as well. but there's not an easy answer to this, because there's not -- city, landlords or small business person that can bear all of the costs themselves. >> >> commissioner haney:, this is steve -- this is steve adams. can i make a comment. >> briefly. >> i'll be very, very brief. mark, i want to thank you for the comments that you just made. in my new position here, working

for a landlord, you're right. it takes a village and not just federal aid. you said something that was very key in and it's something a lot of landlords need to do. i'm actually -- in situations where i can help finance, i am helping out those tenants with their business, because i don't want to loose them. because at the end of the day, i have to make my mortgage payments and everything else like everybody else. but i did find out that by actually helping our tenants, especially our small mom and pop tenants with their financial aid, instead of waiting on government aid, it's really, really been beneficial. and i really, really appreciate that comment you just made. that's it. >> great. all right. mark, we'd love to talk more. i'm sure we could ask you many more questions.

but unfortunately we are already over budget for time. so thank you for coming. we're honored to have you. and appreciate you spending your time with us today. >> best of luck. >> thank you. >> thanks, mark. >> okay. next, i'd like to introduce laurie thomas, executive director, golden gate restaurant association. go ahead, laurie. >> am i unmuted? >> you are. >> can you hear me? thank you for asking me to join you. and thank you to everybody out there. i'm going to pivot a little bit from my prepared remarks. as i listen to carlos and to mark, i think we want to maybe take a different direction with what i was going to talk about. just kick me off when i hit five minutes, okay. so first and foremost, i do want to second -- a thank you to the office of economic workforce development, the team and everybody there. and how closely they've been working with us in the business

community and the city in general to delay the gross receipts tax payments until next year, under $25 million in gross receipts, to delay the license fees, to help with the grants and the loans. we'll come back to something carlos said. and i can reassure him it's certainly nothing to do with hispanic or not. i didn't make the lottery for my small restaurant. it's just more demand than supply problem that we have. there's so much need. so i do want to reiterate from the restaurant perspective, that i think that the biggest spinning that occurred to me -- thing that occurred to me is communication. and so many of us are in financial stress, our restaurants, as you guys know, last year we were already -- we were already sick. we were already sick. and i'm just going to -- i'm just going to keep talking, but be right back. we're already sick and we fell 40% more closures than openings. in the city we now know there's

3600 food services, businesses per ted egan's number that he gave to the task force on friday. of that it's interesting to note that about 70% have revenues of less than $1.1 million. certainly not micro, but on the smaller side. i are reiterate what you just said, most of us, including me had less than a month of cash runway. we just weren't ready for the music to stop. most of us keep paying things from the cash flow and we thought we were in decent shape in february. and it turns out we weren't. and so to have to pay a payroll to furlough employees or cut back on payroll took all of the extra cash in the business and about 60,000 of a personal loan. i have two two small restaurants, in addition to being the e.d. of golden gate restaurant association. what we need is cash, cash, cash, cash. and it occurred to me that one

thing that hasn't been clearly communicated, that i just filed for, is part of the cares act, that we all really need to work to get the message out. it's a complicated part of the cares act. it's something called the employee retention credit or the e.r.c. and that's really something that, for whatever reason, has been overlooked. it's not a loan that's forgiven. it's a credit up to $5,000, up to 50% of what an employee earns over the period of that we're in, the disadvantaged period where we're partially, fully closed. the i.r.s. rules and a drop in revenue. we're clearly in the semiclosed or totally closed situation. and any revenues through the end of the year, in that period for employees under 100, you can get up to a 50% credit from our friends at the i.r.s. so payroll taxes that we've paid. it's interesting to note that this applies -- you can apply for a refund for anything paid

starting from pay dates of marc. so we finally did the math on that a couple of days ago. and i realized, wow, i could get some money back that's not earmarked for anything. it could be used to pay payables, things that, you know, we have to pay, mostly payables to get that going again. and then when we bring people back, we'll be able to keep counting up to $5,000. so up to somebody earning $10,000 in payroll for, you know, the next couple of quarters. and i think this is something we need to try to communicate. it's complicated. i spent a lot of time with mission local yesterday trying to explain it to them. it took me a while to understand it. but again i think it goes to what mark just said and carlos just said, there are some more government resources that we need to try to explain. and i'll be trying to do that to our membership as well. there are many things that we really need to reopen. i just want to reiterate the rent and lease issue is key.

many people will be in the position to file for bankruptcy, to break lease obligations, if landlords don't work with their tenants. some are, some aren't. we're continuing to try to help that. there are multiple concerns about reopening, who is going to help the people pay for the personal protective equipment. can we open up our outside spaces to allow for more capacity for restaurants? you know, what can we do in terms of forgiving maybe the gross receipts and payroll tax completely under a certain level. i'd opt for a $5 million or below, let's just forgive that. i completely understand the pain that we're in. our city has seen a drastic reduction in revenue. it's not like they don't want to do anything. it's that our hands are tied financially. so again i have lots of things i could talk to you more about that we need for our community. but right now we're anticipating only up to 80% of restaurants that don't come back, based on a

recent survey. and that's -- that's devastating. we employ 60,000 employees just in san francisco. >> thank you, laurie. we appreciate you coming down or i guess you're not coming down. >> yes. >> going to your office or wherever it is in your home. so do we have any commissioner questions? okay. we'll give it five seconds here. commissioner huie. >> hi, laurie. thank you so much for coming today. >> yep. >> i just had a quick question. going back to the delivery cap. i've gotten some questions from people in terms of how the delivery cap has been affecting their restaurant and their understanding of where that delivery cap is being -- however

the delivery companies are i guess executing or implementing this cap. so what i heard from somebody was that they were taking this out of their marketing. >> yes. i spoke to billy about that. >> so i did have a call well supervisor peskin and his aide the other day. there are a few in this instance, a situation where grubhub was applying the discount that the commission that we're capping at 50%, not to exceed 15% in this emergency ordinance. they were pulling that out of a marketing dollars. so this individual was disproportionately affected because they were allocating that and cutting out marketing. therefore, not driving consumers. that was the site he had good reviews on. so i know that there is

thability. -- there ability. there could be an emergency modification to that order to allow for a restaurant to pay for additional services, such as marketing, if they wanted to do that. we're also in discussions with the supervisor's office regarding the more permanent legislation that's been introduced that will go through the normal 30-day process and all of that. so this is an ongoing thing. but we can take this offline. i did hear that. there could be something we could do to modify the existing ordinance in a specific way to address that problem. because that was not intended. most of my members are very positive about this change. this is -- this is enabled them to see significantly more dollars stay in their pocket, to try to offset the cost of staying open in a reduced take-out or to-go situation. >> okay. i would be happy to talk about this afterwards. >> and i have communicated commh

with this individual back and forth. i totally understand it. and the supervisor's office is aware of it. so we can certainly circle back and try to fix that. >> okay. >> we didn't want any bad, unintended consequences for sure. >> thank you. >> so, lawyery , before you go, one last question. you spoke earlier about the impact of -- i think we know now that unfortunately many restaurants just aren't going to survive. and you spoke -- or you mentioned lease obligations. >> yes. >> in some cases are, you know, pretty significant obligation. >> huge. >> right. and are guaranteed by the owner. i know i have lease obligations that are personally guaranteed. so what that means for the public is even if i declare bankruptcy, as a business, via

the personal guarantee, the landlord can pursue the tenant. so i guess the question i have for you is new york has a bill, 1932 that's currently in the works. you might have heard of it, that prohibits landlords from enforcing a personal liability provision against any commercial tenant impacted by covid-19. do you think that that is something the city should look at or the state should look at? do you think that would be helpful, you know, well that be constructive, mindful of commissioner adams' comments about, you know, landlord also having their own obligations. >> right. should i answer? >> yes. >> okay. so i was just made aware of that yesterday. my understanding is that senator wiener is considering taking up legislation at the state level

to address that. this would have to be a state type of a thing. i literally just heard about this yesterday afternoon. i do think that would be helpful. i do have calls from my friends in the real estate side of the world i'm sure wanting to talk about that. and i -- i think the problem, as we go forward and this is where, you know, maybe i can help. i have always hated hard-ball negotiation. the best outcome is where everybody takes a hair cut. we ask as we go forward, with all sorts of different things and i'll be advocating for this on the city task force, is everybody is going to have to realize that nobody is going to come out good in this if one side tries to take a disproportionate cut, if you will. and so we do have to recognize. some of these landlords. i spoke to someone on a call the other day, that's how she pays for her family, right. it's the rent that she gets. we have to be mindful of that. on the other hand, the personal

guarantee thing is terrifying. but even without personal guarantees for a business, such as mine, if i were to get out of, you know, millions of dollars in rent obligations. people say leases can be liabilities. you have to file a bankruptcy, which isn't going to help anything in the city. we want to try to educate everybody, like mark said, let's think of creative solutions. it never occurred to me to ask milord for financing. that's like a new thing. i just heard of. so i think where we as leaders are obligated and certainly with the e.r.c. and more elusive type of government programs, and to carlos' point, we have to figure out how do we explain this in a way that people that are completely tapped out can understand. >> okay. all right. laurie, thank you. as with everybody else, we'd love to talk to you longer. >> yeah. send me emails. i'm available. >> thank you. >> okay. bye-bye. >> grateful to have you here. okay. next up, i'd like to introduce

jenny dasilva, executive committee chair of the san francisco economic development and founder and director of start small think big. >> hi, thank you very much. i hope you can hear me okay? >> yes, we can hear you great. >> okay. great. thanks very much for having me. and for convening this meeting. as you said, i am the chair of the san francisco economic development alliance, which is a showers and -- consortium of 18 organizations, who all work in the small business and economic development space to support small businesses. and the executive director of start small think big, which is a non-profit organization that provides free legal, marketing support to entrepreneurs to help them build stronger small

businesses. about 97% of our small businesses are minority and women-owned. average business revenue is about $33,000, when at the come to us for support. so these are definitely the small businesses that are on the front lines, as we all know of this small business crisis. i think we saw in 2008, with the recession, and we're seeing it again, that the younger companies, the minority and women-owned businesses are certainly going to be the hardest hit. and in crisis like this. one of the things that mark had said and that laurie had said and i feel like it's not a competition about like what we

need most exactly, because there's so much need at this point, whether it's capital or technical assistance. that's the place that i'm coming from is, as a technical assistance provider. so what i see is that there is -- that there does seem to be a lot of capital. but the businesses that i work with, are not able to access that capital. ard part of that is structural. if with you just look at the p.p.p. loan process, how that process has unfolded.

i feel that's sort of demonstrated conclusively, you know, what happens to businesses, particularly smaller, typically minority-owned businesses that don't have technical assistance. and really sort of comprehensive individualized technical assistance. there are obviously structural problems with that program, you know, banks prioritizing loans to businesses, that have substantial payrolls, large loan applications, which obviously puts smaller businesses at a significant disadvantage. but then there's the process itself, the larger businesses lean on their relationships with banks, law firms. [ please stand by ]

>> this new age of creative business will take over the

market share and i think technical assistance is really going to be facilitate that pivot and therefore, it will be more crucial than ever and so technical assistance is going to include lots of things. there's the sort of traditional financial support and i think really providing support for businesses to increase their digital capacity is going to be key in returning -- a key to returning didn't having an ability to pivot as needed at a bare minimum. that's digital platforms helping to communicate and engage with platforms and even when you're on pause, keeping alliance and allowing you to scale up when that time is right because there's a lot of back and forth there.

>> we have time for underquestion and we're running behind schedule and i'll recommend question huey.

>> i know they're looking at the same conversation with started with with the hiss panic chamber in terms of looking at language, and community access. things are translated but they're not necessarily living within those communities and not the cultural context of those communities. i guess it's maybe not so much a question, but maybe kind of like to ask to see if that is part of your structure and if there's a possibility of growing that more

into the structure and i think the technical portion of things will be huge and hopefully as the city can figure out it's funding portions, but maybe there might be some support or something available for that, as well. >> yes, i mean, i think the point that you make about there being a difference between translating services and making services -- and delivering services within and from a community in native languages, where the services are organ quicklquickly deliveredorganicaa critical point and one that has to be remembered as programs are being delivered and as new programs are created and that is

a very -- those two things are very different. if you translate a program or you translate a service and you have an organic program that lives within and is from the different communities, those are two very separate things. >> the san francisco chamber of commerce. >> hi, everyone, nice to be in the same room for everybody. and yes, thank you for this opportunity and we are all paying good attention to what's going on. i want to share with you quickly, if you don't know the chamber of commerce, 0 80% of

membership is made of o up small businesses and we are trying to fight for small business owners.

>> joining me is carmen chu, rudy gonzalez and we have a task force of 80 people which seems like a lot but considering how many different sectors, not just business, nonprofit, trades, transportation and that's a pretty small group and that group, the task force will start out into very specific sector-related conversations and so, we want to ma make sure everyone will give their input. the three main buckets, policy areas of the task force are retention of existing businesses and jobs in san francisco. and so important to hang on to the one we have. the second is the focus on a vulnerable population and that may be different than we thought before and that could be people reliabilitily laid off or furloughed and e were wan we wae

sure we're creating jobs for them and then economic development and are there opportunities moving forward and other large cities to be the leader in the clean management in movement and science and technology that helps post covid life. i think we're in a great position in the bay area and maybe better than others to attack that and turn that into an industry creating jobs for us ultimately. people talked about a v-shape recovery or l-shape recovery and what we have to be careful of with the health decisions is that we try to avoid a w-shaped recovery where we open up and hey, we're back open for business and the consumer confidence is not there yet or worse yet, we have a second wave of an outbreak that sets us back. we all know as operators here, that even though we've closed for seven weeks, it will take capital to get back up and different things off and we'll have to rehire and we have to

fix these things. it's going to take money to do that. to the w point, we may have one good spot to do this and we want to do it right and at the right time so we don't have a false start. two things i want to share with you that maybe are overlooked from the business perspective, but that is the public schools and the private school systems. and so important for the business community to get fully functional that our public schools have to be reopened with the same kind of confidence that the parents can send their kids off to school and then feel confident that they can get back to work, even if that means staying at home at work but i want to put out that school is so important. by the way, 38% of the working force in america are parents and provide some sort of childcare, relying on senior care and parental care and it goes way up.

a lot of this comes done to land use and we need to be fully aware land use will control a lot of our future. retailers may begin to think about how many people they allow

in a boutique store and reservation-only or appointment only and we used to see art galleries with appointment early if we thought that was way fancy and that might be the way of the world going forward. swift shifts may come back around, using san francisco as more of a 24-hour city is viable and i've felt guilty when i've seen big buildingings and we have a crunch forward land use and they're climbing on top for more space and we are not maximizing our square footage. lastly, i think so important is the emphasis that all of us in the business community that we need to put on the internet and expansion of equitable broadband service and many likely, many of us will be working from home or wherever two or three days a week. from an equitable point of view,

so many, we live outside of san francisco and it's important, i think, that be considered bay-area wide. speaking in the bay area, i was encouraged by the shelter-in-place, when we did that to see all of our nine counties work together and i hope this is an opportunity or a breaking point where all of our counties come together to talk about transit and talk about housing, all the way across the bay area and not just in san francisco and that starts a bay area conversation. i'll stop there and just to let you know that cut-outs from the information on the one san francisco.org site. and give me a call rdfong@sfchamber.org and we'll let you know how we can make this a better city. >> do we have any commissioner questions? commissioner kubia.

>> hi. i've done a full interview with you, i know you're one of the shares of the economic recovery task force is thank you for fighting for small business on that task force, which is awesome and i'm a little concerned about the timeline of the task force. from what i read, the final report is due to be submitted to the mayor's office in october when, of course, the bleeding is happening right now in such a big way and if we're going to take decisive action to help small businesses, it needs to be done now. so my question tow to you, do yu feel there's an opportunity to book long-term is also short-term quick changes to help small businesses who only have a couple of weeks left of runway. >> absolutely, mannc. i don'y.i don't think this is au

hand over, but i think this is a google doc that just flows and the board of supervisors, in my opinion, should have access to this breathing plan, no and i dt think this is something that we script every single play, no matter what. this is a playbook where what if this happens, and what if that doesn't happen and we impart this solution? so maybe the first five, six things are scripted and it should be a play list to plural the cost benefit when the time is right. i believe it needs to be brought to the attention to the mayor and board of supervisors and the public. >> thank you. >> so, rodney, you know, something that has come up for me and somewhat relevant to

manny's point and a degree of uncertainty about when they're going to reopen and under what conditions or criteria. do you think that the task force is going to be examining that part of recovery as to -- the dry tarcriteria for opening thes of businesses and in order to open, what sort of requirements might they are to make? what i'm hearing from a lot of small business owners is a lot of trepidation around the planning portion of this and how to get ready to come back. >> i know. it's so hard, and hiring back you would like to have a little bit of notice. so i think there's some things that are out of our control, the

best we can be prepared, when we get that green light go and i think the mayor has done a great job listening to health advice. at a certain point, we have to listen to economic advice. at a certain point, when the time is right. and one advantage of maybe us being conservative about it is there are many states and countries that are ahead of us and if you set up a google alert, economic recovery, there's all kinds of things coming in and people to some degree, maybe foolishly ahead of us, but i want to watch that and to see what things work well for them and what mistakes and failures they're making so we don't step on the same pile. the best we can do is try to be prepared is cue up some things. to your point, we had a directive yesterday that loosened up construction and i think that's important, that the governor just really is trying to careful about what to unleash

when things open back up. >> yes, and you know, i share your thoughts that all leaders have done a great job and we're fortunate being here in san francisco and i think we've navigated this very choppy water as best as we can. i think i want to commend the small business community many are committed to staying closed because they support the public's interest in keeping everybody safe. it's become a bit strife to sayy we're all in this together but

it's true and genuine how much everyone has sacrificed to make sure that we keep everybody safe and how much folks like yourself are contributing towards making sure that we get to the other side. so thank you for your contributions on the task force. >> i wish we could bottle that sentiment that people are closing for the right reasons, for their employees, neighbors and it's hard these days to capture that, but we're going to need to take care of each and look out for each other on the rebound. so i don't know how you bottle that, but that is good stuff. >> so if you can, if you're schedule allows, stick around and we'll open up the questioning to all of the presenters and we have a cue from the commissioners here. so commissioners. >> hi, everyone. thanks to our last speakers and i have a question for director

fong, if you have gotten a sense from the task force that they are already lining up, kind of prioritization of which businesses can reopen when and i think we have touched on it briefly, but i know a lot of people who -- a lot of businesses subject to the last supplemental, the six supplemental that installed a business curfew for apms are wondering if that's something that the city is discussing and lifting or adjusting or if we're talking about going the opposite direction and enforcing more types of curfews. >> yeah. to tate date, we haven't been pf those conversations, but i think we should be and i think we should be thinking about what is semiessential and what types of businesses have procedures in

place, like a hair-cutter. cosmetology has state regulated health certificate and so whenever i think there's that level of already some oversight in regulations, we should consider letting those be some of the first to come back out, worth secon.i'm not a health exl defer to safety first, really. >> well said. any other commission comments or questions to any of our presenters? commissioner adams, i know you're on the phone and i just want to make sure you have an opportunity to ask any questions.

they are thinking about helping businesses rebuild and just a closing thought, something i'm thinking about for myself, as we look at the next phase, we talked a lot about recovery and as jenny mentioned during her comments and the need to pivot and rodney mentioned about

looking at different businesses and how they're going to have to sort of restructure their operations, i really think that we're not looking at recovery, we're looking at rebuilding and i think rebuilding and the right word for what we're doing here, because i don't think we're going to recover to where we were before. i think we're building something new. and while that is extremely challenging and difficult for many businesses, my own included, we're in full scale collapse right now. so i'm right there with you.

this is changing as time goes by and this is a conversation to be continually checking in with each other and continuing to listen and make suggestions so that we can move forward in a positive manner. so with that, i will open it up for -- i guess next item or do we open it up for public comment, dominica?

>> it's public comment? >> do we have any public comment. >> operator: you have one question remaining. >> hello, commissioners. can you hear me? >> yes. >> great, i'm adam gordon and i own oxygen massage therapy and i employ 30 people at three locations and first of all, i want to thank you all for everything that's been said on this call so far. i see all of the support for our small business community on this commission and i just second so much of what was just said, in that this is an opportunity to rebuild and i want to really emphasize that we need relief when it comes to rent and tacking on four months of rent will be debilitating. i think it's really important to look at the nuance policies of the payroll protection act loans because they are allowed to be

used and there seems to be a talking point that i have received from a number of my landlords that i should use my ppe loan money to pay my rent. however, if i, too, i don't payl salary i was paying everyone, the loan will not be forgiven and a quarter of -- an annual quarter of my payroll is astronomical. i'm working on 5% margins and in 2019, my margins were negative. so to cover that out of my own cash reserves would be impossible. and the landlord is taking that government handout and asking for me to pay rent out of that is not reasonable and i wanted to make sure people were aware. there seems to be a talking point, because there are three locations and three landlords working with me on that. and another thing to emphasize, the massage therapy business, san francisco has subjected us

to some of the most intensive regulations due to our association with human trafficking and i have nothing to do with human trafficking. we've been written up as one of the leading therapeutic systems in the country and we have no reason to want to be associated with that. we're trying to disassociate ourselves. i've lost one location and i've seen the writing on the wall and i don't want to keep acquiring debt and there's been issues where i don't believe the landlord would be a great actor. however, the relocation costs, due to the regulations on my specific industry are between 10 and $20,000. and that comes from not only the individual health department regulations, which are the least of the cost, but the way that regulation requires a reference from the police department, the department of building inspection and specifically planning and the way that the ddi and planning work is so much

discretionary. the planner you're assigned to, costs can amass and a lot of the reasons the systems don't work because to dismantle them, it's like trying to fly a plane and if we rethink the way it suburbainterfaces with the busis community and to update them to the most modern standards, this would be the time, thank you. >> in public comment, there's just a reminder that this is public comment for item number 3, so comments should be specific to this item. thank you. >> operator: you have two questions remaining. >> go ahead, commenter.

>> what adam just said, i agree with everything. small businesses are getting zero support and any business under 25 employees, zero support and my application has been with my pp has been for two weeks, nothing. i don't think we're going to get help. you're going to see a ghost town all over san francisco and big banks have completely scaled down on every single level.

i don't know what to do and adam doesn't know what to do and no one knows what to do and i would also like to be considered for the task force to represent the spa industry. so thank you so much and i hope we can get through this. >> thank you. >> operator: you have one question remaining. >> hi there. , there. i own a neighborhood bar in the mission district and i have three missions that i wanted to comment on. first, i would like to suggest that the business commission organize a break-out group for bars. i hear a lot of talk about restaurants and their challenges and i think bars have unique challenges that merit some thoughtful discussions. my next point is to echo

laurie's comment that we need cash. i've applied for all of the loans and grants i'm eligible for and i've heard nothing back, positive or negative. also, i would like some updates on the sf health interest-free loan that the city is offering and my final comment is regarding landlords. i think it's important in the discussion of landlords and leases to distinguish between types of landlords and some own one or two properties, but some landlords are really in the business of landlording and own multiple properties and maybe could afford to be a little more lenient or understanding and that may require some leadership from our government. thank you. >> next question. >> operator: you have zero questions remaining. >> we're going to give them just

30 seconds. >> the number is (888)463-4735 and 413-4030.

do we have any in the cue now? >> operator: ten. >> next speaker, please do. go. i think that was a typo, no one is left in the cue. >> that's weird. i'm getting a message from one commenter who said they are there but they're on silent. to wyou need to dial 10 to get o the cue. >> i'm a resident in the city, a

small-time business owner and i own and operate an apartment maintenance company and two mexican restaurants, one in hayes valley and i own a management apartment building in the tenderloin and i have over 70 employees full-time and more tenants and some of my employees run departments for me so there's some cross-over. my concern is the undocumented workers that we have, that work at the restaurants and in the maintenance company i always knew ther.i always knew a sharee workers were undocumented and using other people's credentials, but really i did not know to the extent of the problem until we shut things down and i really had to figure

out who was eligible for unemployment benefits and who was not. and you know, it turned out that almost everyone in the back of the house at the restaurants and a lot of guys in the maintenance company were not eligible for these benefits. they were not provided any stimulus relief money, even though many of them pay the taxes through tax i.d. numbers, in hopes when they gain citizenship and they were also left out by this administration's policy for the individual relief. and it seems clear that 75%, 80% of these small restaurants are not going to survive. i think they'll pull through and our restaurant down there in union square relies heavily on the tourist business and hotel occupancies and i'm not sure

that that business will come back to really guide us with the income that we need. we managed to keep what i thought was a reasonable reserve and the restaurant accounts, almost 80% of one month's revenue and nearly $100,000 of income from reserves in the business accounts. as soon as we shut down, i paid out all of the unpaid sick leave and advanced nearly 40 hours' sick leave to all of the employees hoping to get reimbursed from the workers and family first program.

these workers that work on the maintenance company with the guys that go out at night and they just don't have any resources and it will be the undocumented workers that suffer the most and i want to make sure they're putting together a plan take care of these people. and these people have been working for me more over a dozen years and many are even family members in many years. >> we have to move on. thank you for your comments. >> operator: you have four questions remaining. >> question: hi, this is steven

cornell and i would like to add one thing to the mission for the long-term recovery. in today's chronicle, there's a list for seniors that could linger for years and if i take two sentences, even when stay-at-home orders are relaxed and most people resume some semblance of everyday activities and seniors need to take extra precautions to avoid being exposed. this could mean no dining out, no public transportation, no travel and this could be out for a year or two until we have a vaccine. so this will affect a lot of our businesses that have a lot of seniors coming, maybe restaurants and that sort of thing and also it will affect our employee. s. can we employ people over 65? i see this was a whole other impact oaspect of our planning r

businesses, loans and everything else. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> you have four questions remaining. >> question: this is ben wineman. prin pai( inaudible).

(inaudible). >> operator: you have three questions remaining.

>> next speaker, you're up. >> question: hello, this is david, three generation family-business for 57 years. we're open still, so we're fortunate, but i would like what was said earlier about rebuilding, because we have to rebuild, too and how we rebuild is our custome customers and rer customers and what i notice in just the last few days, how customers aren't abiding by the rules and they are not wearing masks and everybody should know that and it's seeing the change in the last few days. i reached out to my inspector, the department of public health, to ask for some more signs, colourful and big signs that would be put in front and so

what i'm saying is, we're rebuilding and i'm getting a little bit ahead. thank you very much. >> operator: you have two questions remaining. >> question: hi. my name is sage and my partner and i own two dog grooming shops in san francisco and i would like to comment on behalf of all of the pet services in the city. it's a multimillion dollar

industry in san francisco and as you probably know, there's probably more dogs in the city thaunder the age of 12 and a lof people consider their pets their children. not only is it is vital industry but it's essential to pet owners and i feel like we've been sort of ignored in this whole conversation. i looked at the task force online and i did not see one representative for a pet service industry. i've asked to be a part of the task force and i want to ensure that at least somebody is on that task force speaking for the pet service industry and advocating for the millions and millions of pets in our city that are not getting the assistance they need right now.

we can make protocols and open safely. also, a dog, it's not like they just have a bad hair day like a human. they get matting and their hair is starting to pull and harm them and they have nails that are overgrown and they're getting ear infections and our customers are desperate for these services. and i want to make sure we're getting represented in this conversation that we can be a stage two business that opens and we want to open safely and we just want to be a huge part of the discussion. and until we can open, we need a way to get information and provide relief to these pet

owners. >> next caller. >> question: hi, i own a cafe and we responded when the initial shelt-in-place order was implemented and doo during the 16th of march, we moved our service to the doorway so no one comes inside and we were checking barriers to help customers and employees feel safe. and we're very, very fortunate that our cafe business is mostly

returns. and our wholesale is down over 80%. the ongoing concern that i want to bring up is that we've been applauded by customers and by other people for moving our ca

cafe. maybe we need to be more inclusive of the extraordinary measures that they have taken for people's safety and public's health. we're nervous one day a health inspector will come by and make us change our set-up, which is ideal and everybody feels great about and it's making people safer. >> people that called in with public comment, we appreciate all of the feedback and input. it's really important when you do that, it enables us to convey your concerns with policymakers and agencies.

with that, i'll open it up to commissioner discussion. do we have to make that a formal item, dominica. >> no. >> any commissioners have any comments? >> mariam here. i think this is good and i'm glad we created a forum to receive some input from different sectors and pick up on some trends. this is a big area that we need

to address and it insects with seniors and microbusinesses that are just, you know, one individual who intersects with another vulnerable population and they're falling through the cracks. i think getting more info out on that employee retention credit is huge and then, another trend is the land use and planning codes and we definitely received some written public comment that also eluded to that, where a business needs to relocate, but

because there's a cu or a neighborhood corridor restriction for, you know, a franchisee, like a formula retail franchisee which could still be a small business by a single owner, but land use, we need to ask if there's any suspensions to land use or planning codes at this time. i think that's something that i'm not sure that's been asked or that's happening and i would also like to ask where some of the federal back-stop recommendations that we made regarding commercial property owners or small property owners to be able to accommodate that rent freeze from tenants, so i'm curious where that conversation is, if anybody, my of my fellow

commissioners has an update on that. but those are some of the things i think we should bring back around. >> great, thank you, commissioners. i'm going to recognise the commissioners that spoke and i'm going to, as often the case, we go to a more sort of general discussion, but i want to recommend to the commissioners in the cue first. commissioner ortiz? >> thank you to all of our speakers, time and insight. every information is resource that you bring to the table helps us to disperse it among our constituents. and issu everyone in the publict is watching, making your suggestions known, we thank you because we couldn't do it without you. all of the minds and thoughts are needed in this crisis. and like all of my co-commissioners, one of the biggest things, liquidity,

liquidity, liquidity and we need money on the streets and from a cultural component, in the latino population, that's been the hardest hit with the virus in the city and obviously, we're the hardist hit with the affects and i'm part of the economic recovery task force and all of the data, self-proprietors are not mentioned. it has to be one employer or more and this is a sole proprietor, whether it's a contractor or even a small food service area that may be you have your kids working in the kitchen and it's kind of for free, while they're going to school and whatnot. this leaves the latino community, we've been very underserved regarding all of the of the programs, all of the resources and everything else. so we have toking cultural sensitive during this crisis and

all of the resources don't necessarily make it to the mission on time. and when they do reach out, they're not in our language and then it becomes a capacity issue where you have to handle somebody and walk them through this very culturally unfriendly process. so i commend or politicians. they acted quickly and they acted within their capacity and i think we need to fund more programs that exist to capacity and we should take the burden ourselves and lead the way as a city. and also, it's time to revisit the legislation. before this pandemic, our businesses had a weakened immune system with all of the ordinances and all of this legislation. the time is a new day and we need to start looking at stuff. we need to revisit. and we need to stop making it so cumbersome to start a business.

we need expediters to change their permits and zoning and whatever they need. we need to be helping businesses. >> thank you. commissioner hewing. >> i would like to thank all of our speakers today. this is an incredible meeting and i am so fortunate. i feel -- not saying i'm fortunate. i am saying we are so fortunate that we live in a stay with so many strong business leaders and it's been incredibly impressive with all of the thoughts coming together right now and i feel that we have the opportunity to be very innovative. one of the things that i wanted to just echo or speak about, i guess, was what one of the things in terms of recovery. i've gotten a lot of questions and i've heard a lot of this pointed out in this last piece

of discussion on really identifying businesses that have other oversight bodies and other types of organizations that can help them open up safely. i really like to push forward -- or i guess i would like to just add that exclamation point to add that the businesses sooner rather than later so that we can start getting things into a better position sooner. that's all. >> thank you. >> commissionecommissioners?

>> thank you to cynthia for leading the webinar and representing the small business commission with so much tact and so thank you, cynthia for that and for people who wrote in public comment and to our presenters, this has been a great meeting in a time of crisis. so i just put together some thoughts after speaking to a lot of small business owners and the groups i'm a part of and listening to this call and broke down b what i think might be the beginning -- i know this is kind of brain-storm time for proposals to submit to the economic recovery task force and just to work on. and so if you'll allow me, i want to go through them. the first are fees. and there are a lot of small businesses that have fees from before shelter-in-place started in march, that they owe the city

and. my thing is let's aim high and see what the city comes back with and ask for what we need and wit what the small business owners need and i want us to waive the fees that small business owners had before racking this up, which is weighing on their heads. the next thing is to waive registration fee for brick and mortars or any consumer-facing businesses for 2021. those fees have been pushed out until september but small business now is a $4,000 bill on it, now. and so that's money that will come out of my bank account at some point and consider waiving those. any application fees that make changes to physical space and make improvements.

we shall allow for flex use space city-wide and right now, flex retail is on the books but most commercial corridors do not allow it. we should expand it and expand formula retails from 11 shops to 51. a lot big bad businesses have a lot more than 51 location exposd that would allow new businesses in vacant spaces should they occur. funding, i propose one is a recovery fund, a fund to be used to reopen small businesses and this is not for ppe and sanitizer masks. i think that needs to be separate. a lot will need to purchase new inventories and new signage and

make improvements to the space in order to bring people in. whether it's financial support or a lease procurement portal to purchase the ppe sanitize and this ithese are businesses thatn out of money and at the very least give us a procurement so that we're not competing in china and in the state of new york for the same product. two more pieces, hdso, money should only be paid out to hdso being used and it should be -- i think it should be suspended for another year to three years until small businesses can get back on track.

i'm so glad and happy that the mayor has made the announcement to fak take over funds and givek to workers and i think that's magazinmagazinegreat of her. we need to suspend the program for another three years before we recover. a lot of people have demonstrated a lot of angst on renegotiating their leases to accommodate what will likely be a slow and long recovery and i think the city should help small business owners by providing free local services and all languages to help to renegotiate. i'll just end by saying, i think

time is so of the essence right now and so, i would like to ask if you are all amenable to these, maybe starting to circulate a working document that we can kind of agree on and finalize by the next commission meeting should we be allowed to have it. i think we need to anticipate potential departments having issues with some of these proposals and i would like to see with your permission, to ask the office of small business to schedule meetings with the individuals responsible for i fr approving these with dpw, fire, planning, oewd and maybe some from the mery mayoral staff andt be clear asking to schedule a meeting in four weeks so once we have this finalized, we can present it to them. >> great. commissioner, we're going to come back to you in a minute because i'll have a

recommendation for you. >> i have to take off, everybody, good talk. >> ok. thank you, commissioner suzunus. i want to make sure with is a quorum. >> yes. >> and so, i will make a couple of sort of brief comments here -- >> i need to jump in before you go because i didn't put my name in. >> yes, of course. >> first off, i just want to echo what my fellow commissioners just said, the speakers were great commissioner, everything you just said, i just think is awesome and i hear you. i want to thank our speakers.

i probably learned more from these speakers today and got some hope than i did from watching any media. and i like what rodney fung had to say between house advice and economic advice and opening up. and i do feel there's a pent-up demand out there right now and if we don't do something sooner than later, i'm nervous of what we may see and what may happen and that's it and i want to thank everybody who called in, the public comments. and this has been very, very, very good and very, very informative. that's it. >> thank you. , steven. so first off, the first thing i want to say is many of the

public commenters expressed a little bit of angst that their business type or their business industry wasn't highlighted or mentioned. and so i wanted to speak to that. the we have the small business commission and we represent all small business, not just restaurants, not just cafes or y particular small business. we representative bars and we also represent dentist offices.

commissioner, i'll come to you in a second. to briefly talk about some of the other things that were mentioned here, i'm deeply concerned about the impact of personal guarantees with so many of our businesses failing through no fault of their own and personal guarantees were designed to prevent reckless abusive and fraudulent behaviour and none of that is the case in the wake of covid-19. and so, i know new york has introduce the ed a law to try to

prevent landlords from exercising pertinenexercising p. i am of the opinion that we need to expand that concept and needs to be extended to folks who are falling behind on loan payments and commercial lending agreements 1. we shouldn't see business owners using their life savings to make banks whole because of something that affected all of the of us. i feel strongly about that and i want to make sure that doesn't get lost in the mix because that is something that will be very relevant, particularly with respect to the ability of the business owners to reopen a business again in their lives. if we knock them all the way back to losing every last thing

they own, many won't be in a position to rebuild and deploy the expertise that they've gained over many years of being in business. so i want to make sure we pay attention to that. something that came up a lot is the issue of access from a cultural perspective, from weather due to language issues or just being, you know, in a place where you're familiar with how the process works and there's a lot of people that are left out of the current aid process. and one thing i did want to mention, there was an article in the chronicle this morning. there's a new group that's come on board called -- i forget what k stands for, but you can search for it in the chronicle. they are a joint partnership with a law firm called morrison

and forester and berkley law students and they are providing free legal support for small business owners and i believe it's 25 employees or less. and i think that's important for people to be aware of, that there's a free service out there. and i just learned this reading it in the paper this morning, putting together a $1 billion punned to help small business which is magazine tides larger n anything available in the city. so keep an eye on that and as a commission, i think we need to think about what to do to integrate with that. i think bot commissioners talked about land-utilization flexibility and i agree

whole-heartedly and that's something that we need to make it easier for people to be in business and i think -- it's no secret to anybody that the planning and the dbi has become so labor intensive and we need to be a forceful advocate to make change so that we can engage in the building process. i think formula retail is something absolutely, you know, that we have to look at. you know, there's a lot of smaller chains that are getting lumped in with the burger kings of the world and we head to think about how that can be improved upon. the ppe, we're now seeing regulations come in, and they don't have a way to get it and i think that's an outrageous state of affairs.

why are we making it harder for small businesses to operate when the city can't even get ppe and you know, we heard mayor breed talk about shipments diverted but we're laying all of this expectation that a small corner store will deal with what the city cannot. i think we need to make sure as manny suggested, i agree whole-heartedly, some sort of portal or ability for them to access the supplies. and acso is absolutely something. so many businesses pay into this and i think many businesses don't understand and certainly members of the public don't understand that a lot of these funds never get used by the employee at all and eventually, they get subsumed into the

general fund. you're paying money and neither the worker or business gets any benefit and it increases the cost and expense of being in business and i think originally, that was crafted in a time we did not have the aca and we did not have -- we had a lot of workers that did not have access to healthcare. i'm not saying that aca has fixed all of that, but i am saying that there's something i agree with whole-heartedly, something is fundamentally broken and there is $130 million sitting in a fund that workers and business owners paid into, both, and it took executive action from the mayor for them to be able to get access to those funds. that's an outrageous state of

affairs when small businesses in the crisis that it's been long before the coronavirus entered the picture. none of us has seen in this our lifetime and we need to rethink how some of this is structured. i agree with all of that. for the benefit of the public, we have the brown act. that means the small business commission, we cannot interact with each other outside of this and talk about agenda items outside of -- did i just get disconnected?

the purpose of this hearing, at least in my mind want was to gather information and to take that information and what i would recommend is that today, we were given a lot of

information and there's been a lot of written public comment that has been emailed to us, as well, which i have not had the chaps to read all of those emails yet and there was quite a bit of public comment. rather than making a motion today and recognising, manny, that you're correct, it's an urgent issue, but i think we need to take a little bit of time to digest all of the information that came in and as well as the written comment. what i think we should do is to try to set up another meeting as expeditiously as possible, recognising the urgency of the matter and that, of course, is not entirely up to us. there are scheduling issues and we ar have to get approval for special meetings. what i recommend is that we digest the information that came

in and then have a followup meeting where we could have staff collate is list and that's how we can assemble all of our suggestions and items in a way that doesn't violate the brown act and collate a list and gather that list up together and then we can talk about as a commission, we can talk about what our recommendations would be to the economic recovery task force and we can make our first set of recommendations. and i say first, because i'm imagining between now and october, we will have an ongoing series of recollections that we will make. we will get new information. we'll have new things that we want to respond to and we will have new ideas and we will hav have -- it will be a shifting

dynamic landscape and we'll want to respond to it. but as our first series of recommendations, i know that there are many on the economic recovery task force and there are many on the board of soup supervisors that are interested in were what very to say. i'm encouraging the fellow commissioners to take our time and move through this as quickly as possible. we need to digest what we've received today and work up through staff what we will discuss in our next hearing. >> that all sounds great, but i think the goal should be by the end of the next hearing, we have our list of recommendations.

>> i think a month is too much time before we provide those. >> i would completely agree. i would hope that hat th at thef the next hearing, there's a document that we can submit, as a letter to the economic recovery task force. >> can i empower you or can we empower you and the dominican regina based on what was said from the commissioners and word smith is in the next meeting. it may take time for them to collate and finalize it and get it ready. >> yes, i think that is a workable plan and i'm seeing notes here from dominica.

and feel free to make it on the channel if you have notes. >> i am sending a reminder to everyone to keep their -- to activate their voices on the meeting. >> ok. just to be clear, my proposal is that sharkky dominica and reggia take what has been said and come up with a draft of proposals that we can spend the next commission meeting, week of may 11th.

if you would be willing, i would love to have your involvement in collating that document and as vice president, i think she should have the ability to weigh in on whether she wants to participate in that document and if she chooses not to, then i would -- we can't restaff, ask if one of the other commissioners would like to participate and make a decision from there on the best way to move forward. >> i'm happy to do that. >> ok. well, then, is that a workable plan for generating a collated draft for us to review in the next meeting?

>> this is regina, yes. >> good. and we have a good plan, then. >> i confirm with my commissionecommissioners that tf the essence and no time to waste. everybody has made great points that we need to get on ground now. >> yeah, yeah. >> look, i think it's also important to highlight the work of the commission, which i think has been extraordinary.

we have been moving as quickly as we can and i think quite effectively and maybe punching quite above our weight and so, i agree with you that we need to move quickly and i wanted to let the public know that we have not been moving slowly up until now. and that the public should know that we are moving very aggressively and not being shy about advocating for small business on all levels that we can as much as the charter allows us to. >> hi, commissioner. i'm going to interrupt and remind everyone that we still

have commissioners' reports. also, remaining on the call are commissioner ortiz and huey. if we lose one more commissioner, then there won't be a quorum.

>> next item, please. >> item 4, commissioner reports, allowing president, vice president and commissioners to report on recent small business activities and to make announcements that are of interestininterest to the smalls community. >> commissioner ortiz. >> i wanted to report back to the latino recovery to address all of the issues impacting small businesses and the latter resources.

(inaudible). >> i wanted to comment on the

virus hitting the commission the hardest because that is a vulnerable community. and i do think that it's appropriate that we make sure that community gets enough attention to that we can establish some level of equity. so i appreciate your advocacy there.

>> this goes into the employees they furloughed and how much longer to last to get some hard data from all of the merchants on valencia so that we can provide that information where it's necessary, to get a good snapshot of how small businesses are going and we're calling it the merchant's reality check. and one thing to note is that valencia corridor is one of the busiest in the city with some of the highest rents, commercial rents in san francisco. and a huge number of consumer-facing small businesses and so, it is a good snapshot on

what's going on and so, i hope to be able to report on some of that data for the next one. obviously, we're still pushing people to th to complete that s. >> to you think that will be completed by the time of the next meeting? >> i do. >> i am wondering if the results will be available somewhere on line they can be digested by commission members prior to the meeting? >> absolutely. wile get it all done by next week. >> ok. that sounds good. any other commissioner reports? >> this is steve and i just want to say what everybody has been doing is great and these have

been hard times and the one thing i'm very optimistic about is we'll be able to open up so soon. we're going to do new items, aren't we, on the agenda here? i don't see that on the agenda. >> we didn't get it on the agenda. >> i just want to -- manny, i want to put out there, because i would love to be working with some of that, because the one thing that we really all have to talk about now is the opening up and that will be a big thing and i think some of the speakers today gave me some ideas and my head is just rolling right now with all sorts of crazy stuff with this, but i do think that they'll start slowly opening up and we need to be ready for that. we need to be sooner than later,

but i think week by week, you'll slowly see stuff and we really need to be on top of this. >> two thoughts about that and one is, as we start to open up, i've spoken with several business owners and there's a lot of -- even within specific segments, there's a lot of variance and i observatio spokeo different gym owners and they're both small businesses. you know, one, everybody can go to the gym whenever they want and the other is a very small gym that you can only go work out with the private trainer and there's only two people in at a time. and what i think, something we need to think about if we start to reopen up and whether the

commission is advocating for i is -- one concern i have is painting with a broad brush or doing one size fits all criteria. for example, looking at gyms, saying it would be upsettable founderstandable for policy maks to open up gyms last for health concerns.

we have to remember that it's not one size fits all and that concludes my report from what i've been hearing from the community. >> and you're absolutely correct. it's definitely not a one-size-fits all and that's what worries me, because they're going to do it as a one-size-fits all and we have to look at individuals. >> and i think that is what the commissioner was speaking to, which is that we've got to start with our ask and let them come back to with what's reasonable. with we havbut we have to be ase

chartered advocate this city deposit, we havgovernment, we hs aggressive as we can reasonably stand to be. >> by the way, we need to be loud about this, too, as commission, and as a whole. >> that's right. >> and we have to be loud and we have to be out there and make those phone calls and just be in their face on this one. >> commissioner becames, your leadership oveadams, yourleaders given us a perspective and any guidance you have on that front would be well received. >> that's why i'm here. you know, i'm working for a landlord now and i will tell you, it's different than a bank

and a lot of stuff that was even said earlier, you have to treat everybody different and it's just -- we're in a new world, folks. and it came quick. >> so thank you for talking about the survey and i think that that data will be extremely valuable. not only valuable for the commission, but it would also encourage that -- i know that

the valencia emergence encourages many and i think we need this data moving forward. and then i also want to express my appreciation to the commissioners for really talking about the nuance in terms of dealing with the opening and not one size fits all. so it will be very helpful to know that for us as offices we're communicating and working with small businesses to know that we have that support and so right now, it's an unofficial support, because there's no specific action on it, but that may be something to propose at a future date. so thank you.

>> great. well, certainly it's a challenging time to be on the small business commission for many of us that recently joined, my goodness. and what a crazy time. so, are there any more commissioner comments before we move on to the next item? any members of the public wanting to make a comment on item number 4? seeing none, public comment is closed. and next item, please. >> sf gov tv, show the business slide. >> we will end with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. and that the office of small business is the best place to get answers about doing business

in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, continue to reach out to the office of small business. next item. >> item 5, adjournment, action item. is there a motion? >> motion. >> i take my hat off to the generation before mine and you can ajourn the meeting, steve. >> motion to ajourn. [ laughter ] >> motion by commission adams to ajourn the meeting and seconded by commissioner utiele. (role call).

>> this motion passes 4-0 and meeting is adjourned at 1:39 p.m. [ ♪ ] >> thank you, earn. everyone. pho

as latinos we are unified in some ways and incredibly diverse in others and this exhibit really is an exploration of nuance in how we present those ideas.

♪ our debts are not for sale. >> a piece about sanctuary and how his whole family served in the army and it's a long family tradition and these people that look at us as foreigners, we have been here and we are part of america, you know, and we had to reinforce that. i have been cure rating here for about 18 year. we started with a table top, candle, flower es, and a picture and people reacted to that like it was the monna lisa. >> the most important tradition

as it relates to the show is idea of making offering. in traditional mexican alters, you see food, candy, drinks, cigarettes, the things that the person that the offerings where being made to can take with them into the next word, the next life. >> keeps u.s us connects to the people who have passed and because family is so important to us, that community dynamic makes it stick and makes it visible and it humanizes it and makes it present again. ♪ >> when i first started doing it back in '71, i wanted to do something with ritual, ceremony and history and you know i talked to my partner ross about the research and we opened and it hit a cord and people loved

it. >> i think the line between engaging everyone with our culture and appropriating it. i think it goes back to asking people to bring their visions of what it means to honor the dead, and so for us it's not asking us to make mexican altars if they are not mexican, it's really to share and expand our vision of what it means to honor the dead. >> people are very respectful. i can show you this year alone of people who call tol ask is it okay if we come, we are hawaii or asian or we are this. what should we wear? what do you recommend that we do? >> they say oh, you know, we want a four day of the dead and it's all hybrid in this country.

what has happened are paper cuts, it's so hybrid. it has spread to mexico from the bay area. we have influence on a lot of people, and i'm proud of it. >> a lot of tim times they don't represent we represent a lot of cultures with a lot of different perspectives and beliefs. >> i can see the city changes and it's scary. >> when we first started a lot of people freaked out thinking we were a cult and things like that, but we went out of our way to also make it educational through outreach and that is why we started doing the prosession in 1979. >> as someone who grew up

attending the yearly processions and who has seen them change incrementally every year into kind of what they are now, i feel in many ways that the cat is out of the bag and there is no putting the genie back into the bottle in how the wider public accesses the day of the dead. >> i have been through three different generations of children who were brought to the procession when they were very young that are now bringing their children or grandchildren. >> in the '80s, the processions were just kind of electric. families with their homemade visuals walking down the street in san francisco. service so much more intimate and personal and so much more rooted in kind of a family practice of a very strong cultural practice. it kind of is what it is now and

it has gone off in many different directions but i will always love the early days in the '80s where it was so intimate and son sofa millial. >> our goal is to rescue a part of the culture that was a part that we could invite others to join in there there by where we invite the person to come help us rescue rescue it also. that's what makes it unique. >> you have to know how to approach this changing situation, it's exhausting and i have seen how it has affected everybody. >> what's happening in mission and the relationship with the police, well it's relevant and it's relevant that people think

about it that day of the dead is not just sugar skulls and paper flowers and candles, but it's become a nondenominational tradition that people celebrate. >> our culture is about color and family and if that is not present in your life, there is just no meaning to it you know? >> we have artists as black and brown people that are in direct danger of the direct policies of the trump a administration and i think how each of the artists has responsibilitie responded ss interesting. the common you can find

out more information about this data and on our data tracker, on our online data sunny skies sf.org/covid-19 for full details. i want to just kind of update all of you on a few things and get to dr. colfax and some important things that definitely need to be discussed. first of all, this past monday dr. colfax and i had a -- monday was yesterday, right? it feels like monday every day, but yesterday dr. colfax and i, along with dr. susan phillips, had this great conversation

about what it would take to reopen, and we talked about the indicators and the hospitalizations and a number of other things and the various phases. it was a very good conversation, and i think it is needed. what we found from that conversation are, of course, a number of questions, and many questions centered around when will we will able to get child care open, summer camps, schools and other things centered around children because i know many parents are anxious to not just get a break from their children but to get back to work and to get their kids involved in activities, and i know kids are anxious to play with their friends, and so this friday at 11:30 i, along with bill ginsburg who is the director of park and rec and others will have a conversation around some of the options that we have

available and what you can expect for the future. it will center around opportunities mostly for the summer and transitioning kids into, you know, a place where we can allow in some cases some summer activities, and we will be able to speak to more details about that on friday and hopefully get to some of the questions that so many of the parents have. so we appreciate you all tuning in. we decided to cut back on some of the press conferences and really focus on the conversations with a lot of the leaders who are leading around public health, who are leading around support for children, youth and families, folks who are helping us to make the decisions about economic recovery as we move in our new normal of covid-19 this provides us with an incredible opportunity to really get to the heart of, you know, what is of

most concern to the people of san francisco and answer your questions so that you are able to make plans or arrangements as information is provided to you. so we know that it's been probably very challenging that we have not been able to provide you with specific dates or times around the things that you want to know the most, and as we have said before, this is a fluid situation and things can change at a moment's notice, but because most san franciscans have complied with the orders, people have been wearing their masks, socially distancing themselves, and again i say most people. i didn't say all people, but most people have complied, and because many people are taking this directive seriously, we have seen a decline in the curve, and that is something to be proud of, but our goal is to get rid of it entirely, and that's going to take continued

work. yesterday was the first day that shops were able to open for curbside pick-up, and some offering delivery. i stopped by green apple, a bookstore, in the inner sunset, and they have another location further out. i was so happy to buy a book. i just didn't know what to do with myself. it felt good to go out to the community and to support this incredible institution. this past friday i picked up dinner at the golden mira. i stopped by, you know, the garden center, and it just -- you know, to be able to support these businesses was really incredible, and i think that it's important -- i know that we are all sheltering in place, going out to run errands and do essential things, but here's an

incredible opportunity. we want to support our businesses, and this is a way that we can do that. so rather than making that next purchase on amazon, maybe consider finding a place in your community and trying to shop at the local stores that may have availability for pick-up and delivery. i am really -- i needed a cord, and so i made sure that i checked in with the local hardware store. they didn't have the cord at the hardware store that i called, but i found it at another place. so i like the idea of making sure that we are purchasing things from businesses in our city that are able to offer their services, but i think it's going to take a lot more effort so we can make sure that after we get through this hump those businesses are able to open they are not able to bring back their entire workforce. they still have to pay their

rent and bills. it's been a really challenging time, even though they are raising private money and we're putting public money together and we're trying to support our small business community, and there have been a number of other initiatives, it's not always reaching the people who need it the most because we still have our hair salons, our nail salons, our barber shops, our masseuse, people who do services that require direct contact with people, they are still not open, still not in business, and this is a really challenging time for so many people. so whatever we can do to support our local economy, our local businesses, i really want to strongly encourage you to think about supporting the businesses in your neighborhood and just maybe seeing what's available, going online and doing some research to see what's available to support small businesses in san francisco. another way that we are able to help some small businesses in

san francisco and help our seniors is through this great plates food program. and i'm really excited about this because we know that, first of all, when we first issued a -- before we issued a shelter-in-place for everyone, we specifically asked that vulnerable population, our seniors and those who have underlying health conditions, to stay home. and what we found, of course, you know, there are some seniors, for example, who qualify for calfresh, some concerns who qualify for meals and wheels and are lucky to have those opportunities, but there are a number of seniors who are just above that threshold. they may even own a home but are on a fixed income and can barely take care of themselves and take care of their home. and i do think it's important, regardless of whether or not you have the means to make sure that all of our seniors are taken care of.

and so this program is a program that partners seniors with local restaurants, and what we're able to do is provide three meals a day from local restaurants. so it not only helps support our seniors, it helps support our restaurants. and it provides a no-contact delivery. it makes it so easy for them, and i am so excited that along with all the other programs that are available, including the food bank, the san francisco -- food bank, meals on wheels and a number of other initiatives and people who are doing it on their own, the fact that we have even another program that will provide food to our seniors and also support our restaurants is really great and i want to thank governor gavin newsom for his support for this program. i want to talk a little bit about testing because i know that comes up. the great news is we've come a long way. the fact is, if you are a san

franciscan and you exhibit one symptom, you could have a cough, you could have a temperature, call 311 or go online to sfgov.org and sign up and you'll get sent to a testing center to be tested, any san franciscan. but we also will test any essential worker, whether you are a san francisco resident or not. if you're an essential worker in san francisco and you don't exhibit any symptoms because you're on the front line, whether you're selling groceries or driving muni or out there as a paramedic, those are the people who are in contact with folks on a daily basis, putting their lives on the line to provide us an essential service, so we wanted to make sure that you know that testing is available for you. we've expanded the number of sites, and in addition to a site in selma area, in the western

addition and bayview and a few other sites scattered throughout san francisco, we wanted to make it a lot easier for communities where we know testing is needed. we specifically announced a few mobile sites, including the mobile site in the tenderloin, a site in ocean avenue and the omi, the lakeview area, and another site in the bayview hunters point community, and the site in the bayview hunters point community, the testing will be over the course of a few days, specifically in hunters view. but anyone from the bayview is definitely welcome to receive a test. we did this in collaboration with a number of community-based organizations, similar to what was done in the mission, because we know that there are high rates of covid-19 in the bayview hunters point community, and we know that people need access to testing, and we also understand that sometimes they may not call

or they may not go online to figure out whether or not they should be tested. and we also want to make sure we detach the stigma associated with getting tested, and so on friday, myself as well as supervisor walton, we will be going to the bayview hunters point. we will be tested, and the goal is to show people how easy it is and to make sure that folks feel comfortable and they feel safe, that they can be tested whether they have insurance or not, whether they are documented or not. the more that people know they have access to testing and they feel comfortable when they exhibit a symptom or if they think they've been exposed, the better we'll be. and so our goal is to get to a certain level of testing in the city because it's gonna be critical to our ability to reopen. and that's why we want to make sure we set up these mobile

locations. we hit all of the neighborhoods and we make it easy for people to get tested, and this is another opportunity to do that. so with that, i just want to, again, thank all of you for your patience and your cooperation. we have come a long way, and i just want to appreciate how far we've come. there was a time where access to testing was very, very limited, and now we're at a place where we have expanded testing, and this is absolutely critical to reopening. there was a time when we were having discussions about requiring everyone to stay home, and now the pick-up and deliveries and other things are available. we're going to have a conversation, as i said, this friday about the options available for families because i know that there are so many parents who are anxious to figure out what is gonna happen for their kid this summer. we want to make sure that kids have, you know, a great

experience. it has been challenging and will continue to be, but it's important that we make sure that there are options available, and so our goal is to have an in-depth conversation on friday at 11:30, so i hope you will tune in, and with that, i know dr. colfax has an update of where we are as it relates to public health overall, as well as some information, the latest on laguna honda hospital, and so, again, thank you so much for your cooperation, and with that i'd like to introduce dr. grant colfax with the department of public health.

>> dr. grant colfax: good afternoon, everybody. i want to thank mayor breed for her leadership, and mayor was just a great experience to have that conversation with you yesterday on zoom, of course, about where we are headed and the phases of -- the potential phases of reopening and the key indicators we are going to be looking at going forward. so i'd really encourage people to watch that. it is available. it was recorded. i'll allude to a few of those points today, but if you really want more detail, please go to that conversation. and certainly we'll be sharing more information in the future as we move forward together. so as of today, as the mayor mentioned, there are 2179 san

francisco residents who have been confirmed with covid-19. sadly, 36 san franciscans have died from the disease, and again, my condolences to their family, friends and community. and as we move into a new phase of our response and recovery, i would like to thank you all for doing your part. everything that you have done has truly saved lives and slowed the spread of the coronavirus in our community. you have protected each other. you have protected your families, and you have protected your community. and most importantly, you have protected the populations that are most vulnerable to this virus, the populations over 60, people with co-morbid conditions who we know, both on our local data and from our national data, are unfortunately most likely to die from this disease.

today there are 62 patients with covid-19 hospitalized in san francisco across our nine health care hospital entities, and while this is an increase since yesterday, the curve has been remarkably flat for many weeks now and steadily declining since may 5. although, of course, and you've heard me say this many times, but it's -- i will continue to say it, this could change at any time, but we must acknowledge that big accomplishment that, again, all of us have made major contributions to. you have all been a part of this, and for this i thank you. and let's continue to flatten and push that curve down together. we are certainly making this measurable progress in our fight against coronavirus, and because of that, we are starting here locally under the mayor's

leadership and across the region with regard to the gradual process of reopening. yesterday we issued new health orders that allow curbside pick-up for most retailers in the city, and we are taking steps in this regard with caution as our focus on community health remains a top priority. we will need to watch, continue to watch for the effects of increased movements that this opening will bring. we know that before the shelter-in-place went into place, order went into place, the more we moved, the more the virus moved. and we are certainly hoping, based on the data, the science and the facts, that as we continue to take the precautions necessary, the masking, the

social distancing, the intense hygiene that i think we've all adapted to over these last few months, i don't know about you, but my hands are a little red from the washing, and i've used a lot of hand gel recently, but as we adapt, we are hoping that as we move more we will not see increased movement and transmission of the virus. and remember the virus has no timeline, and our new stay-at-home order reflects that reality. we are in the second inning of a long game, and most scientists expect that this long game is going to be with us for 18 to 24 months. so the new updated health order will allow for future expansion and the reopening of additional businesses provided, again, we continue to flatten and even see a decrease in that curve. and again, the health indicators need to continue to look good.

this new order doesn't have an expiration date so we can act with maximum flexibility and not be penned in, literally, by artificial deadlines. and i have hopes, and i think we should all have hope and good reason to believe, as i said, that if people continue to take precautions we will continue to make progress. but at the same time, if needed, we will dial back. if that curve starts to go up, if we start to see indications that the virus is spreading in the community at an alarming rate, if our intensive care unit numbers start to go up, the hospitalization numbers over all start to go up, we will need to take a step back and decrease our activity in our community. i hope that doesn't happen, and again, the more vigilant we are

in our preventive activities, the more likely it is that we will be able to make incremental but sustainable progress going forward. it will take resilience. it will require that we stay nimble, and it will require that we continue to monitor the evolving health situation, you know what i say here, using data, science and facts. so in terms of our reopening phases, and i think we have a slide up to show this, this is the focus of our steps will be aligning generally with the state's plan that you see on this slide. we are currently in stage 2(a), which is really, again, focusing on that allowing curbside pick-up and then having the manufacturing and supply chains

to support that curbside pick-up in place. so again, this is just the beginning, and over the next period of two to four weeks, we will continue to watch the data to see if we can enter into that next phase, the 2 (b) phase. again, if things go well, we would then be, over time, moving into stages 3 and ultimately into stage 4. but this is, again, an iterative process. it's going to take nimblism, and it's going to take a lot of vigilance on all of our parts. we are working locally with the economic recovery task force, the office of economic and workforce development, and the community -- the business community and other stakeholders to design smart ways, to design smart ways, ways that are informed, again, by the science, to help businesses come back

while protecting public health. these things can go and will go hand in hand. i look forward, we look forward to bringing the next steps together and will continue to provide updates in this regard. and again, we will continue to study these indicators over a two to four-week cycle, which will give us sufficient information to determine whether we can gradually open up into these next stages. so one of the key things we will be doing in this, the vital statistics, as it were, for this staging, is looking at the five indicators that i have mentioned before, but we have another visual for you to see here. as we move towards this reopening, the five indicators we are going to be looking at are cases, the number of

covid-19 cases, our hospital capacity, testing, contact tracing, and p.p.e., or personal protective equipment. the mayor mentioned these indicators earlier, and as i said at the beginning of my remarks, we had a very good conversation, along with dr. susan phillip, about how we will be determining and following these indicators as we go forward into these new phases. so again, i would encourage you to watch that session, and we will be coming back to these indicators during this next phase of reopening and onwards. many of these indicators are also represented on our data tracker, and so i would encourage you to follow along, if you haven't already, particularly that hospital curve that i continue to look at every day. i know many of you are doing

that. you can also look at our testing data. as the mayor mentioned, we have dramatically scaled up our testing over these past few weeks, and that information is, again, available on our website. so those are the slides, and i'm going to talk more specifically around testing in one of the most vulnerable populations in a setting in our health department, which is laguna honda hospital. and one of the most important testing expansions we have launched is to require universal testing of residents and staff at all skilled nursing facilities in san francisco, including, of course, the largest skilled nursing facility in the region, and one of the largest if not the largest in the nation, laguna honda hospital. i'd like to provide a progress report on how our universal

testing is going at laguna honda hospital, and we'll have final results next week on this. but we were -- as we initiated the universal testing order, laguna honda was the first skilled nursing facility in the city to begin universal testing, and that started on may 4. resident testing, so the people who live in the facility, the residents, resident testing is now complete, and staff testing will conclude next week. so far we have -- of the approximately 2500 staff and residents of the laguna honda, we have completed screening, the universal testing of 2,087 people. so just in this facility alone, over 2,000 people have been tested, screened if you will, tested on a routine basis

because they either live or work there. this testing allows the hospital to proactively protect residents and staff from exposure by identifying covid-19 cases among people without symptoms, and we know that many people have covid-19. they may not show symptoms, whether it's because they don't show symptoms at all during the course of the infection or whether they are in the early stages of covid-19 disease. as of yesterday, 718 residents and 1369 staff have completed the universal testing, and we've had just four positive results, two among staff and two among residents, as, again, a result of this universal testing. that is a less than 1%

positivity rate for -- in fact, to be very specific, i know i'm throwing out a lot of numbers today, but it's a 0.19% rate. that said, with increased testing at laguna honda, we do anticipate additional covid-19 cases. we know these institutions are highly vulnerable to infection with covid-19, and while we are being extremely vigilant, we know that it is likely that there will be more cases. the key thing is that we do as much as we can to prevent cases, to detect covid-19 cases when they are in the facility, either amongst staff or among residents, and then take aggressive action to limit the outbreak and, of course, care for both the staff and residents who are found to be infected. the people who have followed up -- who have tested positive,

excuse me, we have followed up with contact tracing and so far have tested additional residents and staff based on the possible exposure from these four cases. this past weekend that follow-up enabled us to small a outbreak in the south two neighborhood. these neighborhoods are historically been -- you may think of them as hospital wards. it's a neighborhood because these are long-term residents and certainly goes beyond sort of the traditional hospital ward, but it's an area of the hospital where residents live together and where staff work together. so we did identify a small outbreak on south two precisely because we implemented this universal testing, this universal screening process. we had found two cases there through the universal testing in

that neighborhood, and case investigation led us to test additional contacts as a result of that. this additional testing resulted in four positive cases in residents who had previously tested negative. so again, because of our vigilance and repeated testing, we were able to identify four positive cases of residents who had tested negative before. this is an example of the systems that we have put into place working in the way that they should and in the way that they must, enabling us to take action quickly and to move quickly in response to testing results. staff who test positive are immediately sent home to self-isolate and provided with supports. and residents who test positive are immediately transferred to the new dedicated covid-19 unit

at laguna honda where all best practices and best medical care is provided. all staff and residents who have tested positive, i'm thankful to say, are in good condition, and we have quarantined south two and continued to monitor, test and investigate contacts. so these new cases bring the total confirmed covid-19 cases to laguna honda to a total of 29. again, that's going all the way back to march 22. eleven residents and 18 staff. several of these cases have fully recovered, and i'm thankful to say that the rest remain in good condition. i'm also thankful that to date there have been no deaths from covid-19 at laguna honda hospital. and i'm really just so personally grateful to the residents and the staff at laguna honda who have worked

tirelessly to continue to contain the spread of covid-19. this universal testing, which will now become routine at laguna honda, a huge lift, something that took really a great amount of investment and time, and i'm just so grateful to the leadership at laguna honda and the staff there who are not only doing the work that they did so well before this pandemic but now being resilient, being flexible, being nimble and ensuring that they are protected -- they are continuing to take the best care for residents possible. i am proud of our work and really want to thank the ongoing collaboration with the cdc, the centers for disease control and prevention and the california department of public health. the improvements that we've made at laguna honda not only benefits the more than 700 residents of laguna honda and the workforce there, but we are also sharing what we learn with

other skilled nursing facilities across the city. in san francisco, approximately 40% of all skilled nursing facility patients and residents have been tested through universal testing to date. five facilities have completed universal testing. four are under way with our support, and the remainder are planned in the next coming weeks. so in conclusion, over the next weeks and months, we will continue to focus on vulnerable populations and expand universal testing to more congregate settings, including shelters. we will continue to focus on the five indicators that i and the mayor have emphasized. we will continue to work together with community businesses and other stakeholders across the region and coordinate with the state to

accomplish as much restoration of activity as we can. and we know that the coronavirus is still here. but we are going to find a way to protect each other and enter a new era for our city, for san francisco, for our community. we continue to rise to this occasion. and san francisco, i can't thank you enough for your dedication to the entire health of the entire community, and i look forward to moving forward together. thank you. >> good afternoon. the first questions are for dr. colfax. the first question is from mel baker, san francisco public press. when will san francisco residents and staff of all san francisco's nursing facilities be tested for coronavirus?

>> dr. grant colfax: so as i detailed in my remarks, this effort is going well. i don't have a specific end date for you, but i can tell you that with our health order and with the aggressive actions that we are taking and supporting in nursing homes across the city, i expect that it will be done soon. and again, this is an iterative process. it's not as though we do one round of universal screening or testing of all residents and staff. this is a process that will be ongoing because we, again, want to support the staff and respects in the nursing homes in early detection of covid-19 to prevent it from spreading through these communities. i would also add that the health department is supporting many of these institutions. they haven't had the technical expertise, the capacity to test residents, and as we enter this new normal, one of the key things we're working with them

to do with support and engagement of the state, is to make sure that they make the investments necessary so that routine testing becomes part of their model as they support the communities in their nursing homes. >> next question is from joshua sabotini, on testing at laguna honda, you mentioned there was an outbreak at south two but there was also an -- but was there also an outbreak in north four? >> so that was a prior situation which has been contained, and again, i think in that earlier outbreak one of the key things that we did was bring in our own infectious disease experts, experts from the state and the cdc who helped us provide the best techniques and monitoring efforts to contain the infection. that did contain the infection in that neighborhood, and so now we're using that evidence and

those guidelines to now mitigate the outbreak in this new neighborhood. and again, these lessons learned will be applied across nursing facilities, not only in san francisco but i expect across the state, if not across the nation. so this is hard work. it's challenging work, but as we expand our testing and our ability to care for people and detect the covid-19 virus early, i'm hopeful that we will be in a much better situation than we would have otherwise been. >> since the patients who tested positive are outside of the initial outbreak detected in south five, are you concerned about how widely the virus may have spread throughout the facility? >> dr. grant colfax: well, this is exactly why we tested all the residents and why we're testing all the residents and all the staff. so you heard, this is exactly why we issued a health order to require this testing and, you know, needed to make sure that we were following our own orders, which is why we started

with laguna honda. it's also a very large facility. you heard me say, you know, we found a relatively small number of patients and residents on -- i'm sorry, of staff and residents on that routine screening, but the system worked because we found a few and then that helped us focus our efforts in a specific neighborhood where we were able to detect more cases and take aggressive control actions, as well as ensuring that the residents who tested positive who were in good condition and might not have otherwise been detected get the best care possible. so you know, yes i'm concerned that we need to be vigilant and this vigilance is paying off in terms of ensuring that we're protecting the health of the residents and the health of the staff to the best of our ability based, again, on the data, signs and facts. >> the next question is from ron lynn, l.a. times. can you update us with the

percent of people testing positive for coronavirus in san francisco compared to the worst point? >> so i think if you go to our data tracker, you can see the percent of people testing positive in our system of care, and that percent that test positive varies depending on how testing is being scaled up, whether there may have been an outbreak at a facility or in a setting where there's likely to be more positives. what i think we really need to focus on in terms of i think the gist of the question is how do we know that we're doing better, that's really best reflected in the hospital data. those are the people who are living with covid-19 who are the sickest. that's the curve that we really need to be looking at. that curve, again, is flat or going down. as we expand our testing, and i think this is a key point, as

eexpand our testing, we will surely detect more cases in the city because if we test more people we will get -- the numbers will go up. we will be watching that percent, that positivity rate over time. the last few days that positivity rate has hovered around 7 per cent. >> the next question is from jamie har with the associated press. the governor floated the possibility of having live sporting events without spectators as early as june 1. is this in any way possible for san francisco? >> well, i think we need to, again, look at the data and monitor carefully work with the sports business community and determine whether that is something that could be done safely and commensurate with best practices. i can't speculate on a date, but i would say that i know many of us are looking forward to getting back to watching sports, and it's certainly something that we've been discussing.

>> the next question is from sf chronicle. given sf's grim budget projections for the coming fiscal year, is the department of public health bracing for big cuts to its own budget? >> dr. grant colfax: so, look, we're in a situation where we have an unprecedented public health emergency and we also have a major fiscal crisis. and we're looking across the department to figure out how can we accomplish the goals of ensuring that the pandemic -- that our pandemic response is robust while also looking at how do we continue to provide as many services possible for people in our clinics, in our hospitals, behavioural health services and so forth. so we're taking a hard look of where we can make adjustments. i will give you a key example of where things have accelerated, for instance, because of the pandemic. our telehealth work has

accelerated in primary care and behavioural health services. so we are looking at how do we shift our response and whether there are commensurate cost savings in that work. so a lot of work to do going forward with ensuring that our budget goals are met, but also ensuring that our pandemic response and that our ability to provide care to the safety net populations is -- continues. >> specifically -- this is a follow-up. specifically, should programs within the behavioural health care system, like drug treatment programs and mental health facilities, prepare for reductions in service they are able to provide? >> dr. grant colfax: i'm sorry, could you repeat the last part of the question? >> i'll read it again. specifically, should programs within the behavioural health care system, like drug treatment programs and mental health facilities, prepare for reductions in services?

>> dr. grant colfax: so you know, i think it's too early to speculate on that. right now we are looking, again, at multiple factors that will help determine what our proposed budget will look like in the future. i think that certainly as we look at the intersection of the covid-19 pandemic and the behavioural health challenges that we already have in the city, we will certainly be looking at what programs need to be supported that intersect with both the behavioural health needs and the covid-19 response, and increasingly, you know, as we enter this new era, one of the key things we will be looking at across the health department is how do our services not only continue the strong work we've done in supporting health, but how do those intersect with our ongoing pandemic response, and those will be particularly -- those will be services that we will particularly focus on adjusting and maintaining and in some

cases i think strengthening. >> thank you, dr. colfax. our final questions are for director abigail stuart khan, homelessness and supportive housing.

dr. stuart khan, your question is: the mayor tweeted on friday about the newest safe sleeping site and said the city is looking for new sites. what are the sites that are currently still being considered? >> thank you. so as the public may be aware, and just thanks for the opportunity to revisit things that are happening for residents who are unsheltered on our streets, when the epidemic began, the healthy streets operation center, which hsh is a part of, paused shelter encampment -- excuse me, encampment resolutions. this is because moving people into shelters was no longer possible given that congregate sites are a difficult location for people during a pandemic caused by covid. and so we know that this means that there are more people living unsheltered than there were before, and we know that even before the pandemic we didn't have enough space for people. we also understand that in a crisis people, unhoused and

housed, want to be together, that community is what makes us feel safe during times of high anxiety, and so similar to the physical distancing that i need to create with my colleagues or people who are not in my close family, we worked through our partnership to provide education, outreach, access to hand sanitizing, access to sanitation, access to food, and we continue to work in an ongoing way with the unsheltered population. it's become extremely clear that that is insufficient given the number of people living unsheltered and how difficult it is to physically distance on our sidewalks. and so as you note, kathy, the mayor tweeted about the first sanctioned safe village in san francisco. this is not something that the department of homelessness or the city has ever approved before, even though many, many cities across our country have done so. and this is really related to the pandemic and the need to

provide safety for people living unsheltered during the pandemic. so to the specifics of that site, it opened last week. it is seen as a short-term solution. it is run incredibly well by urban alchemy with our deep gratitude and all of the partners working together. the intention at that site via our hsoc partners is to move people out of it as quickly as possible, whether that is into our traditional housing, if they are housing referral status, or into a hotel if they were known to our system of care before april 1. and then to find other solutions and resolutions for other individuals so that that location does not remain long term or even longish term. there is another location that has been identified that's been talked about publicly in the hate, and we are looking forward to its opening in the next couple of weeks, and to our partnership with larkin around

that site and their subcontractors. each site needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. based on the needs of the unsheltered individuals, the community, the community input, and we look forward to that. the healthy streets operation center and the emergency operations center remains point on evaluating and looking at future sites. for example, we are looking at a site to serve the mission and the castro districts, and we look forward to that partnership and the role that hsh will play. and other sites will continue to need to be evaluated based on the need in the community, community resident input, and the specifics of each location. >> follow-up question: how can local residents participate in discussions about the site? >> yeah, that's a terrific question, and for those of you who know how we do our community process around navigation centers, you know that it is robust and it is extremely time consuming before the covid

pandemic. and so we will not be able to do that -- we can't come together in meetings, community meetings of 100 people and share all the details because we can't all be together. but i know that the healthy streets operation center and the emergency operation center, as they look at each site, partners with local leaders, takes a look at the neighborhood, tries to understand how to mitigate the impact if, in fact, a site is important. listens to the residents and reaches out as quickly as they possibly can for that engagement, understanding that given the crisis that we're in we need to move in an expedited manner. >> thank you, director stuart khan. that concludes our questions for today's press conference. ♪

>> hi. i'm chris mathers with channel 19, and you're watching coping with covid-19. today, i'm going to be talking about exercising during the pandemic. first, i'm going to tell you what i've been doing, and then i'm going to be checking in with some friends and family. i've been riding my bike. all i take is a pair of gloves and a mask if i come into contact with anyone. i try to ride my bike during the time i'm sheltering in

place. i try to ride for at least 30 minutes. surfing is my other regular outdoor activity. california state guidelines recommend you don't drive more than ten minutes for a spot to exercise, and although i'm close to ocean beach, i'm a bit wary to go there, so i'm using the time to do some maintenance. filling in gouges and dings, and sanding it down. i'm also repairing holes in my suit. fellow sfgovtv producer chris took his first yoga lesson a couple of years ago and used to

go to a class regularly before the lockdown. he and his wife set up a space in their garage for exercising. this routine is from an on-line class by power yoga. deann and andy have been using the ping pong table that they bought off craigslist and set it up in their back yard. ellie has been using this home gym to stay fit. it has everything she needed. and lastly, if the weather is bad outside, you can exercise your mind by doing a puzzle, sudoku, or just by reading a good book. here's a quick recap. since i started this episode, the guidelines have changed. for instance, jack may be able to go golfing with some restrictions. go to sf.gov to get the most

up-to-date

>> announcer: you're watching "coping with covid-19." today's special guest is dr. steven getnick. >> hi, i'm chris man us and you're watching "coping with covid-19." today my guest is the director of the behavior therapy center of san francisco and professor emeritus in counseling psychology at the university of san francisco. doctor, welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> let's talk about managing anxieties during this pandemic. what types of issues are people facing at the moment? >> there are a number of issues and i really want to point out that this is affecting everyone and has come on very quickly. so it is normal.

if you are not experiencing some anxiety, something is a touch off because this affects us all. i think some of the main ones are our health and worried about getting the virus and our developing serious complications. i think for a lot of people who are single, living alone, in isolation, has been very difficult. i think being in close quarters with people who we normally have some space from now are together 24/7. that's produced a lot of stress and anxiety. that loss of connection with others. we already addressed. and having kids home. for a lot of people. >> yes, absolutely. what are the other problems

that they might have? >> i think without that dynamic, the good things are not a problem. it is the difficulties we have. and when we're together 24/7, again it's like hooking everything up to an amplifier. >> so, what kind of problems could be created from working home from home, perhaps for the first time in your career? >> a lot of people are not used to working at home and a working at home just isn't the same. for one thing, there is a lack of social interaction. some people find that that affects them greatly. some people are actually finding they're getting more work done at home without distractions from work. the lack of structure is probably the most common. we see it here with work at the office. people are kind of watching. we know that our schedule is, suddenly you're at home and you are on your own. >> absolutely. if those are some of the issues

people are facing, what are some of the techniques people can use to overcome their anxiety? >> caller: i think there are many. one of the first is how managing and keeping track of your thinking, we think and talk to ourselves a lot. that's normal. we have a dialogue with ourselves often and we need to monitor that a bit. people tend to ruminate versus problem-solve. that is they tend to worry about all the things that might go wrong. and what i suggest is, look, there are things that can go wrong, but ruminating about the worst-case scenario is not going to be very productive. sit down, figure out what the things are that you have to deal with and try to problem-solve. i think any of the self-control techniques for anxiety can be helpful.

and there are dozens of them. the common ones are meditation, relaxation techniques, yoga, for example and another is diaphragmattic breathing. if you google that, you can learn diaphragmattic breathing in about 10 minutes online. it's incredibly simple and it is a really nice way to reduce anxiety in the moment. self-control procedures, exercise. whether if you're fortunate enough to have equipment at home, that's great. if you're not, get outside and go for a walk, keep your safe distance, of course. but you need to be active. that's helpful. >> i think people marry be dealing with information overload at the moment. how do you suggest people manage that? >> i was just going to say that. i think it is really important to kind of limit the information you get. not in terms of accuracy. i think in terms of accuracy,

you want to identify a few sites where people are coming with evidence-based information and scientific information so you can form yourself well. once you've informed yourself, you need to not be watching all day long. i've talked to people who are mesmerized from the tv and a it keeps that anxiety going so you need to limit your viewing for sure. this can be stress for people who have economic concerns and worried about their family and friends and loved ones who are essential workers. what would you suggest they do to help manage anxiety and stress? >> there is a number of things. one of major ones for depression is behavioral activation. simply, it really means that people will tend to not be depressed as a number of

reinforcing activities to engage in. whether it is hobbies, you read, you listen to music, you crochet, you -- whatever. these kinds of things are very important so you want to make sure that you're engaging in activities that literally make you feel better as opposed to sitting around ruminating, worrying about the worst-case scenarios that might happen. >> what about trying to do some self-development? >> yeah. it's a very interesting time. i've talked to a couple of my own clients who are finding, in a very positive way, that this isolation, while at first can generate a lot of anxiety, particularly if you're just not good at living alone. for a number of people, it's giving them a chance to sit back and really think about what is important in their lives, what are the priorities. i think that maybe if there is

any silver lining in this epidemic, it's really forcing all of us to kind of rethink what's really important. >> indeed. you know, though, at the same time, there are people who are feeling very lonely at home. how would you encourage them to overcome that? >> you get online. facetime, skype, zoom, like what we're doing right now. you can stay connected. it's very possible. most connections are important. we are social critters and we need that connection. i think for people who don't have those options, pull up photos, take a look at pictures of family. you need to stay connected. and it's very important. >> and finally, do you have any suggestions that are specifically for families? >> yeah. well, again, i think one of the interesting things that's come about from all of this, is i talked to families on video is

they're obviously spending more time together. while it's a bit awkward, particularly for parents who are in the house working a lot. it's a chance to really deepen relationships and spend more good, quality time together. i think parents really need to step back and kind of plan their day a little bit. not micro manage it, but have some ideas. can the family play games together? a lot of people i talked to, they're even together as a family for the first time. so i think there are a number of things that people can do. i think it is qulaouzful for the families to take five, 10 minutes and say how did the day go? i talked to someone in the phone book before we started who said they noticed what time of day all their anxiety kind of comes together and they

start sniping at each other. now they're taking a few minutes at tend of the day to say, ok, how are we doing? >> i think they need modeling good behavior, something you can do within the family, too, to try to -- >> that's right. i think that's relevant. very relevant to how children are going to do. most of the research from crises, particularly things we can't control showed that children do as well as their parents do. so i think it is important for parents to think about how they're react aing and they stay calm because whatever they do is modeling, coping for their children. so, that can be very useful. it can also be problematic. >> when we talked earlier, you mentioned that acknowledging that your kids are afraid is important. >> yes. i think that ties to your last question. i think modeling -- you know,

it's not incompatible with saying, yeah, you know, mom or dad is a little nervous, too. it means a lot of stuff is going on, but we're going to be ok. we're going to stay together. we have our time together. we're going to be safe. we'll -- fill in the blank. so you can do both. you can re-assure but in a realistic way that once the kids know it's normal to be anxious in these times. >> thank you for coming ton show, doctor. i really appreciate the time you've given us. >> you're welcome. thank you for having me. >> and that is it for this episode. we'll be back with more covid-19 related information shortly. you have been "coping with covid-19."

>> as a woman of color who grew up in san francisco i understand how institutions can have an impact on communities of color. i think having my voice was important. that is where my passion lies when the opportunity to lead an office in such a new space came up. i couldn't turn it down. i was with the district attorney's office for a little over nine years, if you include the time as an intern as well as volunteer da, all most 13 years. during the time with the da's office i had an opportunity to serve the community not only as the assistant district attorney but as director of community relations. that afforded the opportunity to

have impact on the community in an immediate way. it is one thing to work to serve the rights of those without rights, victims. it is really rewarding to work to to further the goals of our office and the commitment we have as city employees and advocates for people who don't have a voice. i don't know of anyone surprised to see me in this role. maybe people have an impression what the director of the office of cannabis should be like, what their beliefs should be. i smash all of that. you grew up in the inner city of san francisco. my career path is not traditional. i don't think a person should limit themselves to reach full potential. i say that to young women and girls. that is important. you want to see leadership that looks diverse because your path is not predetermined. i didn't wake up thinking i was going to be a prosecutor in my

life. the city administrator reached out and wanted to have a conversation and gave me interest in the new role. i thought you must not know what i do for a living. it was the opposite. she had foresight in realizing it would be helpful for somebody not only a former prosecutor but interested in shaping criminal justice reform for the city would be the right person for the space. i appreciate the foresight of the mayor to be open how we can be leaders in san francisco. i was able to transition to the policy space. here i was able to work on legislation, community relations, communication and start to shape the ways our office was going to reform the criminal justice system. it is fulfilling for me. i could create programs and see those impact people's lives. i am the change.

it took truants youth to meet with civil rights movement leaders who fought to have access to education. being a young person to understand that helped the young people realize this was an important thing to give up. what we find is that young people who are truanted have a really high homicide rate in our city, which is a sad statistic. we want to change that. >> coming from a community we are black and brown. i don't reach out to other people. i don't think they feel the same way. >> i had the great opportunity to work on prison reform issues and criminal justice reform issues. we created a program at san quentin where we brought district opportunities t to lifs and talk about how we are all impacted by the criminal justice system.

we brought over 40 elected das to san quentin for the situation. now we are inviting the police department. our formerly incarcerated group born out of this programming asked for the opportunity to work on a project where we could bring the men in blue on the outside to come speak to the men on blue inside to start the healing dialogue around how the criminal justice system specifically in san francisco impacts the community. i was attracted to the role. there was a component of equity that was part of this process. the equity community here in san francisco is a community that i had already worked with. before i took steps to visit cannabis businesses i thought it was important my team have a chance to go inside and speak to men who ha had been impacted. that conversation needed to happen so we know how we are making an impact with the work

that we are doing. the da's office as we were leading up to the legalization of marijuana in the state we started having conversations on the policy team what that could look like. the district attorney was really focused on the right side of history for this. we realized it would be quite a heavy lift for individuals who have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs to expunge the record. it was important to figure out the framework to make it seamless and easy. they put their minds to it after some time and many conversations the data analysts and other policy walk throughs on the team came up with the idea to engage the tech community in this process. code for america helped us developed the rhythm to be used for any jurisdiction across the state that was important to

create a solution to be used to assist all jurisdictions dealing with this matter. the office of cannabis is the first office to have a completely digital application process. we worked with the digital team to develop the online application. there are going to be hiccups. we are first to do it. it is one of the most rewarding parts to offer a seamless -- to offer a seamless approach. that is how they can find solutions to solve many of the community challenges. the best way to respond to prop 64 was to retroactively expunge 9,000 cannabis related records for san francisco. it feels like justice full circle for my personal experience. in the past i was furthering the war on drugs just as my directive. really coming from a place of

public safety. that was the mandate and understanding. it is nice to see that pass a society we are able to look at some of our laws and say, you know what? we got it wrong. let's get this right. i had the privilege of being in the existing framework. my predecessor nicole elliott did an incredible job bringing together the individuals super-passionate about cannabis. >> the office was created in july of 2017. i came in early 2018. i have been able to see the office's development over time which is nice. it is exciting to be in the space, stickily in thinking about her leadership. >> looking for the office it is always we might be before my time when i was working for the board oforboard of supervisors.

i learn new things every day it is challenging and rewarding for me. >> we get the privilege to work in an office tha that is innova. we get to spearhead the robust exprogram. >> i am excited she came on board to leverage experience as a prosecutor 10 years as we contemplate enforcements but approaching it without replicating the war on drugs. >> i was hired by cam laharris. i haven't seen a district attorney that looked kind of like me. that could be a path in my life. i might not have considered it. it is important that women and certainly women of color and spaces of leadership really do their part to bring on and mentor as many young people as they can. it is superimportant to take advantage of as many

opportunities a as they can when they can intern because the doors are wide open. plans change and that is okay. the way this was shaped because i took a risk to try something new and explore something and show that i was capable. you are capable, right? it was about leaning in and being at the table to say my voice matters. you find your passion, the sky

[♪] [♪] >> so i grew up in cambridge,

massachusetts and i was very fortunate to meet my future wife, now my wife while we were both attending graduate school at m.i.t., studying urban planning. so this is her hometown. so, we fell in love and moved to her city. [♪] [♪] >> i was introduced to this part of town while working on a campaign for gavin, who is running for mayor. i was one of the organizers out here and i met the people and i fell in love with them in the neighborhood. so it also was a place in the city that at the time that i could afford to buy a home and i wanted to own my own home. this is where we laid down our roots like many people in this neighborhood and we started our family and this is where we are going to be. i mean we are the part of san francisco.

it's the two neighborhoods with the most children under the age of 18. everybody likes to talk about how san francisco is not family-friendly, there are not a lot of children and families. we have predominately single family homes. as i said, people move here to buy their first home, maybe with multiple family members or multiple families in the same home and they laid down their roots. [♪] >> it's different because again, we have little small storefronts. we don't have light industrial space or space where you can build high-rises or large office buildings. so the tech boom will never hit our neighborhood in that way when it comes to jobs. >> turkey, cheddar, avocado,

lettuce and mayo, and little bit of mustard. that's my usual. >> mike is the owner, born and bred in the neighborhood. he worked in the drugstore forever. he saved his money and opened up his own spot. we're always going to support home grown businesses and he spent generations living in this part of town, focusing on the family, and the vibe is great and people feel at home. it's like a little community gathering spot. >> this is the part of the city with a small town feel. a lot of mom and pop businesses, a lot of family run businesses. there is a conversation on whether starbucks would come in. i think there are some people that would embrace that. i think there are others that

would prefer that not to be. i think we moved beyond that conversation. i think where we are now, we really want to enhance and embrace and encourage the businesses and small businesses that we have here. in fact, it's more of a mom and pop style business. i think at the end of the day, what we're really trying to do is encourage and embrace the diversity and enhance that diversity of businesses we already have. we're the only supervisor in the city that has a permanent district office. a lot of folks use cafes or use offices or different places, but i want out and was able to raise money and open up a spot that we could pay for. i'm very fortunate to have that. >> hi, good to see you. just wanted to say hi, hi to the owner, see how he's doing. everything okay?

>> yeah. >> good. >> we spend the entire day in the district so we can talk to constituents and talk to small businesses. we put money in the budget so you guys could be out here. this is like a commercial corridor, so they focus on cleaning the streets and it made a significant impact as you can see. what an improvement it has made to have you guys out here. >> for sure. >> we have a significantly diverse neighborhood and population. so i think that's the richness of the mission and it always has been. it's what made me fall in love with this neighborhood and why i love it so much.

>> everything is done in-house. i think it is done. i have always been passionate about gelato. every single slaver has its own recipe. we have our own -- we move on

from there. so you have every time a unique experience because that slaver is the flavored we want to make. union street is unique because of the neighbors and the location itself. the people that live around here i love to see when the street is full of people. it is a little bit of italy that is happening around you can walk around and enjoy shopping with gelato in your hand. this is the move we are happy to provide to the people. i always love union street because it's not like another commercial street where you have big chains. here you have the neighbors. there is a lot of stories and the neighborhoods are essential. people have -- they enjoy having their daily or weekly gelato. i love this street itself.

>> we created a move of an area where we will be visiting. we want to make sure that the area has the gelato that you like. what we give back as a shop owner is creating an ambient lifestyle. if you do it in your area and if you like it, then you can do it on the streets you like. >> announcer: you're watching coping with covid-19. >> hi. i'm chris manus and you're watching "coping with covid-19." today my guest is anastasia

klaste and we're going talk about how the pandemic has affected our school community. welcome to the show. >> hi! thank you. >> i understand that our students and teachers have adopted video conference as distance learning tools to be able to continue studying remotely and this is clearly new for everyone. do you have some suggestions to students and perhaps their parents that could help them manage this new approach? >> i think the best advice i can give students and parents is to really be gentle on yourselves during this time. the thing we don't really want to do is increase stress and anxiety amongst our students because they know it is a scary, uncertain time aside from the work. so, we are engaging in distance learning and providing work for students to engage in. the mental health of students and their well-being and safety is really at the forefront of our minds and so we're asking

parents to keep an eye on their kids and also asking kids to speak up and let us know if they're having trouble f they need to talk to someone, if they need to take a break or they need more time to do work. because that is really what's most important for us. >> right. and what would you say to teachers having a hard time adjusting as well? >> i think our faculty is really lucky in that we were already utilizing google classroom in all of our classes. so the switch from in-person to online is not as extreme as it may have been to some other faculties in other schools. that said, most of us had never engaged in video conferencing or done any sort of daily online lesson planning. so, i think the same thing i say to parents and students i say to teachers is to just be gentle and give yourself space and know it's ok to make

mistakes and it's ok if you're not perfect and we're all sort of learning and doing at the same time. so, that can also be anxiety provoking and that can be hard for taoefers that are used to being really good at what they do and knowing what exactly to say and how to do it every day are grappling with new technology and they're finding that students [inaudible] what they do in person. >> are there concerns about college admissions for high school seniors and juniors? >> i think at first there was a lot of sort of confusion and anxiety for juniors and seniors about colleges. and now that the system has come out with some guidance and we understand that, you know, the s.a.t. and a.c.t. tests won't be required for the next year, we know that universities have only agreed to accept credit or no credit or pass-no

pass grades and looking at students across the country knowing that we're in unprecedented situation now that we've got guidance of clarity around that. students are feeling a lot more comfort. -- comfortable. for our current seniors, most of them got their college acceptances in february and march so those things shouldn't be changing that much. for juniors, you know, now that they know that they have to step it up for the next year because the grades that they're getting this semester may not be letter grades, it might be a pass-no pass, credit-no credit. but it seems from everything that i read or hear, they're working really closely with school districts to make sure that no student is, you know, adversely affected by the pandemic because of this sort of universal experience for all students. >> indeed. i heard that some kids are worried that they may have to make up the work or retake the whole year? how likely are those scenarios and how will grades be assigned

for this semester? >> well, san francisco unified has made a decision through the board of ed that there will be a signing. credit-no credit for 6 through 12th graders and that means that basically they will either full credit for the glass or won't receive credit for class, based on the work that they do and that goes into a gaap of neutral so it shouldn't raise or lower any specific student's g.p.a., but just give them credit toward graduation. from what i can tell, california has been pretty clear that no student will have to retake this year. as educators, we do acknowledge that thereby a little bit of catchup happening in the fall. >> right. have your students had a variety of different experiences during this pandemic? >> yes. i would say definitely. our school serves a big at-risk group of kids.

we have students from every zip code and city, basically. and students from all sorts of backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses so on one hand they have their high speed wi-fi and it's no problem for them to hop on a zoom call or get their google docs turned in and then we have a lot of situations where they may not have wi-fi so they're delivering hotspots or they have a device but it is shared among several siblings or the parents are using it during the day and the kids have only a certain amount of time that they can engage. so, you know, something that the teachers have talked about being mindful of and i'm definitely being mindful, as a principal, is that our students are in various situations and we can't assume anything about their access in their ability to [inaudible] right now.

for some of them, they're caring for siblings or grandma, living at home. many of them have family members affected by covid and so they're in a space where they're really just trying to take care of those around them. and academics are sort of on the backburner and for right now that's ok. you know, we sort of support them in whatever way they need. >> i understand. have you been able to provide any technical assistance to your students or faculty? >> yes. the school district had hotspots so i personally delivered about 50 chrome books to students and now we're getting hotspots, which are wi-fi devices that utilize cell phone coverage in an area so homes that don't have wi-fi or homes that have spotty wi-fi can use these hotspots and the kids are saying that they work really well and now the

district just got a bunch of them so we're able to list them. so any family that needs them right now, which is really great. now all of our faculties have access to high speed wi-fi and technology at home. we are providing them with the technology that they need to be engaged in this. >> i see. and finally s there any news about summer school? >> there is. sort of. it's happening. in some way, shape or form. but we don't really know how or where. i'm assuming it will be online and, as usual, seniors or kids about to graduate will be prioritized so there'll definitely be some summer school, i'm just not sure where or what at this point. but they're going to share information about that pretty soon. unfortunately all the fun

summer programs and jobs, the arts programs and language programs, the acceleration programs are probably not happening. but there will be some sort of credit recovery option for kids who need it. >> right. well, thank you for coming ton show. i really appreciate the time you've given us today. >> yeah. great talking with you. thank you so much for having me. >> that is it for this episode. we'll be back with more covid-19 related information shortly. you've been watching "coping with covid-19." i'm chris manus. thank you for watching..

>> i just feel like this is what i was born to do when i was a little kid i would make up performances and daydream it was always performing and doing something i feel if i can't do that than i can't be e

me. >> i just get excited and my nickname is x usher my mom calls me i stuck out like a sore thumb for sure hey everybody i'm susan kitten on the keys from there, i working in vintage clothing and chris in the 30's and fosz and aesthetic. >> i think part of the what i did i could have put on my poa he focus on a lot of different musical eras. >> shirley temple is created as ahsha safai the nation with happens and light heartenness shirley temple my biggest influence i love david boo and el john and may i west coast

their flamboyant and show people (singing) can't be unhappy as a dr. murase and it is so fun it is a joyful instrument i learned more about music by playing the piano it was interesting the way i was brought up the youth taught me about music he picked up the a correspond that was so hard my first performing experience happened as 3-year-old an age i did executive services and also thanks to the lord and sank in youth groups people will be powering grave over their turk i'll be playing better and better back la i worked as

places where men make more money than me i was in bands i was treated as other the next thing i know i'm in grants performing for a huge protection with a few of my friends berry elect and new berry elect and can be ray was then and we kept getting invited back you are shows got better we made it to paris in 2005 a famous arc we ended up getting a months residencey other than an island and he came to our show and started writing a script based on our troop of 6 american burr elect performs in france we were woman of all this angels and

shapes and sizes and it was very exciting to be part of the a few lettering elect scene at the time he here he was bay area born and breed braces and with glossaries all of a sudden walking 9 red carpet in i walgreens pedestrian care. >> land for best director that was backpack in 2010 the french love this music i come back here and because of film was not released in the united states nobody gave a rats ass let's say the music and berry elect and performing doesn't pay very much i definitely feel into a huge depression especially, when it ended i didn't feel kemgd to

france anymore he definitely didn't feel connected to the scene i almost feel like i have to beg for tips i hey i'm from the bay area and an artist you don't make a living it changed my represent tar to appeal and the folks that are coming into the wars these days people are not listening they love the idea of having a live musician but don't really nurture it like having a potted plant if you don't warrant it it dizzy sort of feel like a potted plant (laughter) i'm going to give san francisco one more year i've been here since 1981 born and raised in the bay area i know that is not for me i'll keep on trying and if the struggle becomes too hard i'll have to move on i don't

know where that will be but i love here so so much i used to dab he will in substances i don't do that i'm sober and part of the being is an and sober and happy to be able to play music and perform and express myself if i make. >> few people happy of all ages i've gone my job so i have so stay is an i feel like the piano and music in general with my voice together i

san francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, the fire boat station is intergal to maritime rescue and preparedness, not only for san francisco, but for all of the bay area. [sirens] >> fire station 35 was

built in 1915. so it is over 100 years old. and helped it, we're going to build fire boat station 35. >> so the finished capital planning committee, i think about three years ago, issued a guidance that all city facilities must exist on sea level rise. >> the station 35, construction cost is approximately $30 million. and the schedule was complicated because of what you call a float. it is being fabricated in china, and will be brought to treasure island, where the building site efficient will be constructed on top of it, and then brought to pier 22 and a half for installation. >> we're looking at late 2020 for final completion of the fire boat float.

the historic firehouse will remain on the embarcadero, and we will still respond out of the historic firehouse with our fire engine, and respond to medical calls and other incidences in the district. >> this totally has to incorporate between three to six feet of sea level rise over the next 100 years. that's what the city's guidance is requiring. it is built on the float, that can move up and down as the water level rises, and sits on four fixed guide piles. so if the seas go up, it can move up and down with that. >> it does have a full range of travel, from low tide to high tide of about 16 feet. so that allows for current tidal movements and sea lisle rises in the coming decades. >> the fire boat station

float will also incorporate a ramp for ambulance deployment and access. >> the access ramp is rigidly connected to the land side, with more of a pivot or hinge connection, and then it is sliding over the top of the float. in that way the ramp can flex up and down like a hinge, and also allow for a slight few inches of lateral motion of the float. both the access ramps, which there is two, and the utility's only flexible connection connecting from the float to the back of the building. so electrical power, water, sewage, it all has flexible connection to the boat. >> high boat station number 35 will provide mooring for three fire boats and one rescue boat. >> currently we're staffed with seven members per day, but the fire department would like to establish a new dedicated

marine unit that would be able to respond to multiple incidences. looking into the future, we have not only at&t park, where we have a lot of kayakers, but we have a lot of developments in the southeast side, including the stadium, and we want to have the ability to respond to any marine or maritime incident along these new developments. >> there are very few designs for people sleeping on the water. we're looking at cruiseships, which are larger structures, several times the size of harbor station 35, but they're the only good reference point. we look to the cruiseship industry who has kind of an index for how much acceleration they were accommodate. >> it is very unique. i don't know that any other fire station built on the water is in the

united states. >> the fire boat is a regionalesset tharegional assete used for water rescue, but we also do environmental cleanup. we have special rigging that we carry that will contain oil spills until an environmental unit can come out. this is a job for us, but it is also a way of life and a lifestyle. we're proud to serve our community. and we're willing to help people in any way we can.

>> hi. my name is carmen chiu, san francisco's elected assessor. when i meet with seniors in the community, they're thinking about the future. some want to down size or move to a new neighborhood that's closer to family, but they also worry that making such a change will increase their property taxes. that's why i want to share with you a property tax saving program called proposition 60. so how does this work? prop 60 was passed in 1986 to allow seniors who are 55 years and older to keep their prop 13

value, even when they move into a new home. under prop 13 law, property growth is limited to 2% growth a year. but when ownership changes the law requires that we reassess the value to new market value. compared to your existing home, which was benefited from the -- which has benefited from the prop 13 growth limit on taxable value, the new limit on the replacement home would likely be higher. that's where prop 60 comes in. prop 60 recognizes that seniors on fixed income may not be able to afford higher taxes so it allows them to carryover their existing prop 13 value to their new home which means seniors can continue to pay their prop 13 tax values as if they had never moved. remember, the prop 60 is a one time tax benefit, and the

property value must be equal to or below around your replacement home. if you plan to purchase your new home before selling your existing home, please make sure that your new home is at the same price or cheaper than your existing home. this means that if your existing home is worth $1 million in market value, your new home must be $1 million or below. if you're looking to purchase and sell within a year, were you nur home must not be at a value that is worth more than 105% of your exist egging home. which means if you sell your old home for $1 million, and you buy a home within one year, your new home should not be worth more than $1.15 million. if you sell your existing home

at $1 million and buy a replacement between year one and two, it should be no more than $1.1 million. know that your ability to participate in this program expires after two years. you will not be able to receive prop 60 tax benefits if you cannot make the purchase within two years. so benefit from this tax savings program, you have to apply. just download the prop 60 form from our website and submit it to our office. for more, visit our website, sfassessor.org,