. >> the small business commission thanks media services, sfgtv. members of the public who will be calling in, the number is 888-273-3658, and the access code is 3107452.

when prompted, enter one and zero to be entered into the queue. when you are called for public comment, please mute the device that you are listening to the meeting on, and when it is your time to speak, you will be prompt today do so. the number and the log in will also be scrolling across the screen. public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established. speakers are requested, but not required, to state their name. sfgtv, please show the office of small business slide. >> today, we will start with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policy that affect the economic vitality of san francisco. the office of small business is your best place to get

information about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance during this time, you can find us on-line or via telephone, as always, our services are free of charge. before we get started, i'd like to thank sfgtv for coordinating the meeting and the live stream, and to jane smith for mediating the comment slide. item 1. >> clerk: item 1, roll call. [roll call]

>> clerk: mr. president, you have a quorum. >> thank you. well, first, i am delighted to say we have three outstanding leaders in public service today. >> clerk: commissioner laguana, do you want me to call item 2? >> oh, yes, call item 2. >> clerk: item 2, presentation on small basis recovery. continues discussion on small business recovery and rebuilding, presentation, and discussion from the san francisco municipal transportation agency,

treasurer, treasurer and tax collector, and the planning department on small business recovery and rebuilding and discussion of relevant recommendations made to the economic recovery task force. >> commissioners, please note, we have a limited amount of time for each presenter due to their schedules, so limit your time in chat. we're going to budget roughly two minutes per person. if we have more time, we'll circle back. mr. tumlin, thank you for being here. >> thank you, mr. president. i'm going to be reviewing our transportation recovery plan. there is a lot of material that i can present, but i would like some time guidelines about the

length of time you would like me to present versus q&a, and if there's a specific topic you would like me to address, i can do so accordingly. >> i think other commissioners can jump in here, but i think probably the biggest item we recommended to ertf was around the shared spaces program. welcome updates about that, but there are a few more items that commissioners would ask questions about. i think they would appreciate an opportunity to ask as many questions as possible, but we want you to convey whatever you think would be interest of us, so we'll just muddle our way through. we budgeted about 40 minutes for you. >> okay. i'll spend more time for

details getting into the q&a. i'll share my screen. are you seeing my screen? >> we are. >> excellent. let me go into -- there we go. all right. so good morning, commissioners. i'm jeffrey tumlin. i'm the director of the san francisco municipal transportation agency, and as many of you know, one of the things that we do as an agency is supporting the overall san francisco economy. recovery cannot happen without mobility. people need to get to work, get to services needed, move around, and we face fundamental constraints in our mobility system, specifically, that our streets are not getting any

wider. so we needed to figure out how to let our streets move the greatest number of people, especially for people who don't have many choices. last week, we saw the greatest congestion in the region since the city opened up, and we are worried that we are going to see the greatest congestion ever in this region. we are working with c.t.a. and other regional agencies, and we're very nervous about what we see. even today, where we think the economy is maybe about 15% open, we're within 10% of hitting the traffic levels that existed precovid. it takes only a relatively small percentage shift away from transit towards driving to reach rather catastrophic

levels of congestion, and this is related to simple mobility. driving a car is super convenient. it takes you from any point a to point b, and during this time, you have the ability to have built in social distancing. the problem with driving a car is it takes up more than ten times the space moving someone in a car versus any other kind of communication including a socially distant muni bus or train. so if our streets are not getting any wider, we don't have any ability to move more cars than we did back in january. indeed, we don't have much ability to move more cars than we're moving today. there simply isn't space to support the san francisco economy except by emphasizing the most space efficient modes of transportation which creates a set of conundrums for us in

this precovid era. muni lines that are full of people still get caught in congestion especially in the south of market grid for people vying to get onto the bay bridge. that turns into loss of time for muni, and that turns into a capacity loss and frequency loss for muni because we're not able to turn our buses around as frequently. now this loss of capacity and frequency also creates a public health issue for our essential workers because it cuts our ability to offer social distancing on our bus by the same percentage as our travel time losses, and we're starting to see this all over san francisco right now, and we're wanting to try to get ahead of the problem really quickly so

we can continue to manage our streets to maximize the flow of people and particularly to pay attention to who we are serving. so all of our work at the moment for every single line of business at the sfgtv is being pulled into what we're calling our transportation recovery plan. we look at each of the stages of reopening the economy to figure out what does the mobility system need to do in order to do that. everything from turning the parking meters onto phasing in the meter system to when the taxi fares and other things need to adjust. everything is oriented around covid recovery and specifically our role in reopening the economy. the san francisco economy

cannot reopen without mobility in place, and indeed, our financial stability is largely dependent on the return of business in san francisco. that's what we depend on, is people doing their business in san francisco not only from business tax, but from the fares we collect. we also know that now is a really challenging time to be making major changes to the mobility system, but we have no choice but to make some pretty radical changes. most of our sources of revenue are down by 80 % to 100%. we've got to make some changes to our system just to survive, but also be able to take our services and deliver them to people who need it the most.

it's a hard time to be making changes to the system given that we can't hold a conventional public hearing, and many of the people who we care the most about have the least ability to participate in forums like this. so we're trying to invent a series of ways of engaging people to be able to do very rapid change aimed at supporting the financial sustainability of the city and its small businesses for the people who need it the most. so we're trying to take every community forum, either through a community-based organization or through our board of supervisors offices as well as other techniques in the field to be able to reach out to people who are typically not

involved in government services. we want to do more experimentation, meaning try things out on the streets. so instead of going through a year of public hearings and planning processes, to do some experimentation on the streets as a way to get feedback. we are learning a lot from our slow streets experimentation that is informing how we're going to move forward from ther there. we're thinking have you quantity thai -- thinking very quantitatively system wide. for example, should we be measuring our street impact and

how our streets serve people? and more importantly, how should we be reaching out to community members to solicit their feedback based upon arthur actual experience with our experiments in order to be able to either make adjustments, make them permanent or cancel them altogether and move onto something else. so today, we're going to be talking about how we're going to use those different techniques to address those challenges around biking, transportation, neighborhood corridors, and commercial demand. as most of you know, covid has hit muni really hard. back in april, as a result of the successful efforts that we did in order to probability our right lane -- in order to protect our vulnerable workforce, we needed to cut about 60% of muni hours.

we eliminated the rail system and retreated into a position of radical resiliency, throwing all of our resources at the muni lines that served the most people, that concentrated on residents and neighborhoods that had the least access to services and to employment. like focusing on our major institutions, like the hospitals, and doing a period of adjustment to ensure that no one was way too far from muni services. and this radical resiliency was w what allowed us to survive. we have the lowest rate of covid among our workforce and passengers. we've had a very small

percentage of our workforce catch covid, and all of them recovered, which is very different from some of our sister communities. the geography of san francisco mobility and the geography of our san francisco workforce is very different than san francisco general. the neighborhoods are mostly empty, but our commercial districts are full of activity, and it's coming back even greater in our neighborhood commercial districts. so we focused service where it was needed the most. even in a time of service set backs, we had to increase our level of service delivery on critical corridors like mission street, like the 8 and the 9 serving visitacion valley and

all of the shaded areas on this map, which are so-called areas of concern, concentration of lower income neighborhoods and people of color. making sure that people had service was extremely important to us. we've also maintained everyone's health based on the c.d.c.s covid guidelines, but i want to make you aware, we're having to pass up a lot of passengers as buses reach their capacity of limit, and as many of you know who take muni, we're experiencing severe crowding. we need to find ways to protect the safety of our passengers

rather than relying on something as simple as the distance of our passengers. we believe that the united states is the only country that is only for social distance on public transit. almost all of the asian and european countries have focused on more distant and effective distancing strategies. we cannot move more people than we're moving today without social distancing. we lost about 30% of our service hours due to direct impacts of covid. we gained back some service hours due to the increase in congestion. we're worried we're going to

lose more of those gains and suffer even more congestion, and the social distance goals in transit result in another two-thirds service cut. so all of that adds up to between a 70% and 80% service cut, which is the equivalent of the loss of all of the traffic lanes on the bay bridge, golden gate bridge, richmond-san raphael bridge, and san mateo bridge. it is about the loss of capacity for 600,000 people every day, and this is going to stand in the way of our economic recovery. that said, we are looking at solutions. part of the solution relies on the data of the system that we

had duriwe -- system travel time that we had during the shelter in place. interestingly, we achieved zero travel time savings on the corridors we had only commercial travel lanes because our last decades of investment in travel lanes in corridors really worked. so one of the questions is should we be extending our transit-only lane network in order to allow our protected transit network to be protected from congestion and to allow those streets to move more people and particularly people with the fewest choices. so we're going to be talking to the board of supervisors in the form of the sfcta commission today. we'll also be talking to the

m.t.a. board tuesday of next week about advancing emergency temporary transit only lanes on our key corridors as a pilot program that would be designed to sunset 120 days after the end of the state of emergency. so we're starting the conversation with community members right now. we're looking at doing some temporary installation starting in july, and we're proposing to use this temporary installation as our process for gathering community feedback, for measuring the results, for measuring the unintended consequences, collecting significant data, and then, at some point immediately after that or within 120 days of the emergency order expiring, going back and doing a more formal process for either pursuing legislation for making those transit lanes permanent or adjusting them somehow or

removing them if they didn't work as we had hoped. this is a very different way of working compared to how government conventionally does its programming. typically, a transit only lane planning would take between two and five years of community analysis and detailed workshops and arguing. we're proposing to do a detailed two-to-three-month analysis. so our first tranche would be getting some assistance on mission and places where congestion is already starting and we know it's going to get worse in august. looking at pieces of masonic and presidio and putting some

upgrades on lanes near laguna honda and bosworth. there are chances we're going to take on this project. we're going to want to look at having the peak parking tow away on sacramento and clay streets perhaps be all day, or on 19 avenue, having a conversation with caltrans about having an h.o.v. lane on 19 avenue in the curb lane. so not easy questions, particularly on the time horizon that we'll be working on. we also know that public

transit will be hobbled due to the financial crash for years to come. our parking protected bikeway network in the south of market and our slow streets, particularly on streets like page and lake and sanchez street, as well as streets throughout the sunset have been wildly successful. our slow streets in particular are attracting people on bikes and skate boards and scooters and walkers and wheelchairs in a way that we've never seen before, and particularly in a way that matches the actual age, ethnicity and neighborhood demographics of the areas that they're service. so one of the questions that we ask is should we connect our investments together in order to allow all san franciscans of all ages and ethnic groups to

be able to get to their neighborhood commercial district and to their employment centers in san francisco because the advantage of biking and scootering and wheelchairing is they have exactly the same geometric space efficiency as muni does. so here's our existing network of facilities that actually attract a broad array of users. as you can see, this is a deeply disconnected network. it's like as if the interstate highway system in the united states randomly turned into travel roads. so we've been trying to make recent expansion in the last couple of months, that we've installed in the last six months or intend to. this is a much better network, but it's still super gappy. we've done the work that's easy but not the work that's necessary in order to pull

these streets into an interconnected citywide neighborhood and one that serves the neighborhoods, again, with the fewest mobility choi choices. we need to make sure san francisco have multiple mobility devices. this means we need to not only expand bikes and scooters, but getting those devices to people with lower income. and it means, you know, engaging further and making sure that we can expand the neighborhood and have networks feel like these services are actually something for them that's useful for them and indeed yields with the tradeoffs, such as the loss of parking that comes with the establishment of bike shore stations or the potential spillover of traffic from one

street to the next street if we were to advance our slow streets program. we're spending a lot of time in our neighborhood commercial corridors. the first thing we did was invest in 450 neighborhood and curbside drop off zones so that people could do their business. that has been significantly successful, and now, we're investing in the shared spaces program. i believe as of this weekend, we had 385 applications for various versions of shared spaces, and a lot of merchants already investing in their shared spaces in advance of the permits actually being available. we are looking at basically having a program of trying to say yes and making adjustments and corrections as we go along, because again, the mobility system doesn't work if small businesses are not -- are not

successful. we need to make sure that all of the needs of daily life are available within walking distance of all san franciscans, and we need tax dollars flowing again. so we need to look at when we bring back parking meter enforcement. we know that it is extremely important for small businesses that motorists be able to find a space within reasonable walking distance of businesses. as i've been walking around san francisco the last couple of days, it's time to start enforcing the meters because parking congestion is getting pretty severe in many neighborhood districts, and it's our policy that the right price for parking is the lowest price that ensures that one or two spaces are available on every block. we're also wanting to ask all of you when it is time to start having our meters enforced evenings and sundays. we don't want to impose this

upon you. our interest is really in making sure that small businesses are successful, and, as a part of that, making sure that customers can find a space at 7:00 at night in order to go to a restaurant, or on sunday afternoon, to go to church. by the way, we're asking some big questions of the region and selecting a lot of data. we're fortunate that we're not expecting very high rates of office occupancy for some time in part due to elevator capacity and in part due to the fact that office jobs are more readily converted to telecommuting jobs compared to any other job in the district. this allows us some time to catch up, but it also gives us

some time to manage our capacity. should we establish a toll as the lowest price that clears the queue from neighborhoods backing up from the east bay and use that revenue to expand choices to people who have the fewest choices. but in all of this, the biggest question is how hold should we be? we are in a state of emergency, and things have dramatically changed. we know again that the economic recovery is dependent upon

rethinking mobility and the bold changes that we're facing. are we ready to repurpose streets in order to better service business customers? to reprioritize streets to better serve customers? and are we ready to address these challenging tradeoffs and to mitigate the tradeoffs in a way that creates the least harm for the most people and, again, take advantage of the increasing mobility in this era? so that's a very quick presentation, and i'm happy to take any questions that you have. >> great. thank you, director tumlin. commissioners, do you have any

questions? >> yeah, thank you, director tumlin. that was a great presentation. really enjoyed it. can we get a copy of that, regina or jeffrey, in the next few days? my question is as the area starts to reopen, and you've opened up some other lines, like the masonic lines, what about other lines? because as people are starting to move around -- i've been hearing from a lot of the small businesses that you're trying to get to their neighborhoods where they work, and you're just waiting on bus lines to open up. >> i don't think people appreciate what a financial disaster sfmta is facing, and we're not alone among agencies. so we're planning to do another small tranche of meeting like restoration in august, along

with reopening the rail system, but we still have 50, 5-0 muni lines that are shutdown. we do not have a path for restoring all of those lines for at least two years, and -- yeah. it's -- things are bad, and we're expecting them to get worse. >> okay. thank you, but a great presentation. i appreciate it. commissioner dooley? >> yeah, i have just a quick question about the elephant in the room, which is t.n.c. they certainly are contributing enormously to congestion in this city. any thoughts on where we're going to go with that? >> yeah, so as you probably know, municipalities don't have the authority to regulate ride hails, uber and lyft, so we are working with the state and particularly the california public utilities commission in

order to help make sure that municipalities have the right -- basically the right to have ban authority. we believe in a role for ride hail, particularly for first and last miles to transit, but we want to make sure that ride hail expands their services to people with disabilities, which they're currently not doing, that they help us to reduce traffic congestion, that they help us to reduce total miles travelled, that they help us make the system more efficient rather than less efficient, which is what they're doing right now. >> are you going to be talking about limiting the number of t.n.c.s in the city? i've heard estimates of 40,000 a day coming into san francisco, which is contributing a huge amount to our congestion. >> so i -- my pressure

regulation really focuses on outcomes, so if there is any mobility providers that is helping me to make the streets more space efficient, that is great. if there's any mobility provider that is helping me to serve those less well served, whether it's a matter of income or geography or ability, that's great. i don't think we need to reduce the numbers to private investors for the public good, but to do that, we need a clear definition of the public good. >> because i don't see any other commissioners lined up to speak, i'll jump in. i want you to be bold. this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reassess transit at the ground level, and i hope

you'll seize that opportunity. i'm sure i speak on behalf of all the commission, we very much appreciate your commitment to equity. came through at numerous points in your presentation. that's so critical right now, and it's so easy to overlook in a wealthy city like ours, so thank you for your efforts there. one question that came up on twitter last week, the shared spaces program is not currently on the sfmta permit page. you may want to have us consider putting the shared spaces permit on the permit page. a quick question. with respect to the transit only lanes, i can emergency that you're trying to balance

travel time with the reduced capacity of the vehicles because they're at one-third capacity. have you -- i'm just wondering how you balance, say, a full-sized muni bus versus a smaller format or smaller vehicle choices -- i guess where i'm leading this is would there be an opportunity for there to be -- much like with uber and lyft and with the bicycles, would there be opportunity for private vehicle operators to operate in these transit-only lanes with vans or small buses if -- talk to me about it -- is that limited solely to buses or, you know,

do you think that there's the potential for plexibility in what -- flexibility in what a transit lane means? >> clerk: just so you know, it's 11:40, and the treasurer is on the line, as well, just so you know for time management. >> to what degree are we encouraging or discouraging private traffic shuttles? from a pure outcome perspective, they allow us to move more people, but they're also controversial, so it's hard for us to filter out them without filtering out, for example, ucsf shuttles. >> right, right. and it comes to mind particularly with respect to people with disabilities and

their ability to move in this environment. >> ubers and taxis are allowed in our transit-only lane. >> dominica, i respect the time, but i am going to allow commissioner ortiz-cartagena the opportunity real quick. go ahead. >> director tumlin, i just wanted to make sure, as commissioner or president laguana said to make information available in more than english. also, i've seen on city websites, the translations for permits and things of that nature, they don't work, and our community usually fills out things on the electronic side. make sure that they're

available to communities of color. >> the shared transit spaces is currently shared in spanish and chinese. >> when they translate on a mobile device, those functions don't work typically on city sites. >> oh, thank you for that. we're making note. >> we will now move -- thank you very much, director tumlin. we very much appreciate taking your time to present. we' we'll now move onto jose cisneros and amanda -- help me out with her last name, dominica. >> i don't see that amanda is actually here to present. >> okay. welcome. >> hi. >> okay. you have the floor. >> okay. great. hello, everyone. i'm really happy to be here. jose cisneros, san francisco

treasurer. i'm happy to talk about what our office is doing to support small businesses. i think, for all of us, it feels like forever ago when the shelter in place came out in march, but i think we've taken a lot of steps in that time to move things forward. so can we launch the presentation? why don't we do this: so we took many actions to provide relief, and we wanted to figure out how we could accommodate taxpayers who were not at ho-- who were at home. many were seeing disruptions in their homes and workplaces. we wanted to do everything we could to provide short-term relief, long-term relief, and

maybe permanent relief and all of that, so i'm excited to be here to talk with you about that. i just want to start with reinforcing that we've been working for years to make -- to provide better customer service and make it easier for people to work with our office. so now, essentially, 100% of the filings and payments that people need to make to our office can be done remotely, and we worked with the city leaders to see what we could do to provide relief during this very difficult time. while we did consider pushing this back, we did realize that

it defers revenue to the city, and this would be a lot of work, but we did that with the help of the mayor's office, controller's office, and even other part of the city leadership, so if we can go to the next slide, please. our initial actions were followed by an array of additional work to provide relief and assistance to asmal businesses. so we started by deferring business taxes and fees for small businesses. you'll see on this slide, the first slide was the deferral of the first quarterly business tax payments. this benefited approximately 8,000 businesses who would have paid in that first quarter -- quarterly deadline an average of $5,000 due by the end of april, which was the deadline. this relief was offered to businesses -- to small

businesses only, and that was defined by businesses with up to $10 million in annual gross receipts. and the action that was taken for those small businesses was that they could defer that payment that was due by the end of april of this year until the end of february of next year, february of 2021. so again -- [inaudible] >> -- was deferred until february of next year. we also worked with the mayor's office and others, on the second line, to defer small business payments for approximately 11,000 businesses in the city. this was a $14 million revenue

for the city that was due by the end of march. that entire $14 million revenue collection was deferred until the end of september of this year. what i think is really good is these licenses -- license fees that are found on the unified license bill affect many businesses hardest hit by the covid shutdown, such as restaurants, food businesses, bars, many small retailers, hotels, and tour operators, so i think we are really glad to be able to make that happen. we also, as you see, on the third line, took time to delay business registration fees, which is paid by currently the nearly 90,000 businesses that are registered in san

francisco. those fees -- annual renewal registration fee is due at the end of may, typically by june 1 each year. it brings in $49 million of revenue to the city, and that due date was extended and deferred to until september 30 of this year. so business registration fees vary according to the size of each business. they can range from as little as $1,000 per year to tens of thousands of dollars for a business, depending on its size, and all of those payments have now been deferred to the end of september, the same as the license fees. can we go onto the next slide? another major event, tax event

that businesses were impacted with, and individuals, were property tax payments. as many of us know, there are two significant property tax payments due each year. one is september 10, and the other is april 10. the april 10 property tax deadly clearly landed right in the miding of the covid shutdown -- middle of the covid shutdown, so we wanted to see what we can do to help people impacts. san francisco was only one of two of the 58 counties in california that took action to extend the property tax deadlines for all property tax payers. by partnering and working with the board of supervisors on legislation, we extended the property tax deadline -- the

standard april 10 property tax deadline to may 15. so over a one-month extension to all property tax deadline in san francisco. the delay helped individuals and businesses, and at the end of the day, by the time we reached the may 15 deadline, we were still successful at collecting nearly 99% of the payments due. at the same time, we created a solution for tax payers who were unable to make their april 10, or for us, may 15, property tax payment due to impacts from the pandemic. we are allowed, under state law, to provide relief from penalties for nonpayment of the deadline due to such impacts, so we created a link on our website that will allow anybody who's still struggling to make their property tax payment on time, relief from penalty,

which essentially gives them an extension of this deadline by going to this website that you see on your screen, sftreasurer.org/covid19 sftreasurer.org/covid19 -- sftreasurer.org/covid19property . what the application said was particularly for small businesses with an approved covid-19-related waiver that were unable to pay their property taxes that were due on april 10 or in our case, may 15, because of that covid crisis, they have that extended

to may 6 of 2021, so a one-year extension to pay that property tax payment without incurring any late fees. this payment will be in place for the december 10 payment due later this year, as well as the april 10 payment due next year if their small business is still experiencing covid-19 related impact. so i just want to be clear that we've done everything we can under the state law and the governor's office to provide relief to small businesses. can we go onto the next slide, please? so knowing that money was tight for many people, we actually suspended various activities that you see listed on this page, starting with with the upper right.

changed our bureau of delinquent revenue practices. we've stopped many collections activities for the duration of the covid-19 crisis, and this includes bank levees, and small tax collection items. we've temporarily suspended the collection of obligations owed to zuckerberg san francisco general hospital and citations owed to the m.t.a. our office of financial empowerment is housed in the treasurer's office and advocates to strengthen the economic security and mobility of area residents. our office is uniquely situated to assist those hardest hit by the downturn, and we've been doing exactly that. we used our programs to --

on-line and our on-line footprint to amplify city resources meant for small businesses and workers impacted by covid-19, and we did a lot of that via social media. this included one most about insurance that went viral with over 1 million hits. our staff spent money hours connecting local workers to emergency state, local, and federal resources. when the government rolled out the paycheck protection program, we moved to survey local banks about their participation in the program, about their responses to covid-19 related to consumer and small business impacts, and bank survey results are currently being gathered and synthesized to create a report on how banks have responded and to make recommendations for the future. we're also developing a website with covid-19 resources, including listing relief

available from local and national banks and credit unions. we worked with the human services agency and u.s. bank to disburse emergency funding via prepaid cards to low-income san franciscans who were experiencing food insecurity during the pandemic and assured them that the cards were easy to use and nonpredatory. we've repurposed that platform so that the city could receive donations to help in the covid-19 response and recovery fund. to date, that platform has collected nearly $30 million in covid-19 donations. i'm proud to say that our customer service team has adapted to remote work, and we're responding to taxpayer

calls within a 24-hour period of time if not faster to understand how these changes provide relief to them and what the obligations and changes are now. we're also in the process of implementing an appointment system so that taxpayers will be able to schedule a time to speak with our customer service staff directly and not have to file a question remotely and wait for an answer. while much of our work has been to respond to the extreme circumstances of the health and economic crisis, we also have several programs uniquely situated to provide services to residents. our smart money coaching program offered through the office of small business empowerment is available to individuals across the city who received emergency cash

payments. these are one-on-one cash coaching appointments and video appointments, which has made them even more accessible during this time. our kindergarten to graduation program, which we've launched more than ten years ago, available to all kids in our public school district, understandably saw deposits from families decrease in march and april, however, we've noticed that deposits have rebounded in may, and we're excited about families still being able to take advantage of that very beneficial program. our financial justice project has worked with city departments to ensure that fines and fees are not an additional barrier to people's basic needs, and much of what we've done in partnership with our local courts, with the m.t.a., with many other city departments, including the library and others, is either

adjust the amounts of fines and fees to make them more directly correlated to someone's ability to pay or even eliminate fines and fees to provide services more successfully. i'll point to the cash late fees at the library. they've all been eliminated in order to increase access to our library resources. we know some of the most difficult days and months for small businesses are still to come, and i'm eager to work with all of you to find ways to support small businesses in our city, and with that, i'm happy to answer any questions. >> wonderful. thank you, treasurer, for the excellent presentation. we appreciate all your work. commissioners, do we have any questions? commissioner adams? >> yes. great presentation, treasurer cisneros, and i do want to compliment your staff on call times. i've heard from several,

several businesses, people not being able to pay fees and stuff, that when they do call your office, they're speaking to live people, and it's really made life easier, so i really appreciate that, and everything your office has done. my question is, do you have a percentage of people who have not paid fees yet or do you have those numbers? >> i do not have those numbers. we've been doing our best to make sure that businesses or individuals know that the deadline has been extended. we've even delayed putting up the portal that allows people to pay fees because we don't want people who haven't heard news of the delayed deadline to pay by habit and then find that they were out of the resources and have to go through a refund

process. that could take weeks, causing themselves to be short of funds in this very challenging time, so we're still looking at when we'll open up those portals so that people can make those payments. we're trying to be sensitive to that. we'd love your thoughts and guidance on that, if you come up with any thoughts or recommendations how we can handle that. but we want to make sure that we're not over connecting people with opportunities to pay who may not have heard that they have an extended period of time to pay, and they're just making it out of a lack of awareness of that. [please stand by]

-- leading up to the may 15th deadline date. we were concerned like other years that we could see thousands of individuals show up

and make payments in person. so we were very gratified to see that across the three days only 150 people showed up and paid in person. and so what that really showed us was that when the circumstances, like we're dealing with now, are in place that we find that nearly everybody can deal -- can meet their obligations and deal with our office remotely. so the struggle that we're still -- dealing with going forward is as we come across these future dates, the september 30th deadline for what will be the annual business registration and the unified license, that we firmly believe that everybody can deal with that remotely. but we're just curious as to -- and we'd love your feedback -- and now or at a later time, whether it's important to open up the office for in-person payments. i'm guessing that there might

still be a meade for that. and we -- a need for that. and we want to meet the needs that taxpayers or individuals might have, but we're also trying to do everything that we can to keep people safe. and serve people in a way that's best for them. so we're still looking at, you know, what is the best way to serve the public and the taxpayers for these upcoming deadlines. they're still a few months out. so it might be nice if we could continue to dialogue and get your feedback and help on figuring that out. >> great, thank you. >> commissioner. >> thank you very much, commissioner. and thank you treasurer cisneros. good to see you. we have an issue of communications to our small businesses and the office of the treasurer and tax collector is the first and the biggest place where they come in. one of our recommendation says to have an opt out where people who register for businesses or pay the registration fees are opted into communications

between the office of small business and them. and so that's more of putting it on your to-do list as something that we think that is important to better communicate to our small businesses. so an opt out, i would just like to say that per the previous discussion, whether you open up to in-person is one thing but keeping it easy online with an online portal and an online setup is really important and it's something that this pandemic made us do. and i highly recommend to lean into the online digital bill pay. and there's proposed legislation to actually waive fees instead of pushing them out. and i'd like to ask you, you know, how -- you said that it's $49 million roughly and $1 $14 million -- these bills.

is this a huge amount of money for the city? how much money are we talking with a percentage of the general fund? >> thank you. those are great questions and great comments. thank you for that. the business registration fees for the number that i had when we could verify this is the business administration fees for all businesses, which is large and small, brings in $49 million each year. or currently each year to the city. and license fees bring in $14 million. >> got it. >> so, again, that would be to your point, that's a conversation that could be proposed and we'd have to have it at the board of supervisors and then with the mayor's signature for those things to be changed. >> and one more thing, thank you very much, treasurer cisneros. what a mess, the mayor announced that $138 million sitting in a

bunch of accounts would be put back into the workers' pockets. it's now june and that money has, you know, it has not materialized in the way that we were promised. it sounds like it's because of a lot of the complications of all of the different accounts and where it is and where the money is. you know, this is -- i have to just say on behalf of the small business community that there should not have been $200 million of unused money and 140,000 separate tax accounts. where does it come to getting the money back into workers' pockets and back out of the accounts that the city is monitor something. >> great question. there's attention paid to that, rightly so. and i read some of the newspaper articles myself. we don't collect those funds or manage those accounts. and i believe that -- and i'm not an expert in the details of where they are and how they were set up, and my understanding is that they were set up as the law

passed by the city leaders proposed. and they required that they be set up. and, unfortunately, i hope that those same leaders can come together and figure out a way to make that money accessible and used in a way that benefits the people. >> it sounds like we'd have your support in pushing that to happen it sounds like? >> i'm not a policymaker and i don't tell them what to do. i implement what measures they pass and what the voters pass. but i understand where you're coming from. >> thank you. >> commissioner ortiz-cartagena. >> commissioner ortiz-cartagena: treasurer cisneros, thank you. and i want to also piggyback on the commissioner's comments that you look at the h.s.o. but my main question or recommendation is, yes, we still need access to come in and to pay the bills. we've only been a champion of the latino community and you understand that people normally -- and the elderly -- that they're not sometimes

technically savvy and we still need to come in. and thank you for keeping your eye on that because you understand. and i am with having payments online but we still need that access to come in person and to pay. and so look at that from a cultural and an equity line. thank you, treasurer cisneros. >> thank you very much for your comments and the input. we find that very valuable. we have already set up our offices with the safety provisions. we now have glass dividers and partitions. and all of our customer service counters. and so both our taxpayers and our city employees are protected as much as possible. but we want to provide the service that allows our folks to comfortably and to successfully to deal with our city services and our office particularly. so, please, keep that information coming. thank you. >> thank you. and i will -- we have two

minutes left with the last couple questions here. treasurer cisneros, do you happen to know what percentage of business taxes are paid by small business? >> i don't off the top of my head but we could easily figure that out. it varies and we have dozens of different types of taxes. the business reg and the grocery receipt tax and payroll tax and some small businesses might paying collecting and remitting the hotel tax. the parking tax. and then, of course, then there's tons of fees. so i think we could get you the information back on that. >> we'd love to have that information if you could. >> and any information that you have on how you'd like us to define "small business" would be helpful. >> we generally stick with the california state definition which i believe is a hundred employees or less. or 15 -- or did they raise it $25 million in revenue or something like that?

but 100 employees or less is sufficient for most cases. do you have visibility into unemployment numbers as part of t.t.x.? >> we don't work with that. the controller's office is the one that looks at that and we could prefer you to ted eagan, our city economist. >> okay. and i want to echo the commissioner yekutiel comments about making permanent some of these online services. they make life a lot easier for the business owners. so the more we head that direction, i think that's good. and then finally, in our memo to ertf, we have asked that the loss of taxes paid due to the gross receipt and unsecured property taxes, we're looking for as much demographic information as possible about

that. and so as i mentioned small business is a hundred employees or less. but to the extent that we could have that broken down even further we are interested in -- by industry and then i.c.f. code and the commercial district and then in terms of the employee sizes we're interested in one to five, six to 10, 11 to 25. you know, we're trying to get a sense of where the pain is most concentrated. and it seems relevant as we are facing the city-wide budget issues, you know, where does our employment come from and where does our tax revenue come from. where do we need to apply our efforts and what is the highest and best use of our efforts. that's what we're trying to get at. so i appreciate you coming in and i appreciate your time. we are over. so thank you so much.

and i think we're going to move on. director hillis. >> bye, guys. >> good afternoon, i am here. >> president laguana: wonderful. perfect. a pleasure to meet you online virtually and hopefully someday in the future in person. and if you have a presentation, please feel free to make it. >> i do. and dan cider is here with me, the executive director of the program. and he's going to help with the presentation as well. so thank you for having me. many of you i have known and worked with over the years. both as i sat on the planning commission for eight years and i worked for the city and the office of workforce, economic and workforce development for over 15 years. so i'm looking forward to working with you all. and when i took this position small business and the future of our neighborhood commercial corridors was certainly a big

priority for me. we saw significant vacancies before the pandemic and in our process and how we fill those and how we permit those i know is an interest to all here. it's become obviously extremely critical since the pandemic and our expectations is that there will be more vacancies in our commercial corridors in the future. so i appreciate your work on that. we need to fix our process. i mean, we need to make filling a vacancy and getting a permit for these uses in small businesses over-the-counter and as easy as we can make it. it's an issue of equity currently if you've got to go through the process. if you're appealed or you need to go through a discretionary review process, it could take a year or more. and it's extremely expensive to go through that process. last week our two weeks ago at our commission hearing we had a discretionary review where an ice cream shop that wanted to

open in the mission was kind of being opposed by a fellow ice cream shop. there were over 65 public commenters and it went on for hours. i mean, this was for a permitted use. so we realize that there's an issue. we've got to fix. and you've all helped us in the past with implementing that as well as anticipating the currently of the one-stop permit of 49 south van ness that we're looking forward to i continuing those improvements. your letter addressed a lot of the issue issues that is on thet for november that is going to address. so i thought that we would take the majority of our time and kind of walk through the provisions that are in that and if there's any questions on that. because it's on the ballot, nor you or us can advocate for it so we're going to be objective and just kind of give you factually

what it is that will be before the voters in november. so, dan, are you know you able to pull up the presentation? >> i am doing it right now. can you see my screen, everyone? >> i can. i think that we're good. so the mayor's initiative ordinance was submitted with the department of elections last tuesday. and it will be on the ballot in november. it's 98 pages long which gives you some sense of the complexity of our planning code and there's 52 neighborhood commercial districts that are named in the planning code in this ballot initiative applies to most of them. again, our comments will be objective and just kind of give you the facts about the initiative. so next slide, please. so the initiative generally affects the planning code.

but it also kind of takes a broader view and brings in other agencies as well. it creates a streamlined review and inspection process so that principleally permitted uses is a target for the citie cities to approve those in 30 days. we're hoping to do this for more plannings over-the-counter it. establishes a policy to allow table service for restaurants within parcels which they currently can't do. and we want to continue to balance that with our desire to make these open to the public. and it locks in the provisions in this initiative for three years from passage and after that, the mayor can change it. next slide, please. so one of the major things that it does is eliminates neighborhood notification for principleally permitted uses in districts. currently if there's a change of

use, you would notify the community. this would take about 30 days for the actual notification but in reality this process could take anywhere from 90 days to six months. so this is going to drastically shorten the timeframe for permitted uses to occupy a space. next slide, please. and finally the second biggest provision in the initiative is it removes restrictions on specific uses in most neighborhood commercial districts. so our activities like studios and camps for kids around arts and social services and philanthropic facilities which it changes the definition -- which i'll describe later -- will be principally permitted uses in commercial corridors. non-retail sales and services, which are primarily office spaces, would be principally

permitted on upper floors in permitted uses on the ground floors. general entertainment, things like arcades and bowling alleys, movie theatres, community facilities. we've got two definitions of restaurants. and restaurants and limited restaurants can serve alcohol. limited restaurants can't. animal hospitals. retail professional services which are insurance agents. most of these are principally permitted on the ground floor. and all of them will be principally committed where they're currently allowed by c.i.u. and where they're principally committed they'll continue to be principl principd they will continue. so a big shift to allow them to be permitted on the ground floor in the commercial districts. that, coupled with the noticing provisions i think that we

believe will cut the permitting process down significantly. next slide, please. there's some smaller provisions in the ordinance. this one would allow new workspace type uses in connection with eat asking drinking usage in districts. they can be accessory uses during the daytime or principley permitted with things such as cafés. next slide, please. and kind of responding to some anticipated closures of bars and entertainment venues, this would allow tempary uses in those spaces for up to six years. allows to avoid potentially a lengthy repermitting process

when they want to revert back to nighttime entertainment or bar use it. allows top-up retail in vacant commercial storefronts. these are currently permitted in xiftding retail spaces. next slide, please. it eliminates the requirement for outdoor activity spaces so this is table and chairs for a restaurant. for example, in the rear yard space. we currently need a conditional use. the initiative would allow those -- the right as long as the use is between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.. it won't apply to bars. it does eliminate some restrictions and this is fairly technical, and in the use that currently get their restrictions based on neighboring n.c.u.s. it will fix that provision which

has caught up some small businesses. next slide, please. and then finally changes some definitions. so as i alluded to before it expands the definition of social services and philanthropic facilities to both allow for the office uses associated with those uses to be allowed on the ground floor. so what this is getting at is potentially allowing some non-profit type organizations to occupy ground floors, both providing on-site services but also their related office space. and it expands the definition of bona fide eating establishments. to add some additional methodology to that. currently the standard is kind of -- a percentage of revenue from food, alcoholic beverages

and this will allow a broader gross receipt standard that other jurisdictions utilize. and i think that is the end of that presentation. again, we want to continue to work with you on things that may not be addressed in this initiative, but i think that it does cover a lot of the concerns you had in your letter to the economic recovery task force. so i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> president laguana: wonderful. commissioners, any questions? commissioner yekutiel. >> commissioner yekutiel: thank you, very much. and we look forward to working with you over the coming months. obviously, we can't speak whether we support or don't support the ballot measure. i have two questions. one, the ballot would be on in november, we're currently bleeding -- bleeding small

businesses -- you know, in our city. so what are you working on between now and november? and what do you think that you would work on if it doesn't pass? >> yes. so most of what this changes or will that we have in our planning code -- so, you know, we are certainly trying to expand our program and just process permits quicker. we recognize that, you know, this process can't be as long as it takes for many small businesses to get through it. so supervisor peskin had an ordinance before -- or a commission a couple weeks ago that would kind of require us to process c.e.u.s associated with small businesses and neighborhood commercial corridors. in kind of the timeframe that we're supporting cp3 permits. so we will continue to prioritize these. we recognize that it's critical to get vacancies filled and the

businesses back up and running. if the ballot initiative doesn't pass, you know, i think that many of the things in the ordinance are things both -- you support, your staff supports, we support, and our commission supports. so we'll be potentially looking to implement those by changes to the code if the voters don't pass them. >> okay, my second question is about fees. i don't know about the other commissioners but my business is one of the most recent to have gone through the planning and the permitting and building process. and it is very expensive to get all the fees paid and necessary to start a small business in san francisco. understanding that a fair amount of those fees might go to actually supporting the budget of the planning department, and also understanding that we're going to need to get much more -- we're going to have to be providing a lot more incentives for people to create and start small businesses over the coming years, are you prepared to reduce the size of the planning department and

eliminate fees completely to start a new business for the next year or two? >> i think that certainly looking at our fee structure is critical. i can tell you that our budget is primarily fee driven. we've got about $42 million of revenue from fees every year. that make up about -- our total budget of about $50 million. and over the last couple months we have seen a pretty big reduction, about a $6 million reduction, in our fees as a result of the kind of lack of activity in the real estate world. but we are looking at our fee structure. we've got analysis underway currently. a lot of what we do is dictated by kind of state law in where we can collect fees. so we're looking at our fee structure in, you know, looking at who is paying and how we can kind of reconfigure where we're charging fees. so we're in the midst of doing

that. and we anticipate that being done in the next couple months and can bring forward the legislation to kind of right size our fees. >> amazing. and the last thing is that we mentioned it in the proposals to the economic recovery task force and i also look forward to seeing your recommendations on fee restructuring. i think that will be super important. i don't know if you mentioned discretionary reviews and you talked about neighborhood notification but we brought up how sometimes d.r.s are used to stymie competition and hold up a business. but i didn't see anything about holding them back. what is your thought on that and what is your process on it? >> so eliminating discretionary views would take a voter movement to do that as well. it's also the ability to appeal to the board of appeals. what we can do, you know, barring a kind of change by the voters, is prioritize discretionary reviews that are

appealing things like what we saw the other day -- just the opening of a small business. so internally we can prioritize and try to push those forward and get them before our commission and weighed on or approved or whatever needs to be done. we can't eliminate that process. but we can certainly work with the elected officials and others to figure out how to make it easier. >> thank you. >> president laguana: commissioners, our team. >> thank you for the presentation. it was very great and it was very thorough. i have been advocating throughout this process and throughout all of these days and months. i'm very concerned with equity and throughout the presentation i didn't hear mention of the cultural districts. and we're really worried, especially in the mission, that awfltd work that you're performing and that the various departments have done to make

sure our cultural districts stay intact will be unintendedly gentrified because of this. at speed that we are moving i see the unintended consequences of gentrification. with all of the money that would be available, a lot of investors are going to focus in the mission. we already have people speculating and keeping commercial tenants on month-to-month due to the commercial moratorium. people haven't paid their lease, and in addition to all of the vacant storefronts in the mission it creates the perfect storm. with all of the businesses shuttered throughout the city, the people that could get investors, they'll flood into the mission and just devastate and create more gentrification. i haven't seen anything, and i have been mentioning it and been detailing this in every meeting that i can, and i'm very concerned that we're not focusing culturally or equitably throughout this process. and yet again i do not want to delay this process. i just want to have sensitivity to certain neighborhoods.

>> it's a great question and one that we brought up during this entire process in developing the initiative. so, one, i'd say that, you know, our process is an equitable one. if you've got resources and if you can hire attorneys and you can kind of pay rent during a fairly long fee process or a d.r. process, you know, that's not equitable. but i should also state -- and i forgot to mention this and i apologize -- the provisions that we talked about removing restrictions for c.e.u.s especially, don't apply to a couple districts. and those districts are ones where we are working kind of in concert with the neighborhood organizations in doing a ton of community development work. so the mission n.c.t., the 24th street and c.t. and the soman c.t. are areas that those provisions don't apply to.

and we recognize that these are neighborhoods where we're invested in, and the city is invested in and we're working with the communities to help to shape and develop neighborhoods to prevent displacement and gentrification. so in those districts, the provisions i talked about don't necessarily apply. >> so the 98-page ballot, it's somewhere in there? >> what happens is that every n.c.t. is kind of a named district in our code and that's the reason that it's 98 pages. so irving street has its own provisions. so we had to go through, you know, the mayor's office had to go through and make changes to each of those districts to make things permitted where they were fee used. and we left those provisions in place on 24th street and mission and in soma. (please stand by) and the plann

those areas. are those going to be

eliminated or are they going to be exempted? for example, north beach. >> director hillis: yeah, i think north beach gets a little complicated because there's an overlay of an s.u.d. on top of the n.c. and dan, i believe if you're here, you can clarify this. the ordinance does not touch the s.u.d. overlay. >> good afternoon, commissioners. dan sider with staff. it does not affect the s.u.d. areas. that's one of those areas that has further constraints on top of the s.u.d. north beach remains unchanged from a use perspective through the initiative. >> okay.

thank you. >> dominica, the -- can you just verbally say what the instructions are for calling in? i'm still getting feedback from members of the public that aren't able to access the public comment line. i know it's scrolling across the screen, but maybe just verbally say it, as well. >> commissioner laguana, while we're waiting for that, can i just ask one more quick question? >> absolutely, please. >> director hillis, you've heard some of my fellow commissioners talk about this, again, not displaying pro or con against the ballot mesasur, but obviously, we want to make sure that certain communities are being focused on it, and at

the same time, if we come up with a solution and carve out the corridors that people want for services in, it reduces the efficacy of some stuff. how many neighborhoods are left? >> director hillis: well, again, we have 52 neighborhood commercial districts. the only ones that are carved out are mission street, the 24 street n.c.t., and the solano n.c.t. those can be changed by ordinance, as well. if we want to fine-tune them by city ordinance, those not singled out by this initiative

could be changed by ordinance, too. >> when i was looking at the planning process, a lot of questions asked about why it took so long, because it took for it to get on the agenda and then for planning commission to vote on it. how do you propose to change the planning commission process so that that's not a pinch point? >> well, if we're taking c.m.u.s and prioritizing them, that takes a significant amount of time of the planning commission's agenda off their agenda so we can focus on other things. we also have the ability to prioritize what's on our agenda, and certainly housing, filling vacancies in neighborhood corridors, and

departmental priorities are on our count. >> okay. thank you, director. >> director hillis: thank you. >> so how does the planning department -- i'm just checking to make sure no other commissioners have questions. how does the planning department look at data collection and analysis -- i guess -- let me rephrase my question. sorry. how much of the policy making is under your control versus, say, the board of supervisors or the mayor? how much flexibility do you have with the planning department in terms of setting policy or recommendations? do all of these require some legislative activity or can some of these be done just out of your office? >> director hillis: most of what you recommended in your

letter would require changes to our code. >> okay. >> director hillis: so -- so most of it would need legislative fixes. things like reducing fees or eliminating fees, changing some of the these processes, whether you need a c.u. or not -- >> right. >> director hillis: -- most of that is by code. >> would that apply to relaxing restrictions on exterior signs or allowing temporary exterior signage? >> director hillis: yes. >> do you know, was there anything in the ballot measure about signs or signage? >> director hillis: there was not, no. >> okay. so in terms of data -- and i guess their where i was headed with this -- is a persuasive argument in terms of moving the ball forward is understanding

where the baseline is and then understanding where we want to get to. one of the things that we advocated for the department was collecting data on storefront vacancies. i guess that would be the most relevant to you guys. do you guys collect data around vacancies -- what is your policy around data collection in general? >> director hillis: yeah. storefront vacancies, we'll do that for a specific neighborhood corridor, but it's not something we normally do on a regular basis. on just our data analysis capacity, the inventory of storefronts in this city, which then, hopefully, we could use and piggyback off other data sources to fill that in,

whether a storefront is vacant or not, but currently no. >> all right. and then for you in your job, what sort of data do you look at that matters to you? what sort of key metrics are you looking at when working for the planning department? >> director hillis: well, certainly how long things take in planning process and certainly how it relates to housing and permitting. those are just key managerial and data points; how long does something take to get through our process. i can't say we have perfect data on that, but it's something we're building our capacity to do because not only does it affect our small businesses, but it affects how quickly we can get housing and affordable housing.

>> so one of the things the ballot promises was a 30-day turnaround on permits. how do you plan to accomplish that when the current turnaround time can be ten months, a year or more? >> director hillis: yeah. our hope is that most of these uses will only require an over-the-counter permit, and hopefully kind of given what we've been through in the last couple of months, that over-the-counter could also be done remotely. so we're hoping with the relaxation of noticing provisions, the relaxation to jump through potentially a c.u. hoop, those permits that can be issued over the counter, which we believe, then, we can meet the 30-day time period.

we're going to have to work with other departments, too, and that's going to be a process-oriented and management exercise, but i think we can do that. >> i'm encouraged about that ability to do things remotely. is that an articulated priority for your department, trying to move things on-line as much as possible? >> absolutely. and i think now, there is also the pandemic. we are operating at, you know, 95% capacity in doing it remotely with all phases on-line. we're working with the building department to make sure that what they do and we do, we can smoothly integrate, so there's issues with that. but our hope is that a result of this, what we've done to overhaul our processes, with the permitting center opening at 49 south vanness, that we

can make improvements to processing time. >> i would imagine that going on-line would give you better visibility in turnaround time and more transparency with respect to what process it went through and who worked with it and so on, so that would seem like additional benefits. do you plan to continue with this? do you plan to make this the plan going forward? >> absolutely. we still intend to make services available in person, but everything that we're doing remotely and on-line, we'll want to keep. >> with respect to director tumlin's comments earlier, it certainly seems to whatever extent we can keep people from making unnecessary trips will probably help us with the

traffic jams and congestion issues, as well, so every little bit helps. >> director hillis: absolutely. >> commissioner dooley? >> hi. i just wanted to say i really appreciate these changes because i know my own business that i've been trying to open, it's been 2.5 years that we've been paying rent, and we finally got our c.u., and now, we don't even know when d.b.i. is going to allow us to build out the interior. so, i mean, that was just an enormous financial expenditure of renting the space for 2.5 years, and it's still not open, so please, you know, continue with what you're doing because it's been a nightmare. >> director hillis: yeah. i served on the planning

commission for years, and often, we'd see projects that weren't controversial, and there didn't seem a need to go through this process, but it was a process that they had to go through. it didn't seem there was any policy objectives to go through this process, so we're working on that, as well. >> so i know, director, we have a public commenter on the line. we're going to allow them to make the comment, and commissioners may have additional comment. i know you have a hard time in 16 minutes, so i want to let the public commenter do so. >> hi, commissioners. my name is robert stuckman, and i live in lower haight.

i'm calling in because a couple of weeks ago, i listened to an item at the planning commission about an ice cream shop opening across from another. in that hearing, public comment flooded in. i counted 61. by the time i finished posting my play by play, by phone was blowing up with notifications. i saw my thread being retweeted by san franciscans, urban planners, even politicians all over the country, and nobody could believe that san francisco was having a debate over opening an ice cream shop. tens of thousands of people read through the thread that i was posting, so it's my belief that the delay from our planning process is detrimental to the entire city.

you know, the delays from this process cost the new ice cream shop tens of thousands of dollars and months of time, which is frankly shopping. after that meeting, one small business owner messaged me on twitter saying a small business review cost him $200,000 in operating costs caused by the delay. so it's clear that our planning process deprives neighborhoods of affordable stores, and it's true, the only businesses that can survive is one with investors and deep pockets. so i support every effort to make it easier to open a small business. i think the ballot measure is a sensible one. this will help small businesses and nonprofits alike and artists, so i am in full support if we can reform the permit process times from seven months to one month. >> thank you.

is there any other callers? no other callers? public comment is closed. i want to add that the ice cream imbroglio mimicked the great falafel fight in that the concerns seemed to stem more from a similar competitor opening the space than any legitimate planning issue -- at least that's what it looked like from the outside. so i was relieved to see that the ice cream fight was resolved unanimously. as i recall, the falafel fight was a much more narrow win, so i think it's good to see

progress on this issue. it's way too hard for businesses to get started, and it's way to hard for them to do business in the city since i joined this commission 1.5 years ago. it is great to hear your comments and your attitudes toward this and your commitment towards making it easier for small business. i think one thing that this crisis has revealed that maybe wasn't front of mind for a lot of people is the huge contribution that small businesses make to our economy and our employment levels. i think we employ roughly 45% of all employees in the city, so it is really important that we make progress on these issues, and i appreciate your efforts there. is there any other commissioner

comments? okay. director, thank you so much for your time. we really do appreciate all the work you're doing. we appreciate the update on the ballot measure. we will get the presentations that were given to us today up on our website so that the public can review what progress has been made and what has been done. to you and director tumlin and treasurer cisneros, it's been an unbelievably challenging time to have these responsibilities, and i think i can speak for all of us that we're deeply grateful and proud of the work that you guys have all done, and all our city leaders, including the board of supes and the mayor, we have a lot to be proud of in the city. so thank you for your service, and thank you for your time today. >> director hillis: thank you very much, and happy to come back any time. >> okay.

great. we look forward to it. so do any of the commissioners on the economic recovery task force want to provide an update on their work with the economic recovery task force? anything they may have learned or observations? this would be directed at commissioners hui and ortiz-cartagena as well. i defer to commissioner hui and commissioner or tee catiz-cart first. commissioner hui? >> there's so much on my mind. i've been focused on the shared spaces program and seeing how

we can ave. out little plaza like areas within our communities and within some of our corridors? it's a little bit slow going just because it does require for everybody to really want for this, but i'm trying to kind of sell a dream right now, where i think last commission meeting, you really inspired me in terms of talking about how we can reenvision our city, and so i think with those types of conversations, the more that we can have, you know, maybe some tangible mock-ups and renderings to be able to show m merchants -- i feel at this point, i'm pitching a goal to people, but i do feel like the goal, the outcome is going to be beautiful for a lot of our businesses. i think the outcome across the board in general -- what i've been doing is also the same kind of thing, is really

encouraging people, encouraging merchants to really think big and wide and deep and really see, like, what could be. and so i think we have a little bit of a breather, but at the same time, we can think about what we want everything to look like. this time the time, and we've got to do it, so i encourage that of the merchant associations, as well, because i think that they're going to really need to be the ones who do a lot of the legwork in helping people. the other piece that i wanted to say was i'm also pitching the same dream for small

businesses. i think we have the opportunity to create some networks and tap into our small business networks to provide more services and consulting services for our small business community, so i think i'm trying to piece together some sort of -- i'm talking to the economic recovery task force to piece something together for legal, accounting, as we move towards -- even the c.u. and revisions, or as we move towards changes in things, merchants will try to figure out how they can either comply or utilize the new legislation or the new benefit. so i think that's pretty much those two pieces, and then,

we've been working on opening up retail, making sure that everybody has their understanding of what's happening, and what else is there? and i did learn a lot in regards to the dental reopening that i think we can use in other sectors. that's pretty much all i think i can remember at this point. >> thank you. that's fantastic, and i appreciate you sticking up for that vision. it's really going to take everybody echoing that, and it's also a call-out to the architects and artists and dreamers out there to join that

conversation and jump in and help their businesses. i'll tell you, it's been sad to see all the boarded-up windows, but i'll tell you, it's a brite spot to see how many of those boarded up windows have been painted and decorated and graphics. it just makes you realize that we have a lot of opportunity here to make our city more magical, and this is a golden opportunity to seize that. whatever we -- i think one of the jobs of our commission is to help get that mindset out there to the public and to the small business community. yeah, i think it's right to call it a mantra because i'm going to keep repeating it until it's true. commissioner ortiz-cartagena, go ahead. >> i really think the economic

recovery task force collects a lot of important information outside of meetings. i want to give a shout out to the director of oewd. we want to make sure that there's not unintended consequences and artificial barriers to people of color, so watching everything from an equitable lens has been my mission, but i don't want to hinder anything. i'm a fan of this new fresh sense of speed and urgency that the city is partaking in. i love it, but i just want to make sure that there's not unintended consequences. that's definitely partnering up with city leadership behind the scenes. we've been doing a lot of work outside of the ertf, but it's because ertf puts us in contact with all the key stakeholders. that allows me to go back to my

office, set appointments up. i feel like it's a voice where the street and the ground people can definitely have their invoices all the way up heard. that's been great. one of the other things is making sure that there's not artificial barriers for the program. monolingual and technology. even though it's easy for people that are tech savvy, it's harder for people that english is not their first language, so holding their hands when they're going through the process. also, making sure that we don't have unintended consequences by speculators. the moratorium, the unintended problem that people did not pay their lease, there's a lot of speculators that can have the opportunity to rush certain neighborhoods like the mission, and we want to make sure that we have the capacity and resources to put that off and offset it, so that's really

been my work. not to slow down anything, because i don't want anything to slow down, i just want to make sure that we're looking at it through a cultural and equitable lens. >> you know, i just want to publicly acknowledge what a leader you've been on this, commissioner ortiz cartagena. you've had a big impact, and i want to let the other commissioners know, and the public, as well, that after our last meeting, you reached out and followed up with oewd regarding making sure that share spaces was more equitable. as you know, i've -- we were able to connect, and director torres was, my understanding, wonderful, wonderfully responsive, but that conversation, that was you

getting that conversation started, and i'm grateful for your efforts and advocacy. i think it's critical, and a reminder, and it's easy for people to forget when they're worried about their own businesses and their own lives and their own jobs, so thank you so much for being that advocate, and i will back you up every time to the ends of the earth on making sure that space is more equitable. i agree with you on the insurance. i think the city should negotiate some sort of bulk rate on behalf of our residents and businesses that aren't able to afford it. the monolingual issue is an

issue. we brought it up to director tumlin, and it's our efforts of bringing it up that allows it to be addressed. he wasn't aware of it, so that was a nice moment there. the technology issue is something that i actually worry a lot about, because as we move so much of our services on-line, on the one hand, it saves time, it saves energy, it saves space, but on the other hand, you have folks that aren't technology so farravvy, just arrived here -- certainly, i arrived here with nothing but a backpack, and it was several years before i had a savings account, let alone any money to put it in. i think that's something we have to keep a close eye on because that's where our

vibrancy as a city is going to come from. for myself, i will echo what you said about ertf. most of what happens on ertf is outside of the actual meetings. the meetings just primarily update. it just seems like it's a platform for people to connect and get together. it's useful and has been a useful platform for triggering and starting a lot of conversations, including our own memo, which was impacting many of our directors.

i think this is successful towards its goals, and it has been a useful way to help get information out and help get people talking to each other. >> commissioner laguana? >> yes. >> have you guys talked about the petition to move up the opening of indoor bars by a month at ertf, the one that the mayor signed and scott wiener signed and matt haney talked about? >> the answer is no. ertf is -- as i was kind of starting to explain, our way of communicating with ertf is through platforms. there is not an opportunity, like, to get in a room and have a conversation about these kind

of things? >> do you know if that's being talked about on subcommittees within the city? that's what i'm hearing about, is that bars want to be able to open safely. >> well, i know that director dick- dick-endrizzi has an update for us. director, do you have any updates for us? >> yes, director dick-endrizzi. the update that i wanted to get to first is that the mayor did issue an update today, and as i've mentioned in a couple of the previous meetings, our office has been working with the professional service sector, so the mayor sent out an announcement that, of course, this is pending state approval on the variance, that

hair salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors, piercing parlors, and bars -- there's going to be guidelines for bars being able to open up outdoors, in addition to indoor booths and outdoor swimming pools will be able to open on that

point, how can we be of service and useful, and what happened if we get to if there was a 15% increase in the last week in the united states, so maybe this is the wrong avenue and place to talk about it, but i just wanted to bring it up. it might be a good idea for us to start figuring out what a contingency plan it for that. >> and commissioner yakutiel,

that's an interesting perspective. so perhaps we might want to bring up before you the department of public health because -- i also, just the engagement that our office has had with the business community and working on the guidelines, businesses are very committing to ensuring that they are doing everything that they can, not only to -- to protect the health of their employees and their customers, so i've -- that's very encouraging. and so i think as much as we can support the messaging, both as to our businesses and -- and the city, to our constituents, you know, the better off that we will be on the long-term.

>> totally. director dick-endrizzi, i totally agree. it might behoove us as a commission and an office to create the same amount of social pressure that there was to fall into line for shelter in place. i feel like it is now on us to prevent a second shutdown in a lot of ways. not completely, but if we don't want a second shutdown, then we need to make sure that we're taking this stuff seriously. i have to report that i was in hayes valley to check it out and go shopping. let me tell you, you could not go into a shop without getting doused in sanitizer, without people encouraging you to wear a mask. we need to take it upon ourselves to make sure that this stuff is being enforced. >> commissioner, i just want to

say that this is an appropriate and timely question. you're not being a kill joy at all. if anything, you're being a joe preserver, in that, you -- joy preserver, in that in some parts of the country, people think that it is the shutdown that caused the economic problems. we have social distancing and other protocols that are designed to mitigate and reduce transmission. with that being said, i'll say that despite governor newsom's

order mandating that masks be worn, i have seen -- i was driving along ocean beach, and i saw crowds of people, many of whom weren't wearing masks. i saw people not wearing masks in other sort of closed settings, and so i do think that you're right. the burden, for better for worse, fairly or not, is going to be on many of our merchants and small businesses to enforce this social protocol and to make it standardized, to make it something that everybody adopts, to create that social pressure. we need it, and if we don't get it, we're the ones that are going to suffer the

consequences. so i really thank you very much, and miriam is putting up her hand to speak. commission commissioner zouzounis, i'm sorry. >> hi, everybody. thank you for that presentation and for all the comments. i do agree -- i guess i wanted to just kind of flag that moving people in the direction that they need to go right now for resources is definitely paramount, and i don't know if anybody else is still experiencing some backlog with -- you know, where they don't want to necessarily wait until a ballot measure relieves a lot of these backlogs. what is -- what is kind of the resource that we're presenting to business and small property owners right now who are

waiting on permits or even just scans that are waiting in d.b.i. or whatnot? >> well, it sounded like director hillis was saying many of these changes he could not make without action from policy makers. so i don't know what resource we have other than to educate small business owners and encourage them to engage with their supervisors. perhaps director dick-endrizzi, do you have any ideas on that? >> yeah. this is director dick-endrizzi. so there are some backlogs with d.b.i.s permitting process.

my recommendation is because we do have a small group of folks in oewd who are helping to assist with businesses through this process, so commissioner zouzounis, if you know of specific businesses, then i would have them contact us, and we can put them in touch with the folks at oewd to help them getting through this process. >> i will say, too, just to bolster and add to that -- [inaudible] >> i believe we always have the option of issuing a memo or a resolution to the board of supervisors, encouraging them

to adopt this bit of -- this policy idea or introduce legislation around this policy idea. we can really flag it and draw attention to it. now i want to be judicious around that. i don't want to ignore our suggestions, but, you know, i'm certainly open to using that tool in our tool chest to raising this as something requiring more action. i think commissioner yakuitel echoed this, and commissioner zouzounis, and i echoed it, as well. we're talking about september, and my goodness, that's a long

time away. if we can move faster on some of this, why not. we just want to make sure that we have our ducks in a row in the sense that we're advocating for something that's -- you know, that we do it in a way that helps move it forward, so any other commissioner comments, questions? hearing none, item is closed. next item, please. >> clerk: item 3, approval of draft meeting minutes from june 8, 2020. action item. >> commissioners, any questions? seeing none, any members of the public who would like to make comments on item number 3? >> two members are listening. nobody's queued up.

>> okay. hearing none, public comment is closed. do we have a motion? >> i make a motion to accept the minutes. >> second. >> motion by commissioner adams to approve the meeting minutes, seconded by commissioner dooley. roll call vote. [roll call]

>> clerk: okay. motion passes, 6-0, with one absence. >> okay. next item. >> clerk: commissioner's report. we'll ask president, vice president, and commissioners to announce small business activities and items that are of interest to the small business community. action item. commissioners, do we have any reports? commissioner dooley? >> i just wanted to give you an update because we have launched a very successful small spaces program in north beach, and first, i want to thank commissioner adams for mentioning about having the merchant association provide the insurance which has saved

everyone, all the small businesses, a huge amount of hassle? and the business association paid for 100 barricades to be rented for three months so that we could expand our our shared green spaces into stockton and union now. so the bottom line is it's all about your merchant association. get them involved. we've been down there. we put up the barricades. we pay for what needs to be paid, and that is really the pay to go. talk to your supervisor

directly. >> north beach has come alive. >> yes. >> it is extraordinary what it has done. it has definitely led the start for the city. i think one thing that i'm hearing from merchants in other districts is they're not even aware of the shared spaces program, so i think the first half of the battle is just letting people know it exists, and we've got to get the commissioners engaged on this. i was encouraged when director tumlin said they received 385 applications, but i was also -- i feel like there's no reason that shouldn't be 1,000 plus. so we've -- we have our work cut out for us.

but commissioner dooley, i know you've been an incredible leader on moving that forward, so thank you, and north beach is absolutely leading the way, and i hope we can emulate your success in other parts of the city. i haven't seen any of that in my district, district 7, so i'd like to see more progress there, absolutely, so thank you very much. >> i was wondering if, perhaps, on our website, we could even -- i could send photos of north beach and how they've implemented it, whether that would be helpful to other neighborhood districts to see something up and running or if -- you know, i don't know if we would be the best spot for that, but i think people need a little inspiration right now. >> yeah. i think that would be really welcome, and if we're able to pest it on the web side or regulation, a reason we can't, then i would agree, and

commissioner adams has pointed out that he has photoes from te castro, as well. let's do it. i'd love to have best case examples of shared spaces. i think this is one of the biggest opportunities that's coming out of this and could be a huge silver lining, so i want to do everything we can to celebrate what's working and help other businesses and other districts see, learn, and observe, especially know when people just aren't moving around the city at the same pace that they were. yeah. >> this is director dick-endrizzi. we can send them as an example in our e-blast. i also want to encourage north

beach and castro in our district of merchants to also work with the sfcd so they can highlight what different merchant areas are doing, so it helps to support and how you're doing it, so it helps to support those merchant areas that aren't as developed as the castro and north beach. so just want to encourage that, as well. >> i also wanted to give a quick shoutout to c.d.m. may. north beach received a grant from them to help set up our shared spaces, and apparently that is something that is available for members of the cdma. we deeply appreciated getting

that, so contact your cdma representative and get that along and get that grant. >> commissioner yakutiel, are you trying to say something? you look like you may be on mute. maybe, maybe not. okay. so any other commissioners reports, updates? okay. i'll add a couple reports of my own. over the -- it has been a busy couple weeks. one of the things that came up last week was dr. aragon was seeking a variance from the board of supervisors that would

give him more flexibility. this is a variance from the state of california, governor newsom's executive order, and this allows dr. aragon to have more flexibility with opening more businesses sooner, and this is something that will enable san francisco businesses to get back in business quicker. in order to obtain the variance, we did need unanimous approval from the board of supervisors because the county has to attest that their health director will follow certain guidelines with respect to when they open up the accelerated opening. it was not at all clear that we were going to have unanimous approval. there were some questions in some corners about whether the board has sufficient input, you

know, whether it was being handled appropriately. i want to commend the two communities that turned out in public comment. one would be the tattoo shops, and the other would be the physical fitness studios. you know, it -- it's really, as you guys know, public comment can be really impactful when public policy makers are making decisions. these two communities, who our office has been working with to help guide them through personal services, we just simply told them that this hearing was coming up and might be relevant to their shops opening. oh, my gosh, did they turn out. it was 2.5 hours of public comment, and it was

extraordinary, and i think it did make a big difference. the variance did pass unanimously, so dr. aragon did get that flexibility, and that will be helpful in making sure that all our businesses open up quickly and safely. of course, safety is the top priority here. the other thing i wanted to let the commission know is that we have heard about, at a previous hearing, supervisor mar's right to return legislation. one of the amendments, you may recall that they've increased the threshold from 10 to 75 employees. we pointed out that small businesses include 100 employees or less. i've read one thing that

increased that to 100 employees or less. i've heard that it's scheduled and proceeding, but my understanding, as the legislation is currently constructed, it would not impact small businesses, and the larger business community has -- has not weighed in. that's it for me for reports off the top of my head. i know there were other things, but it's hard to remember them at the end of a long hearing. i'll do one more call for any commissioner reports. >> i have one. i don't know if commissioner

adams already mentioned this, but if you're to honor pride, we are -- a group of us, ben davis are illuminating the pink triangle where the pink triangle is unraveled. for the first time, we are illuminating it so it'll be a beacon of pink light goodness. so they're still raising money to do it. you can help illuminate the pink triangle, and i think it's going to be something that the city is going to be proud of. i just wanted to take a second on public t.v. to announce that we're illuminating the pink triangle, and it will serve as

a beacon during pride month. >> thank you, commissioner yakutiel. father's day was quite meaningful to me. as someone you know, i grew up with foster parents, two dads, and they have now been together 35 years, so it was a special father's day for me, and i look forward too seeing that pink triang triangle illuminated. i like what they did with the bay bridge. i'm an ex-rock star. i like light shows, i'm all about it. and then, you know, one other thing i wanted to mention briefly is next monday, we're having a special hearing about

delivery asks and special use. i know it's been a long meeting, but today, we had four agency heads, and we were obviously pressed for time fitting them all in, and yet, this legislation has to come before the board, and it's a balancing act between do you have people sit for three, four, five-hour meetings like this or do we split this off to a separate meeting, and that seemed like that could safely be split to a separate meeting. it sounds, from what i've been able to ascertain, that the various stakeholders have been doing a good job at talking to each other and working out an agreement that everybody can live with. i'm just as time challenged as everybody else.

i know what a drag it is to constantly have to be showing up. those of you that made it, i appreciate it. those of you that didn't, i completely understand. it's just what we needed to move forward. i appreciate everybody's patience on that. with that being said, are there any members of the public that would like to make comment on item number 3 -- no, number 4, right? number 4. >> nobody's in the queue currently. >> okay. great. seeing none, public comment closed. next item, please. >> item 4, commissioner's reports -- or item 5. new business. allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration. discussion items. >> manny, did i miss you before? did i call you? i'm sorry. i see you in the queue here. >> oh, yeah, yeah. that was old. >> okay. commissioners, any new

business? okay. i have one item that -- it's an idea i had coming down the pike. i wanted to get your guys' feedback on this. this came out of a conversation i had with director josh arce who was telling me how he got sort of engaged with city government and policy, and he said he was, you know, doing a bit of the activist stuff and sending e-mails, and then, he was -- he was advocating for environmental stuff, and he sent an e-mail to a mutual friend of ours, adam wehrbach, who was a commissioner with public utilities commission at the time. and adam responded yes!

and josh said that was the first time that any city official had spoken with him or interacted with him, and it made me think about our power as commissioners and that we are city officials, and we do have this ability to have a big impact and influence on other people who are trying to figure out how to contribute to public service. so i had an idea, and i mentioned it to commissioner zouzounis, and she liked it, so i'm going to mention it to you and get your feedback. what do you guys think of doing a mentorship program where, you know, perhaps -- and of course

completely voluntary, no obligation, but perhaps identify somebody, each of us identify someone to, you know show them the world through our eyes, see what it's like to, you know, walk them through what we're considering when we're on a commission. how we view politics, how we view the city agencies and city responsibilities with an eye towards creating that next generation of business leaders, so the next folks that will come behind us and maybe perhaps, as we move onto other stages of our lives -- i certainly don't intend to be on the small business commission

the rest of my life -- perhaps this would enable somebody to join the commission and be able to hit the ground running and really do a better job. so i'm curious as to what you would all think about that in mentoring folks? i think this is also a way explicitly, through personal work, kind of uphold to that commitment to equity that we've been talking about recently. it would be an opportunity to give folks who otherwise wouldn't have that experience a chance to engage. commissioner dooley? >> i've been doing that for quite a while now, and both for people that approach me, knowing that i am a commissioner, and so i spend time with them, explaining it? and also, there are younger

folks that i know through work or whatever that i'm mentoring in terms of they're interested in being involved in city hall. for example, this fellow would be a perfect person to be m mentored, and, you know, i'm all for it. >> i was imagining -- i think we all sort of engaged informally, and obviously, i commend you for what you're doing. i love that you have a candidate, i was imagining something maybe a little more formal and public that could be on our website so that they could get some recognition as being engaged in that process, and maybe that might instill a sense of accountability in terms of actually, you know, this is somebody i'm sorin-- i

sponsoring, and i'm damn well going to make sure they're involved because i'm vouching for them. i don't know what this looks like. i've never started a mentorship program. i've never participated in one, i've never been mentored by anybody, and i appreciate the support, commissioner dooley, and if anybody -- if anybody has any objections, let me know. otherwise, we'll talk -- speak with director dick-endrizzi and dominica about how we might go about rolling something like this out. commissioner adams? >> yeah, i think it's a great idea. i've been doing something similar in the castro when i stepped aside on the board. the thing is, you can't just do

it forever, and if you want things to happen and be fresh, you just have to -- you have to mentor those people because then, there's not any consistency in that, and i'm a full believer in that. >> and, you know, i'm -- i don't want to embarrass anybody, but i do recall when commissioner zouzounis was elected vice president, unanimously, i might add, she spoke how she very much valued your mentorship. >> i also did. i'm going to cry. >> thank you, commissioner adams. >> i just want to make sure that we're exercising our pull power as a commission -- our

full power as a commission and also making sure that we're balancing a bench that can not only replace us but also bolster what we're doing right now and get that out to the community. so any ways, that was my -- >> can i say one thing? i support this idea, and i think it's going to help us work with more commissions. i know i've spoken with youth commissions that are interested in starting a business. definitely, the immigrants rights, human rights who has built into them the relationship with the office of racial equity, so i think this could be a good move of -- in all directions.

>> when i came here, i had close to nothing for more than a decade. when you come here, the quip about the first dollar being the hardest dollar to make is absolutely true. i think anything we can do to help people starting out and give them a boost up in finding that next step, i'm all for it. it's what i'm here for. it's things like that is what makes me excited about public service to begin with. it's why i volunteer on this commission, and i think it's in keeping with the mission statement, which i think is still being drafted. director, do we have an update on the mission statement? >> yes, being that i didn't have the director's report, but

yes, the mission statement is being drafted. we are targeting for the july 13 meeting. >> great. great. great, great, great. we may want to, in whatever way is appropriate, check in with the commissioners before the meeting and reflect their input and not just show up with something and ta-da, here it is. >> correct, correct. and if, for any reason, because of escalated on -- escalated bringing businesses back, that that might delay, then to ensure that process, then the goal would be to finalize it on the 27th. but definitely with the plan of being able to have input from the commission first. >> wonderful. okay. great. any other commissioner new

business? okay. are there any members of the public who would like to make comments on item number 5? >> nobody's currently queued up to ask questions. >> thank you. public comment is closed. next item, please. >> clerk: item 6, adjournment. action item. >> do we have a motion? >> i move. >> i move. >> fast on that one. >> i know. i've got to jump on another meeting in, like, two seconds. >> seconded. >> clerk: motion by commissioner dooley to adjourn the meeting, seconded by commissioner laguana. roll call vote. [roll call]

>> clerk: meeting is adjourned at 1:43 p.m. >> thank you, everyone. friday meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. chairman mar joined i have vice chair peskin and commissioner

haney. >> the commit room is closed pursuant to declarations and directives. committee members will hold meetings virtually. both cable channel 26 and sfgov.tv are streaming the public comment number across the screen. comments are available via phone by calling 415-65-0001. the i.d. is 1451064576 and press pound and pound again to be committed to to the meeting.

you'll be mute and listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up press star followed by 3. call from a quiet location and speak slowly and turn down your radio or device. alternatively you may submit public comment to me by e-mailing me. if you submit public comment by e-mail it will be included in the legislative file and it can be sent to city fall timely, mr. chair items will appear on

the supervisors agenda july 7, 2020 unless other wise stated. thank you, mr. clerk. >> ordnance 74-20 to temporarily require drug stores and on demand delivery services to provide health precautions and you can call the public comment number 415-655-0001. enter the meeting i.d. of the queue to speak and finally a memo from your desk requesting the ordinance be agendized and potentially sent to the

supervisors next tuesday, june 30. >> thank you. thanks, again mr. clerk. supervisor, haney the chair is yours. >> thank you for convening the meeting and support of the ordnance and your partnership and co-sponsor of it. we are still very much in a public health emergency and pandemic and there are essential workers out there every day putting their own health at risk for all of to us deliver food, to work in grocery stores, to staff at restaurants or other essential services and we have to make sure that our laws protect them and protect their health and rights. with that in mind, we enacted this emergency ordnance for increased employee protection for grocery store, drug store

and on demand delivery. this will expire june 30th. it strengthens the workers' protections during covid-19. giving workers an additional level of protection and mechanism to file a complaint with the office of labor standards and enforcement. i want to thank pat mulligan here from the office of labor standards and enforcement for their partnership. the legislature requires gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, soap, water and disinfectant in the workplace and on demand delivery employees must be reimbursed and the service delivery service must be paid for time spent

cleaning vehicles or equipment on shift and delivery platforms have to offer the option of executing a no-contact delivery any time during the state of emergency. fourth, for employees to request a work schedule for any reason under the paid sick leave ordnance during covid-19. fifth, on demand delivery services they must keep employees up to date how to comply and lastly and importantly, number six, no ret ret retaliation for exercising rights protected under this emergency ordnance. the pandemic is not over and the workers are on the front line of helping the city and residents getting through it safely. ignoring the safety of these workers will cause an outbreak affecting all of us.

lastly, i want to thank uscw local 5 and local 648, the san francisco labor council and san francisco human rights committee, uesf, the chinese progressive association for support. we needed this a few months ago. we ton need it now and -- continue to need it now and i want to thank supervisors mar and peskin for your support and advocacy for workers and leadership in putting forward your own legislation as well to make sure workers are protected. it's been an under reported but essential part of how we've been able to control the spread of this virus which is not just putting protections for our residents but actually being explicit about the robust protection that needs to be there for workers and i do think

it has made a big difference and we continue to need it. >> thank you for work on this and your leadership on the issues. i was at a protest and they thanked us for this action. it's an important protection for them and they were asking if it was going to expire. we told them we'd make sure we re-enacted it so thank you for sponsoring the re-enactment ordnance. >> thank you. >> supervisor peskin, do you have questions or comments? why don't we go to public comment. mr. clerk, are there callers on

the line? >> clerk: operations to see if there's callers in the queue. please let us know if there are callers ready. for those who already connected please press star then 3 to be added to the queue to speak on the item. for those in the queue the system will say quote, your line has been unmuted, unquote. for those on cable channel 26 or via streaming link on sfgov.tv if you wish to speak on the item please call in by following the instructions on the screen dial 415-655-0001 and meeting i.d. 145-10 145-106-5676. has anyone connected to our call? >> i have one caller in the queue. >> clerk: thank you.

>> caller: thank you we're grateful for your leadership on this and the co-sponsors. it's a vital piece of legislation. now more than ever at this critical time when we see cases rising across california and businesses opening back people are going back to work and serving essential function you need to take care of their safety and the safety of their families and the community. it's critical not only for workers' rights but the public safety. thanks again. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. do we have any more callers? >> that completes the queue.

>> clerk: mr. chair. >> thank you. hearing no further callers, public comment is now closed. supervisor haney would you like to make a motion? >> i'd like to move it to the full board with a positive recommendation and report. >> thank you. mr. clerk, please call the roll. >> clerk: the motion stated by supervisor haney. [roll call] . >> clerk: you have three ayes. >> commissioner: is there further business. >> clerk: that concludes the

business. >> thank you for your work on this. >> our pleasure.

>> before we begin, as i have been doing, i would like to enter the following into the record that on february 25th, 2020, the mayor declared a state of emergency related to covid-19. therefore, due to the health, city hall is closed. there are emergency orders to boards and commissions