. >> clerk: regular meeting of the small business commission held on monday, october 5, 2020. the meeting is being called to order at 5:30 p.m. the small business commission thanks media services and sfgovtv for televising the meeting, which can be viewed on sfgovtv 2, channel 78, or sfgov.org. members of the public who will be calling in, the number is 415-655-0001. again, the number is

415-655-0001. the access code is 146-668-3787. press pound, and then pound again to be added to the line. again, access code is 146-668-3787. press pound, and pound again to be added to the line. when you are connected, you will hear the meeting discussion, but you will be muted and in listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, press star, three to be added to the speaker line. best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak slowly and clearly, and turn down the

device that you are listening on. when you are called for public comment, please mute the device you are listening to the meeting on, and when it is your time to speak, you will be prompted to do so. public comment is limited to three minutes each, unless established by the officer of the meeting. speake speakers are requested, but not required, to state their names. sfgovtv, please show the office of small business slide. >> today, we'll begin with a reminder that the small business commission is the official forum to voice your concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. the office of small business is the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us on-line or via telephone. as always, our services are

completely free of charge. before we call our first item, i'd like to thank sfgovtv. please call item number 1. >> clerk: item number 1, call to order and roll call. [roll call] >> clerk: mr. president, you have a quorum. >> thank you, please call item number 2. >> clerk: item 2, jobsnow!. presentation on the updated jobsnow! program which provides employment and training services to human services agency benefit recipients, foster truth, and transitional

age youth. discussion item. the presenter is bart ellison, workforce development manager, human services agency, and with him are colleagues from the office of economic and workforce development. >> great. welcome, bart, and thank you for making yourself available. we really appreciate you being here. i'm personally excited about this program. i'd like to also welcome your colleagues who have joined you. we'll begin with your presentation, which will be followed by commissioner questions, public comment, and finally, commissioner comment. the floor is yours. >> thank you, everyone. i'm going to share my screen.

i've got a small powerpoint to go long with my talking. everyone sees that? >> thank you. >> my name is bart ellison. i'm the workforce development manager with the human services agency. some of you may be familiar with jobsnow! and some of you that are not, i've got a lot of information to get out in a few minutes. it's a pandemic response to really help with the economic and employment recovery plan for the city and county of san francisco, also working in conjunction with some other agencies as well as the larger san francisco economic task force. so let me go ahead here. so just -- for those of you that are not really familiar with jobsnow!. just a brief history. we started back in 2009 with the economic recovery and wage

subsidy act. the intent, certainly back in 2009, during that recession, was to work with our clients that are receiving h.s.a. benefits and get them into meaningful and paying jobs and working them towards self-sufficiency and getting them off reliance on public benefits, public assistance. since 2009, we have made 27,,000 j27,000 job placements and work with many businesses. so what's important for 2020 and 2021? the budget, i believe, just god signed on the 1st. we were able to get our budget increased over last year, over $5 million going into the private sector wage subsidies.

our goal this year is to place 3700 individuals into subsidized employment jobs. one of the ways that we hope to do this is we brought back a voucher program which we actually started back in 2009. so in addition to my staff working with employers such as yourselves and other entities to try and get folks placed into jobs, we're also going to be issuing vouchers to job seekers, so they can go out and become their own job developer. they'll be able to go to an employer and present that voucher, saying hey, hire me. you may be eligible for a wage subsidy. it's going to put everyone -- because it's just such a large unemployment right now, and trying to put everyone back to work, and i have limited staff, so this is just another way that we can really get folks out there, and hopefully get everyone working again as we --

as we reopen. in addition to the voucher program, we added some subsidies and wage reimbursement tiers specifically for the pandemic response. just in general, our wage reimbursement to employers starts about $1,000 a month for a six-month period when they hire an eligible jobs. what's new this fiscal year is we have a tier specifically for small businesses that are trying to start-up and/or reopen from this pandemic, so employers that lack revenue, also willing to invest in on-the-job training. we will -- if they qualify, there's an application process which i'll go through in a few minutes. they will qualify for 100% wage reimbursement for the first three months, and then 50% wage reimbursements for the following three months. also new this year, to encourage employers to pay

higher wages, and also working with our clients, we are offering a flat 50% wage reimbursement for six months for any employer that is paying $25 an hour or more for a full-time position. we need to have san francisco business registration, however, the actual operation doesn't have to be located in san francisco. of course, a franchise tax board account, comply with the san francisco labor laws, have the payroll taxes. one of my big keys is intend to retain the employee once the subsidy period ends. the subsidy periods all end after six months. we don't hold you to the future, however, we want folks to be able to intend to retain that employee beyond the subsidy period. we also ask that the subsidy or

the wages are similar to other employees that are doing the same type of work in that business. we discourage and do not want any hiring of family relationships or marriage through that, and there is an application process, which i'll have roxana describe in just a few minutes. one of the things that i wanted to describe in this program is an employee cannot be an existing employee, and they cannot start work until the employer has been approved for jobsnow! approval. it's not like hey, we've hired you, and bart, we want to go ahead and get the wage subsidy. r roxana, do you want to mention about how long the process

tak takes and some specifics about it? >> sure. i'm roxana morales. the process takes usually 7 to 14 days. usually, the longest part of the process is having the employer return the application back to us. normally, the process will be -- you will be assigned one point of contact as jobsnow! or a business account rep that will work with you one-on-one to send you a docusign application. you will submit that application. we will then review it, put it through our process at h.s.a. once that application is done, we'll promote your job orders to the community as well as our collaborating partners and staff within. in addition to that, we will be prescreening the candidates that you will be receiving will

have met the minimum qualifications for the positions that you're applying for. once we gather and prescreen candidates for you, we will introduce them to you, send you the recesume, set up interview and walking all through that recruitment process up until that hiring point. once you make that job offer, that's pretty much where we step back and let you take on the employee as your own, and we say our good-byes until you have another open position. i think one of the best parts of this program is you are given a one point of contact. the savings that you have in using our services could be anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000, depending on the type of position that you're trying to post. so it really helps in that recruitment. it really adds an extra arm to

your h.r. department. one thing that we do ask -- we do ask for all these other documents, but the one thing that's important for us in our partnership with the employers will be that communication, the feedback that we get back on the candidates that we present, and the feedback of why they haven't decided to go with them. >> great. thank you very much, roxana. if you're curious of what -- who our participants are within jobsnow! they need to be residents of san francisco, they need to be receiving cash aid, calfresh, medi-cal, and what's also changed this year is we've also added just in general requirements for the poverty level. so they're making less than

$2300 a month for a family of two, and less than $3600 a month for a family of three. they may not be receiving benefits from human services agency, but they will have come and applied, and those are the candidates that we're going to have our pool out that are going to just have a wide range of skills and whatnot, especially the opening up to that larger group. we're working closely with e.d.d. to be able to have that if you mean funnel of clients coming our way. and other clients that we're working with, we're very happy to be working with office of economic and workforce development. i know that josh is going to be chiming in in a few minutes year, the chamber of commerce, the merchants association. i just mentioned e.d.d. for the state, but most importantly,

our success is working with the small business employers and helping everyone get restarted, get staffed up, and get back to business. if you have any questions or want to reach out and connect, this is a screen with our information, our hotline number, or the worker hotline, which also is able to answer. the 877 number comes straight into h.s.a. the worker hotline number also gains the office of workforce development for other types of questions other than jobsnow! and then, we also have our website, which we are updating, but you're also able to apply on-line there. and then, if you have any questions or want to reach out and prefer to do it by e-mail, our e-mail is there: hsajobsnow

at s jason, did you want to chime in? >> yes, just a little. joshua arce, with the office of economic and workforce development. we are so excited to support workforce agency in this program. we've been partnered for many, many years, and i think during the covid response, coming together around the partner with the human services agency and our office to provide additional paid sick leave, particularly to those small businesses looking to support the workers and also adding some much needed capital to the overall bottom line of the company, i think through the workforce hotline together, we've supported calls from nearly 10,000 individual workers and businesses. that's hard working agency business members. but i think just to add we're

really all in from this strategy from oewd, when you look at the what the unemployment is -- i was going to share a couple of slides -- it looks like i can't -- >> i can make you a presenter. >> okay. just a couple of data points. we see supporting this amazing program, essentially, the 3.0 of this program, what we strategize is looking for workers who have been displaced, graduates of training programs, folks who have served the hotline itself, and some of the data points to where the opportunities are going to be if this pulls up on the powerpoint deal there. so we see where unemployment --

i'll get the little slide show item. when we look in terms of unemployment claims, since february of 2020, 259,000 san franciscans have applied for unemployment, and top of that, [inaudible] and our ability to work together at oewd and h.s.a., and our friends at the state to reach those men and women to create candidates who can go out not only for the wage subsidy but also to additional businesses who keep them working. in that case, it has added benefit of supporting the small businesses in particular. this is new data that really shows you, again, illustrating the need, and director dick-endrizzi shares this type

of data with you, as well. i think we see some real opportunity in the leisure and hospitality industry, where 50,000 jobs have been lost between san francisco and san mateo counties. both counties, roughly 40% job loss. particularly, you look at hotels, small businesses, and the restaurant industry. nearly 40% of their jobs have been lost, and we see this as a way to bring them back and stabilize our businesses as we come out of this crisis. this is where i think we're just so excited to be partnering with human services agency and the small business commission to take this strategy and not only, again, help those workers who can benefit from the wage subsidy but those businesses struggling to stay open to make it through the economic recovery where we're going to emerge even stronger. thanks again, bart. >> you're welcome. thank you.

that's all i have from josh now, so i'm not sure if there's any q&a or how that works on these forums, so excuse my ignorance for this. >> no, q&a, you're signed up for it. i guess we'll turn it over. do any commissioners have any questions or comments? commissioner dooley? >> hi. i have one question, which is i don't quite understand that this program also allows operations to not have to be located in san francisco? can you kind of go over that? that's a little confusing to me. >> sure. so as far as san francisco residents, many times, we don't want to limit the employment. they may be based here in san

francisco, but the work side might be -- amazon is a great example. they might be in south city or in another location somewhere else. so as long as they're on the san francisco tax board, they're paying the taxes or they're registered, rather, with san francisco, that's how that is. so there could be an entity here, but they're just across the bay or whatever. does that help? >> yes, it does. thank you. >> you're welcome. >> commissioner ortiz-cartagena? >> for me, as a small business, i'm so excited [inaudible] i helped so many small businesses and so many local residents [inaudible] this is great. for the small businesses also

watch, this mitigates the training process. imagine getting great people that want to work, and you don't even have to pay that cost. i love this program [inaudible] i'll be your biggest cheerleader. you know me, i hit the streets, and i let all small businesses know. thank you, thank you, thank you for your presentation. >> thank you, and i appreciate your comments. >> commissioner yekutiel. >> thank you for your presentation. this is commissioner man manny yekutiel. with the programs that you are making available, are you making them available proportionately to the industries that have lost the most jobs or where are you placing the dial in the industries that have lost the

most employees? >> whatever employers have reached out to us or the employers that we have reached out to, the available job orders that we have, it's really been based on what is our client pool. so we think we have a wide variety this time than in the past. so individuals that have maybe never been exposed to h.s.a. benefits before or maybe just aren't on them right now, just pulling a potentially higher skill set, hopefully, we'll be able to match. >> thank you. are you hearing from the folks in hospitality to fill those jobs, and historically, have those jobs been a large part of your replacement programs? >> yes. roxana, are you still here? >> yes, i'm still here. can you hear me? yes, they're still here.

as a matter of fact, we're working with oewd and hospitality to connect us with their side of the house. in addition, we -- of course, the promotion that we do is to all small businesses, but we definitely -- it's all about promoting. so the people that come in and take advantage of the program, the more we get the word out there. that's who's going to come in and apply. hospitality is one of the biggest industries. but it's also one of the industries with the highest turnovers. we switch back and forth because a lot of the times, depending on the population we're working with, the candidates that we're working with, some of them may need the flexibility that the industry provides, and in other cases, they may not need the flexibility. they want something more stable. >> thank you, roxana.

i have two more questions. i saw in a slide maybe $3.5 million to support for private sector for the placements. does that mean you're providing financial support to private sector companies who accept your placements? i just want to make sure i understand the program. >> so the way the program works, all the candidates that come through our program are eligible to receive -- to receive a wage subsidy, right? the employers have to apply, and we have to determine that the position pays an x amount of dollars. there are about five tiers that we work with. the tiers can be anywhere from part-time hours to full-time hours, paying san francisco minimum wage, up to -- right now, there's -- we don't have a cap on the wages, right? but, normally, about $50

because of the skill sets we have in our pools are the highest wages we've paid. once we've made that connection with the employer, the employer receives the subsidy, not the candidate. the candidate gets a job, and what we do is provide them with a job that, again, is a -- you know, we're looking for permanent positions, we're looking for companies that are willing to train, and the -- but the subsidy doesn't go to the client, it goes to the company, and they pay some of the wages. and the wages -- [inaudible]. >> such an amazing program. i really appreciate you presenting it today, and the next question is, authorized agents, living in the u.s. or have an annual salary less than

150% of the poverty line. 250,000 san franciscans applied for unemployment. that's a staggering percentage. also, would these people be considered eligible for these programs? >> i'm not sure about the numbers, but i can tell you that when you look at the -- the scale or the table of the 200%, you take into consideration that we are not going to be considering somebody that's collecting unemployment. that's not going to be considered income, so it 'll b based on what the household has, and it varies from household to household. >> thank you. it's an amazing program. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. that is -- first, i just want

to echo commissioner yekutiel's comments. this is an incredible program, and it's really coming at the right time. that really leads to my first question here, which is it seem seems like outreach is really critical here, and making sure employers know about it, but also making sure that applicants -- potential applicants know about it. certainly, i can imagine somebody that has just lost a job or is looking for work probably, how would they even know about this? so i guess a question for you guys is how -- how are we going to reach out to these recently unemployed folks? is there something we can do through e.d.d. to directly inform them of this program or what -- how are you guys imagining we're going to let them know about it?

>> sure. so we're already partnering with e.d.d., and they do a daily workshop. i think there's about 250 people in each workshop, and so we're part of that workshop, letting them know about jobsnow! and how to apply for that. we also send out, just within h.s.a.s universe, we do connection that way through the mail, and then also partnering with all of our other -- chamber of commerce, first source hiring, small business association, just trying to spread the word out that way. i've been sharing some fliers with some of the partners that i have names for so that we can help -- they can help spread that out, so small business will get a flier. regina and -- i forget her name, sorry. any way, we're going to send

out the e-mail soft copy so that they can then share that out with their network, as well. >> and, i mean, definitely in san francisco, one of the biggest -- our biggest help has always been the word of mouth, right? but we also collaborate with the community-based organizations, we also help us put the word on the services that h.s.a. is providing, especially around jobsnow! >> right. you know, certainly, it seems with the threshold changing and more people being qualified to receive it, we should be very careful to be aware of that because they can say oh, i tried to get that program, and i couldn't get it. i have more questions, but commissioner dooley has made a request, followed by commissioner zouzounis. commissioner dooley, please. >> hi. i'm sure you showed us some

really helpful slides today, and i wonder if those can be made available to the commission? for example, i will be meeting with the north beach business association tomorrow. i have been taking notes, but i would like to make sure that i have been telling the merchants the right information on how to get in touch with you. that would be very helpful. >> sure, no. i'd be happy to share this. and it is easy, domenica, to send it to you? >> i would also like to say that i make myself available if you ever need me to come in and do a presentation to the associations or to the -- the chambers. i'd be more than happy to do so

and join you at those meetings. >> great, thank you. commissioner zouzounis? >> thank you for presenting, everyone. this is really crucial, and i'm glad we're looking at collaborating and helping support. my question was in the order of operations and procespective business -- i'm pretty sure that my business -- local businesses in the industry, we're always looking for workers, and it's been -- it's a -- hiring was scare even prior in the service sector, and i'm pretty sure we've gotten on a list, like, jobs we've had open, we had listed on jobsnow! somehow, but no

remember, like, the order of operations? like, does the prospective employee have to say oh, that's a job i'm interested in, and then, they apply and we get documentation? and when do we start communicating with that prospective employee? >> so what will happen is, it works both ways, right? because with the voucher system, the employer may see a candidate -- may meet a candidate, the candidate will introduce the voucher inform them, and then, they can come -- they would take the voucher, call us, and we'll engage the employer at that point, having -- knowing that they already have this candidate in mind, so that's one way. but if you are an employer that's looking to post -- i don't believe you may be posting with jobsnow! because if you're posting with jobsnow! you're working with one

individual to promote your job, promote your business, and prescreen your candidates. at that point, they will only send you the candidates that meet the minimum requirements for your position. and if you would like, i can pass on your contact information to you, and we can check on your family's business and see if they're on. but one of our account reps are happy to. >> okay. that makes sense. if you're a business, and you're anticipating you might have an opening, but you don't at that moment, you can talk to that business account rep and kind of get in the system beforehand? >> that's correct, that's correct. >> okay. >> and that's how we usually prefer, you know, that we start planning ahead. and once you have that point of contact with us. that point of contact will follow you for as long as you

like us to be partnering up. we've been partnering with employers since 2009, and they've been having that specific case or basis account rep with them for three or four years, depending on how long the business account rep sticks with us. >> and if i can just add to that real fast, too. so if the program comes across someone that they may not have heard the program or they haven't received a voucher, you can refer them to call the jobsnow! hotline, and they can get registered and move forward with the hiring process, assuming your business is registered with us, as well. so very flexible during this fiscal year. >> great. so, you know, i guess i should mention, i believe -- correct

me if i am wrong, josh -- that we hired an employee through jobsnow! -- through the jobsnow! program? she is and continues to be fantastic. made it through the pandemic. you know, we had to trim down quite a bit, but i -- we wouldn't be here without her, no question about it. so -- >> great. >> -- we didn't take advantage of the any of the vouchers. maybe i missed an opportunity there, but she's fantastic. couple other quick questions for you. so in terms of starting the application process, is it called the hotline or is there, like, an easy-to-go-to website to send people to? is there an on-line process application? how do employers and employees start the process? >> so either roxana or i can go -- so for a job seeker, they

can simply call the hotline or they can go to a website. there's an interest form that went live on the 1st. it goes right to us. >> what is that website? >> pardon me? >> what is the website for members of the public listening in? >> sure. it's sfhsa.org/jobsnow, and that'll be on the slide deck that i'll send to domenica. and they can call the job line and be connected with someone. >> and you mentioned limited staff, but it looks like you're going to do a pretty significant increase in the number of jobs that you're processing. looks like about a 50% increase over what you've done

previously. with the budget increase, have you identified -- like, are you going to add more f.t.e.s to make that increase happen or how are you going to get there? >> sure. at this time, we have no additional f.t.e.s through the city, but we have adjusted or processes, so staff are organized and ready to go. >> amazing. so it's safe to say that most of that budget increase is going to find its way into the pockets of employers >> oh, yeah, the budget increase is all to the employers. nothing going to the staff. >> yeah, that's incredible. a tiny question here. so 100% or three months and 50% for the next three months is

the reimbursement. >> for one of the tiers. >> so talk me through that. what does that mean? >> so we have five different tiers. that particular tier you're talking about requires that the employer pays $25 or over? >> well, i got the $25 or over was 50% or six months. >> or six months, right. the other one -- i'm sorry. you're right. that's -- the other tier is for small -- to business employers or people that are being rehired or that -- but the -- a salary has to be $16 or higher. >> so -- >> 16.07 zlr, san francisco minimum wage. >> okay. i just want to be clear. if i'm paying minimum wage, i can get 100% or three months and 50% for the next three months, so if i pay $25, i can get 50% for six months?

is that capping the city's -- >> no, because the hours are different. we're being more flexible with the rehires and the business with no income, whereas with the other positions, the requirement is they have to be permanent positions. there's more flexibility with that other tier, and it's geared for more of the -- fore the new businesses or for a small business that has been in business but wasn't getting any income during the pandemic. >> okay. and then, is there a kind of job that you guys specialize in or that you're particularly adept at? >> a sector? >> a sector or even a commission type? >> you know, beauty of the staff, they've worked with various skill levels as well as

various industries. we have placed people in janitorial jobs, in public sector jobs. it varies in what we can do. what we're trying do is help that candidate find a job that will be there after the six months of subsidies, right? so we want to do a really good match on skills. >> right, great. thank you so much. two more questions. these are fore josh. so josh, i can imagine that this program plugs into other stuff that oewd is doing. do you want to flush that out for me? >> sure. sure, commissioner laguana. the thing about this perspective is so great, it's not only to support our human services agency, but our

director, awe teen torres is always looking for these real win-wins between business and workers to really have a shared strategy to get through these times. so in the care of our service, we serve roughly 5,000 individuals in any given year. that's men and women coming into our job centers or going into our vocational trainings and construction tech, hospitality or health care. and so the graduates of those programs who can't find work because a lot has changes, obviously, in terms of employment, those men and women come out with skills that are very marketable to employers that may not have the opportunity to hire them, may need to stay open, may need to be productive to keep going, and now, this is a win-win because a graduate of someone who did all that training, in some cases, up to six months of training, can now have the opportunity to go to work. and the workforce hotline,

close to 10,000 individuals, in many cases have been signed up for workforce services. that's not just accessing and help getting unemployment, but it's the stipend -- we have some training programs that are coming in during covid that help them get a few hundred bucks just to help make ends meet, and we can refer them over to the h.s.a. employers that are coming into jobsnow!. that and we mentioned some workers in family first. that's a roster of partners, and think tony lugo there at the department, we talked about enabling those individuals who can get sick leave. in combination, i think that's, from our office, and as

director torres is fond of talking about, is finding a win-win. >> it's an incredible program at the right time. i love it. i think the entire commission feels the same, and we will all work hard to help you guys promote it. one last question for you, josh. this is in the weeds a little bit, but i'm just curious. the unemployment figures mentioned 259,000 claims. the oewd showed totals for the sector of 126. i was wondering, you know, that's basically, that's 100% difference between 126 and 259. do you know why those two numbers are different or can you speak to that? >> yes, i can, chair laguana, and if i can share one last time, i can go back to the graph in question and illuminate the discrepancy. just waiting for the green

light to be able to share again. the main thing -- thank you very much. so the main thing that i can point to, and i'll go back to that very first graph is, in some ways, actually, a little bit of good news in an otherwise challenging time, which is that some jobs have been regained. and so i did, before presenting this today with h.s.a., i went through and doubled checked the numbers. so these are actually raw counts from the e.d.d. that we get every week. so there have been, since february 1 through the 19th of september, 63,000 claims. another 63,000 contractors get pandemic insurance. but i think you're referring to this number, chair laguana, which is how does this number

show for san francisco and san mateo county, overall job loss of 126,700. that's if we go back and look at this data, some jobs have been regained, and a lot of jobs have been regained since april. if we look at the next graph, which is from june 2020, that 126,700, as of june, was 140,000. you'll see that the job loss in june was close to 12%. we've recovered -- i'm not that great with math, but i would say approximately 13,000 jobs were regained by the time we ran this report in august august when we look back in june. when you go back even further, to the earliest days of the pandemic, april 2020, the change from june 2020 to april 2020 was this figure here.

181,700. so again, doing the path there, i'm going to go out on a limb and say 55,000 or so jobs difference between, again, this is april 2020, 15% of all jobs were lost in these two counties -- these are estimates, of course, and 81,700 to 126,700 by august. so i think we've seen the cycle of folks go on unemployment, get another job, and others go on unemployment. when you total all these cycles of activity, this is what we see. in the leisure and hospitality, 78,000 were lost initially. some were regained, but not enough.

there's still so much hurt among the workers and businesses, of course. >> and just to loop in two components here that i think -- if you could keep it on that slide, drawing the commission's attention to this, the single biggest hit is the restaurant, with a loss of 131,600 jobs lost since february. one can imagine restaurants, with the number of minorities, immigrants, undocumented workers that they employ, that this is disproportionately hurting minority communities. so this underscores why, since the pandemic has started, a lot of our focus has been on restaurants because it is, a, the sector experiencing the most loss, and b, that loss is

concentrated in vulnerable communities. vulnerable communities. that's not to say or diminish the losses that are happening in other sectors, and certainly, we're working on doing our best to help if we can with those to help, you know, retail and the arts is definitely just absolutely crushed. and, you know, certainly manufacturing and nonprofits is a big concern. but in terms of orienting ourselves around triage, right, like trying to tackle the biggest problems and help the most people that we can, this is what's been guiding the commission through our work. so i just bring that up for those that are curious or wondering through what lens that we're looking at this. so with that said -- and this is important to the jobsnow! program because the jobsnow!

program is the other half of that. we are looking at the restaurants. jobs now is looking at those vulnerable communities, and we can't forget, at least from my perspective, we can't forget that there were folks that struggled to find jobs in the prepandemic environment, and there were people getting from step zero to step one is a very challenging thing to do. i was once one of those people, so i can relate. we can't stop that, and now we've got a bunch of other people that need help. this is a fantastic program. really knight really excited to see it, and the fact that you decided to spend some time with us. with that, we'll go to public comment. are there any public commenters on the line? >> araceli, are you seeing

anyone on the line? >> there are no callers with their hands raised. >> okay. >> clerk: sorry. actually, somebody just raised their hands. >> that's fine. unmute them. caller, please go ahead. >> ah, yes. i had a question about the -- the $25 an hour incentive. i'm wondering if that will discourage employers from employing employees at full-time schedules and instead shift them to part-time schedules? and, you know, so how would that impact employers and

jobsnow! participants? >> thank you for the call. are there any other public callers on the line? >> clerk: that concludes the queue. >> okay. seeing no more public callers, public comment is closed. before we go into any further discussion, bart, would you -- would you have an answer or a response to our comment? >> sure. if i understood the question correctly -- that's why roxana has mentioned about five tiers. the tiers range for employers to employ full-time or part-time. to be eligible for that $25 an hour tier, that is full-time employment. so if there was an employee doing $20 an hour, they would qualify for the part-time tier. they would qualify for a

part-time reimbursement fee, which is a flat figure of $1,000 a month. >> and were these tiers presented in the presentation you presented to us or not? >> no. we are the ones that will fit best for that employer, and it might be -- they might say oh, i want this, but something might be a better fit. >> do we have any other commissioner comments before we go onto the next comment or any further questions? okay. seeing none -- >> commissioner laguana? >> yes. >> yes. for the commission, as our office with the -- in the last economic crisis, work with

h.s.a. in promoting the jobsnow! program, it was very successful and was very popular amongst newly starting businesses. so our role, we have been part of the team and part of the roll-out team. so not only will we be pushing out this information through our e-blast and every platform that we have, we will also be providing this information in our one-on-one basusiness counseling and then connecting with them on an individual basis. we are definitely there as a partnership with h.s.a. and with oewd to make sure that as many employers and businesses are able to -- who know -- know about the program and, of

course, can help take advantage of the program. >> i'm glad that we are working tightly with them to help get that information out. to the entire jobsnow! team, thank you for all your work, thank you for coming in, roxana, josh, and bart, and any other members that are here, we appreciate you spending your time with us. >> thank you, commissioners. >> thank you for having us. >> next item, please. >> clerk: item 3, indoor dining guidelines. update and report on the san francisco indoor-outdoor gyning guidelines issued under the coronavirus covid-19 local health directive 2020-16 cb.

discussion item. the presenter is patrick fosdahl, acting director of the environmental health branch, department of public health, and i know that he is joined by colleagues of the public health branch. >> great. thank you, patrick, for coming and explaining this. this is definitely the topic du jour for our restaurant community, and we hope that you will shed some light on this for the benefit of our friends in the restaurant industry and help us wrap our heads around what this week looks like. so with that, the floor is yours. >> great. well, thank you for inviting us. i know it was a little bit last-minute, but we're always happy to come and partner with you guys. we know that it's been a moving

target for months now for small businesses. as these orders and directives come out, it's a very fluid situation. they seem to be changing weekly, if not daily, and try to keep our hands wrapped around it has been a struggle, so we know that it's even been a greater struggle for the small business community. really glad to be here, and hoping we can shed some light on where we are today, at any rate. so i do have a quick little presentation that we put together quickly, if i can get the share screen option. >> domenica? >> clerk: yes. sorry. it's taking me a minute.

the joys of working from home. >> okay. can everybody see that? >> we can, thank you. >> okay. all right. so i'm patrick fosdahl. we've kind of already help, and i've got one of my food managers, terry hong, and we're happy to be here. just a quick overview of the environmental health branch,

we're housed within the department of public health, and we are the environmental branch of the department of public health. we have about 30 separate programs that we enforce, and restaurants, food facilities would be one of those. it's one of our largest programs. we enforce nearly all of the 45 articles of the health code, and then, as of about march, we now -- this includes both health orders and directives that, as you indicated, seem to be changing daily. so we've also been trying to stay on top of those as they come out. what we've been kind of doing during the pandemic response is initially, we sort of pivoted from being primarily an enforcement or agency of the branch of the health department to be more of an outreach, and that was because of the brand-new, sort of changing

environment that covid brought the daily. we contributed to or wrote ourselves. we pushed out well over 40,000 [inaudible] to regulated businesses. we've also been calling ones that we don't have e-mails for just to make sure that everybody is aware of what's going on. we've conducted in-person clie compliance checks just to see how the businesses that are operating, how they're doing. we've participated with barrier masks in businesses, and we respond to complaints. i think we've received 1700 or more covid related complaints through the 311 system, and we also will respond to what are called covid clusters, and

those happen at different businesses. restaurants would be one of those, so we get a cluster of cases, we'll send an inspector out, kind of figure out what's going on. san francisco and covid-19, just a little bit before we get into the indoor dining, there are five key health indicators for how we're doing in san francisco, and fortunately, right now, we're in pretty good shape. those indicators are hospitalizations and available hospital beds, new cases, the rate of infection, our testing capacity, contact tracing and available p.p.e. and right now, all of those are really in pretty good shape. we have a little bit higher transmission rate than we would like, but all in all, we're doing pretty well as a city. san francisco, we performed 533,000 tests approximately for

covid. we've had 11,000 -- about 11,500 cases since we started in march, and we've had 108 deaths. and the deaths are always a really sobering reminder, to me, of, really, the importance of what we're doing here. in conjunction with what we've done here locally, the state has adopted four color codes to sort of guide reopening. why they chose these colors, i don't know, but it's purple is the worst, and then, it goes to red, orange, and yellow, and it's based on the disease transmission or activity in a particular county. so san francisco, we're currently orange, which is pretty good. it puts us ahead of our neighboring bay area counties. so on september 30, san francisco issued directive 2020-16-c, which is the indoor dining provision that we're going to talk about now.

so it's lengthy. the guidance that goes along with that directive is 12 pages in and of itself, so we're going to hit on a few key topics of changes that were made and let the question-and-answer time kind of direct where we go. so indoor dines guidelines, first of all, it applies to dining establishments only, and those are establishments that are permitted to serve what's considered a bona fide meal. and so for restaurants that are permitted, that's just what they do. for bars, the question's been raised, what about bars. so the bars that have a permitted kitchen would fall into that same category. bars that don't have permitted kitchens, what we've allowed them to do is to partner with

somebody who is a permanent kitchen and allow them to essentially do what's called a pop up in the bar. if they want to serve a bona fide meal, that's a way of doing it. we waived the fees for those pop-up permits, and we also prioritize their approval in large part because of the demand and need of that particular business to try to find a way to operate. so the indoor directives are operate at 25% of the maximum occupancy, and that's the posted occupancy for either the building or the room or 100 patrons, whichever is less. before opening, we're asking that businesses look at ways to improve their ventilation. the reason outdoor dining was

opened first was because of the tremendous amount of volume of air movement outdoors, which greatly decreases disease transmission. so before we open that space, we'd like to see that space increase their ventilation. that's accomplished by opening windows, increasing the amount of return by hvacs, increasing filtration, that sort of thing. we ask that businesses spend a little extra time checking for rodents or pests, and then checking the personnel who will be working there with a series of guidelines. there are a series of signs that needs to be posted. this seems to be changing daily, as well, but there are a couple of signs that need to be

posted. and those are one, a sign that covid-19 is transmitted through the air, and two, seniors and

[inaudible]. >> -- basically, what that requires is a way of allowing patrons to do a self-assessment and determine whether or not they're suffering from any of the symptoms before entering the establishment. we don't want sick people or people that are symptomatic to be going indoors. it's limited to a party may stay or a party's stay at a facility cannot exceed two hours after they've been seated. i think the thinking behind this criteria would be reducing the amount of people there at

once. all bars must close at 1:30, and that would allow 30 minutes for patrons to finish their meals. a lot of the requirements, you just go right down the line and check them off. we're here to help. most of the food establishments know who their district inspectors are at the health department. we're asking owners to reach out with any questions, and we'd be happy to help out. so with that, we'll open it up, i guess, to questions and answer time if there are any questions. >> great. thank you for the presentation. commissioner adams? >> yeah. i just want to say this -- the program was working with the

bars and the pop-up restaurants was a brilliant idea. just that alone, you saved a lot of businesses and a lot of bars, and it's creating an atmosphere in the city, especially, like, in the last thing i said with commissioner dooley and what she's done in north beach, and now what manny has done on valencia street has created and saved so many jobs. what you guys have done in your department and getting the restaurants and economy and stuff back up in bars in this crazy world we're in, i just want to say thanks. that's good. as we get into these next steps with slowly opening up indoor

dining, we've all got to be careful, but, you know, it's giving some businesses a chance here, so that's what i have. >> i appreciate that. >> commissioner dooley? >> hi. i just wanted to ask a couple of questions about enforcement? who is going to have to do that often very unpleasant task? is that going to fall on that owner and the staff or is there some way that your department is kind of monitoring or is it all just 311 complaints? >> yeah, that's a -- that's a good question. we get asked that question a lot. i think when the health orders first started coming out back in march, there was a lot of language in there that involved penalties and jail time and all that have for noncompliance.

so we've been dealing with that enforcement question for a while. so we view it as a partnership with us and the business. it's really in both of our best interests to ensure that those statistics remain low so that we can allow businesses to continue to open. so businesses definitely have a role to play on that. they're on the frontline, and they're there, working with their businesses every night that they're open. so they're the ones that are first going to see if there is a compliance issue in their facility. now, what we respond to are complaints, so -- and we also do some routine inspections, as well, kplients checks. but if we get complaints that there is too many people, crowding, that there is not social distancing, people aren't wearing masks or oftentimes from workers that, you know, they're not being

compliant, we'll go out, and we do have enforcement authority. typically, what we do is we tell them what they need to do to correct, provided it's not something that's egregious. if we continue to see it, if they continue to violate, we'll issue a notice of violation, to the point we would suspend our revoke permits to stay open. we have suspended any permits. we haven't revoked any permits, and we haven't issued any fines. we have been working with the city around cease and desist notices, and i think the business community should be aware that there's a group that goes out all the time that just monitors businesses, and this started at the beginning of covid, and it's made up of

people from a bunch of different agencies with the city who sort of monitor businesses that are open on the weekend and at night for compliance. we do want people to comply, but like i said, we view it as a partnership with the businesses, and it's in their best interests and everyone's best interests to comply with these requirements. >> i have one more question. i just wanted to ask, how does the indoor dining situation apply to take-away cocktails that we've seen all over north beach? does that suspend it? does that continue? how do we deal with that. >> yeah. i'll let terry hong, the manager, weigh on this, as

well. but my understanding is the beverage still needs to be served with a bona fide meal. terry, did you want to weigh-in on that? >> sure. i think patrick, you have it pretty much about right. in fact, commissioner may have phrased it better than both of us, saying it was sort of a -- kind of a ray of light, i think, that helps everyone, helped the bars stay open, and it's allowed us to do what we do best. even though the bars may not have been that experienced with food safety, we made the decision that that's what we do, and we've doubled our efforts, and it's a win-win situation. and, commissioner dooley, i don't think that's changing with indoor dining.

>> thank you. >> thank you. commissioner zouzounis? >> thank you. i have a couple questions, if you could bear with me. so i hear that you're largely responding to complaints. however, you said that there are in-person compliance checks. do you have data on the industry or sector off business ties that you're hitting the most with those compliance checks? are they at random? how are those noncompliance-based compliance checks, if there's a strategy around that or triggers? that is my first question. >> all right. terry, you work closely with those guys. >> sure. [inaudible]. >> the city attorney has a team of investigators. they're not inspectors, per se, but they are investigators. so a large part of our

inspections are generated by their observation. so, you know, we're not -- so they make observations, and they send us reports, and our first response is always the same, is education. so we'll go out there, and we'll educate -- in some ways, we have a better working relationship because we know from the food inspections. just like in food inspections, the vast majority of people have no violations, 95%, and i think you would find the same during these covid times. now, it's mostly covid complaints, whether it's no masks or no social distancing. we are mobilized based on the complaints. in some ways, it's good and bad. in some cases, we've deputyized some of the community. you need some expertise for

food safety, but you don't need expertise to see someone not wearing a mask or not observing distancing. not every complaint from the public or from the investigator team will lead to violations from our department, but we will respond to 100% of them. >> okay. and so you're -- you're -- you were were -- you're not going to businesses that don't have compliants? >> it's not our focus. every inspector has a specific area of the city. [inaudible] but there may be less bars in that particular area, and sometimes bars do generate the most -- currently, they generate the most complaints. it might be that they would go there to educate and also conduct a food safety

inspection per normal because everyone -- equally, everyone has to have one in six months or more. >> okay. and -- and has any one -- have you all been seeing any new applications, like, new food license applications coming in during this time, and how is that working? like, for example, businesses that may need an additional license to -- to operate the way they want or being in compliance or whatnot? >> yeah, i'll probably answer that in two different parts. so the first one is we were surprised ours. patrick asked the department, director fosdahl asked them to run the numbers. it was higher -- i don't have the numbers in if front of me, but we were actually pleasantly surprised that there were a good number open during this time and not as many closing. kind of the tangent to -- because i think you're asking

two questions. we are seeing a ton of new permits for the bars because the bars are required to get that no-fee -- i wouldn't call it a permit, i'd call it an approval. they do need to partner with a pop up, and we need to make sure that that pop-has a permit, so we are getting tons of those, yes. >> thank you. and i know that alcohol, obviously, is under the environmental branch, and we have seen, during the course of the health directives released by the city one in particular very much -- it specified type 20 and 21 off premises sale alcohol licenses. it was a sixth supplemental order, and it put a curfew on these license business types for an exemption for businesses

over 5,000 square feet, so essentially, all of the corner stores were shutdown with police force, no notice prior, and safeway and bevmo and restaurants to go were still selling alcohol, but stores and restaurants and businesses with type 21 licenses were shutdown as of 8:00 p.m. that was never explained to us as a business, as a commission the impetus for that, so we don't really know if something like that could come down the line again, like, that regulatory license specific. could you all give us some insight if you're going to be doing business restrictions in in the future? thank you. >> sure. i think that's been rescinded, but to your point, that actually surprised us, as well.

as my boss explained, we enforce the health orders and directives, that, i think, came from a different route. i think that came from a mayor's directive, and if my undering is correct, it was that, you know, peace officers found that there were gatherings at all of -- not all of these facilities that you mentioned, but these types of facilities, and somehow, that recommendation was made and accepted by the mayor, so that went into effect almost immediately. so we didn't really have a role to play in that. obviously, if if we -- if we were given an opportunity to make recommendations, again, our focus would be hey, if they are properly socially distancing, if they are wearing facial coverings, we don't really have any issues with them staying open, just so long as the bevmos [inaudible]. >> okay. two more questions. can you give us kind of a play-by-play, when you had to go to a business that had a

covid positive case and how that interaction might happen? how a point of contact is found and if there's notices that have public and kind of what the order of operations in that is? and then, i can add my second question in there, too. so with the ventilation guidance that we see, it's all guidance, right? there's no mandatory prerequisites, right? >> that's correct. >> okay. thank you. >> just like we have a partnership with this committee, we also have a partnership with our other city agencies. so we don't do the epidemiologist's part. they'll reach out to the restaurant, and they'll do the interview, and they'll explain to them what they have to do. they'll have to do the contact tracing, they'll e-mail them

the dox, and it's -- the documentation, and it's a pretty thorough educational process. that's where the environmental health branch comes into play. we will then send our inspectors there, and they're expecting us. we'll fill the gaps. we'll say hey, did you get this document? and they'll say no, i didn't, or hey, i need the spanish version or cantonese version. if we need a spanish speaker, we have five certified spanish speakers that can go into the mission, probably three or four certified cantonese speakers. without one or the other, you leave yourself vulnerable with the information not being followed through. >> very helpful. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner yekutiel.

>> thank you very much, commissioner laguana. this is commissioner yekutiel. i have a set of questions about this, given the fact that i own a restaurant, and i've been waiting with bated breath to ask these questions. i have an inspector for my part of the mission, and she's been in the mission throughout the entirety of my time as a restaurant professional. she is so professional, she is so good at her job, but also, you could easily, as a health inspector, just not be nice, but she is nice. she's actually more than nice. like, she works with you, and she comes up with solutions, and i just have to say, so many of us in the mission, we have a great relationship with marisol

because she's incredible. okay. that's marisol. one thing that i'm hearing from folks in the restaurant industry is trepidation of providing addresses and phone numbers. is there a suggested way that you would use to ask for people's phone number if they haven't made a reservation in advance? >> gotcha. patrick, you want me to answer that? >> sure, go for it. >> yeah. i would agree with you 100%. marisol is one of our best and young, smart, intelligent, very thorough inspectors, best of the best. i'll pass those kind words onto her. i'll agree with you, i think it's going to be challenging. i don't want to sugarcoat it. restaurant people are really good at customer service, and

asking those questions is probably not in your comfort zone. one of the things that you have in your experience, if a customer brings in a dog, and you've had a restaurant for a while, you have to ask them, is that a service animal? i think i would frame this as it's for the good of everyone, and health inspectors are going to have to ask these questions, too. you're not singling anybody out, you're asking everybody these questions. notwithstanding being a health inspector, i'd be subject to those questions, as well. >> when they say, why we want their phone number, we can say for contact tracing purposes?

>> it's voluntarily, and that's kind of the way that yi would phrase it, and i think i'd put it in that light to any of your patrons, that it's voluntary, but it's in their best interest so if there was a positive case and a need to follow up, i would want to know that, and i would hope they would, as well. they don't have to provide it, and if they don't, that's up to them. >> okay. thank you, director. where my restaurant is on the villa in the mission, a lot of patrons don't have access to touchless payment options. is there a way to safely take in nontouchless payment? you know, do you think that that's a restriction that's going to be relaxed at any

point? just kind of wondering what the options are on the touchless payment options? there are some businesses that are only accepting cash, and they've found it hard to transfer over to touchless. >> well, just like my phone number, it is optional, and i think there's a law requiring san francisco businesses receive cash payment. one complaint came in and said, the restaurant wouldn't accept my cash payment. so, you know, the inspector very nicely called the business. for example, marisol would call you and say hey, you have to let them pay by cash, and then, to the greater concern about safety, if you have a sanitizer pump there at the counter.

it's like if i go to walgreens, i want that discount, so i punch in my number, and there's that pump sanitizer there. you can obviously keep yourself and your hands safe with options. >> it's not just discounts. those walgreens points really add up. all about that walgreens phone number input. next is [inaudible] entertainment in restaurants including televisions. i've gotten some questions from restaurant owners that they can't have the televisions on so people aren't screaming over each other. but what if you want to play televisions on silent with closed captions? >> i think you make a very

valid, reasonable argument. but the city attorney's position is well, you have people dining and leaving their mask off. they want to create a dining experience. you're absolutely right there, that people could safely watch a soundless t.v. screen and still leave in two hours, but i think it was to sequester the distractions of the dining experience. >> okay. i have four more quickies. you talk about installing air filters, hepa filters as filtration. a lot of us have been going on-line, trying to find them, and a lot of them range from $200 to $2,000 or more. i think it's confusing to figure out what's the right

model or what's effective? >> do you want to tackle this one? >> so the short answer is no. i have not seen a list that the city has. unlike the e.p.a. approved disinfectants, and they've all been licensed and checked, and you can see pretty much what you should and should not be using. now we're kind of getting into new ground here with ventilation, and there just doesn't exist any list like that that, you know, that's been approved by a regulatory agency and is rated for different sized rooms and that sort of thing, so we are kind of breaking new ground there. i think the longer that this goes on, we may have a list someday, but that doesn't exist right now. >> i would encourage you,

director, if you have any capacity -- which i know you don't right now -- there's a lot of companies trying to sell you something with a lot of bells and whistles, and a lot of us that don't have filtration systems, people are getting duped for thousands and thousands of dollars. okay. the deescalation training, i'm so glad that you promote this. i know on valencia, there's some really, really amazing people that come to support our restaurants, and there are some people that just are plain nasty. they don't want to keep their mask on, they don't want to follow the rules, and we are putting our workers on the frontlines. i wonder if the city would be

willing to provide deescalation training to restaurants that want it to help prepare our servers for interaction that require deescalation. you provide a website, but is the city willing to provide kind of, like, on-site service if requested? >> i think that's a great suggestion, and i've written it down. let me look into that. we might be able to set it up. it's obviously going to be something that's like this, obviously, a zoom training, but we made available other on-line trainings, and i don't see any reason why we couldn't do this. >> two more questions. a lot of the bar owners, and even some of the restaurant owners that serve cocktails, they're kwusconfused about whae

city considers a bona fide meal. i wonder if you guys would be willing to do some kind of like cheat sheet, you know, like you do for the compost bins or recycling bins about what represents a bona fide meal? i do think there's some confusion. that's more of a comment than a question. congress woman alexandria ocasio-cortez got a rapid test today. if we were able to have massive deployment of rapid tests, you could conceivably have environment where people within a closed dining establishment, we would know the results within ten to 15 minutes. is the city considering the

deployment of rapid tests as it apply to s applies to other forms of dining? >> i have not heard that question. i think that's another intriguing idea. the situation is fluid and constantly evolving. if you asked me last year if there was any way we could test 533,000 san franciscans by this point in the pandemic, i wouldn't have thought that would be possible. so things i didn't think were possible have become possible. so that kind of testing specific for an industry, why not, but i have not heard that discussed yet, but again, an intriguing idea. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate your answers to my questions. >> thank you.

>> are there any other commissioner questions? i don't see any. so couple questions of my own. the clusters in food establishments, are we talking primarily about workers or are you also getting reports of diners having clusters? >> yeah, you can go ahead and respond to that, terry, but it's my understanding that it's been workers. terry, is that correct? >> yes. >> so i think it's important information for the public that we aren't really seeing any substantial clusters of numbers of dining related to the public. i'm sure you got the c.d.c. report that came out of that study that showed roughly 50% of the covid positive -- it was a small sample set, like 400 people, but it said that 50%

dined at a restaurant. it didn't look at indoor or outdoor dining, or whether it was a high-volume area or not. so i think it's important to hear from you guys, since you're on the frontlines of this. i know that there has been nervousness from some in the community about even outdoor dining. so as we tackle this next step, i think it's really important to highlight that we're not seeing clusters of diners in my measurable quality. that's not to say it doesn't exist, but it's really relevant because i think if it was a significant source of transmission, you guys would have seen or heard of it or it would have crossed your desk if it was happening in broad numbers. does that sound right to you? >> yeah, that sounds right. they do do all that contact tracing, and they look for where paths have crossed,

and -- and then, they extrapolate from that for, you know, things like -- like the situation where you have workers all in the same kitchen together. so if we had people's whose paths were all crossing, doing a hobby or spending time in a spent, those would be -- a light would be shined on that, for sure. >> okay. and thank you for bringing that up. also, i just wanted to say, as an aside, i could not agree with you more on the colors. how did purple become -- i mean, like, prince. purple should be, like, the best color. so any ways, the 1700 complaints that you received to date, these are -- you went into that a little bit, but how

much -- or what percentage of these complaints are actually returning into violations? i know that the department commendably has taken an education and coaching approach versus a punitive approach towards business as we all learn how to operate with the new normal. but to what degree the coaching is not working anymore, and it's an actual violation or citation being issued, are you seeing that, too? >> yeah. i think kind of what we're seeing is a few things. as the pandemic has worn on, people's feelings about what they're being asked to do and the restrictive nature of anything, it's become increasingly more difficult the longer the things go on.

i think primarily what we end up responding to as an endorsement issue are violators that are willful. so they're choosing to, you know, this is -- i'm going to run my business this way for x, y, and z reasons, and you can't stop me. and those are the ones that end up going down a path that will ultimately result in some sort of enforcement being taken against them. that is a small percentage of the ones that we see. by and large, people want to do the right thing, and when they're instructed on how to do that or given the resources for how to do that, most people want to comply. but there is a percentage, and it's a small percentage that, for whatever reason, they're trying to skirt the law or they're just being obstinate and saying i'm not going to do

that. would you agree with that, terry? >> i agree with that, yeah. >> great. so next, a couple of questions about ventilation. i have a keen interest in this first because i think the more we learn about the virus, that seems to be the primary source of transmission. second, you know, as restaurants start to open, i want them to be able to continue to stay open, and, of course, if we start to see a resurgence, particularly as we enter into this vulnerable winter period, that has an impact not just on the restaurants but also the entire small business community, so i think it's really important that we get this right and that we communicate well to the community industry, and that i guess we all get on the same

page about this. so, i guess my first question is with respect to ventilation, you know, i see guidance about fanning and opening windows. i see guidance about filters, you know, the merv-13 standard. but i'm a little curious. i mean, ultimately, aren't we essentially wanting a certain amount of air movement or air exchange, and, i mean -- i don't know for a fact. i'm not an hvac guy -- but whether it's b.t.u.s or something else, shouldn't there be a way to measure the amount of air movement through a space? just what i see right now is here's a few things you can do to update your hvac system, and also, you might think about opening up the windows and

putting up some fans. but what seems to be lacking is here's a standard that you need to reach or adhere to. i don't know if you're working towards that or the science isn't there yet. i'm just curious how you're thinking about that. >> yeah, no, i completely hear what you're saying, and i think, yeah, you're right about the science. you know, air transmission, which is why outdoor dining has been so popular and i think the appropriate first step. so we're moving indoors and moving to a new territory, and just what you're describing are all factors that need to be considered along with just the very different sort of set-ups that these restaurants have. some of them have very few windows, if any, especially if you're talking about bars and

that sort of thing. some of them are below grade. some of them have very elaborate systems, some of them have very old forced-air systems. it's hard to say this is going to be the standard when, i think for a lot of businesses, that standard may require significant upgrades and investment and capital to make changes. so i think the way that i'm viewing this is sort of incremental. we're taking steps, and that might be coming at some point, where we actually are able to provide guidelines about what are the appropriate air filtration, you know, sort of systems that you can buy off the shelf, depending on the size of your room, you know, versus having a standard around air flow that would be appropriate for reducing the transmission of this disease. gro i don't thi-- i don't thin

there yet, and we may be ready to take that step at a future date. there's just a whole lot of factors involved, and it's going to be a difficult decision to make for everybody. i . >> you know, if you're not having fans going or if you

don't have windows, then you must have an hvac system with x amount of exchange, and perhaps just have an arbitrary number just to establish some minimum effort on behalf of our friends in the restaurant industry, only from my perspective so we can keep going on this path that we're going, and keep staying open. i'm worried that there are folks there that will say well, that's the guidance, but it's just if i want to, and i'm concerned about that aspect of that. when people do indoor dining, do you send inspectors to review what they're doing or talk it over with them or is it, you know, on a -- your own

reconnaissance kind of thing? >> i think a little of both. you know, if we had all 7,000 restaurants come to us at once, we probably wouldn't be able to handle the influx. that's why we provide the ability to reach out to us. commissioner, one thing for consideration, i think for all the things that you and the director mentioned, we like to point out the weakness of that ventilation part, but it's not really the strongest part of the new directive, but i would say it's one part of -- because of all the new things mentioned, because of austin t a -- all the variables, it's hard to set a standard. we focus on the variables that we did understand and could control, which is the 25%,

because the other one is almost -- it's almost a dog chasing its tail. so many things change restaurant to restaurant. that number is a set number that runs across every restaurant. in some ways, that's the main -- we're hanging our hat on that. we don't want to have the rule back. >> yeah, right. and i can't emphasize enough, like, i'm certainly not advocating to make it harder for our friends in the restaurant industry, but just making sure that we're doing what we can to continue down this path to we can get to 50% and 100% open. that's where my heart is at, so i just want to make it clear that that's where i'm coming from. so that's all my questions.

i don't see any other commissioner questions lined up, so do we have any public commenters on the line? >> clerk: there is no one with their hand raised at this time. >> okay. seeing there are no public commenters, public comment is closed. commissioners, are there any last questions or comments or feedback before we close this item? okay. seeing none, gentleman, thank you for all of your work. i think one thing that we can be happy about is that we are progressing and improving the city. and i think as dr. aragon pointed out at the last meeting that we had with him, we are the largest city and the most successful for controlling the pandemic for a city our size. we've really done a phenomenal

job, and you guys are clearly at the frontlines for making that happen, and we are clearly grateful to all of your efforts for making that happen, and we are also deeply appreciative of those inspectors who are helping us get to the other side. thank you so much for everything you do, and if we can be of assistance in the few tr, donfew -- future, thank yplease cont. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having us. >> thank you. >> okay. item 4. >> clerk: covid 149 economic impact survey. presentation on survey seeking to gather information regarding the impact that coved 149 has

had on the locate of economy and small businesses, suggestion item. presenter is professor anoshua chaudhuri, chair of the department of economics, san francisco state university. >> i'm so excited about this. professor chaudhuri, you have the floor. please make your presentation. >> good evening, everyone. it's a pleasure to be here, and i would like to thank commissioner dooley for initiating this item. we have been talking about this for a few months now, and, you know, the heart really is what is going on at the local level. we have a lot of level at the national level, but the main idea is to dive deep into the ground story of san francisco. so i'd like to share some

slides, if i could get that option. >> coming at you very shortly. >> while we are waiting for that, i just want to introduce myself. i've been at san francisco state for 17 years. i'm a professor in the economics chair. my current profession is health economics. this is my living lab right now, and, you know, i mostly work on the impact of health policy on individuals' lives and health outcomes, but economics, you know, you can ask any question and it would fall within the realm of economics, right?

so looking at my slides. can everybody see this? >> we can. >> so the point is, what is the local story? that is what we want to get at? i just have four slides. i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. i want to spend more time on the questions, getting your thoughts. but what i want to start with is what we know from research done so far. this is a wide variety of research that we've drawn on. the first one is by an conne economist at u.s. santa cruz. he found that in the first two months after we went into shelter in place, there was a

22% drop in small business owners in the united states, and this disproportionately affected minority and women-owned small businesses. they d they found only 35% of the small businesses are actually what they would rate as healthy, and they took a very conservative estimate of health, being two months worth

of operational possibilities, whatever that would be. covering costs, but to be able to survive two months. there was another survey that went out on facebook in a small business roundtable. the two most important things that small businesses are worried about: cash flow and lack of demand. the businesses affected the most are hotels, cafes, dining, and all these businesses that have just opened up in san francisco after six months. a lending tree study in july looked at -- they did a survey and they found san francisco with the grimmest outlook of all major u.s. cities. they put the number of

businesses that would never recover at 16%. a similar yelp study came out studying the san francisco bay area, and between march 1 and july 15, there was 2500 business that had closed, and san francisco is fourth in the nation with business cloners. so if you look at this, you have many questions. first of all, a lot of this is at the national level, and a lot of it, we don't know who's the sample -- are these localized? so where is the san francisco story? it's -- so we wanted to get a little bit deeper, and we started asking questions. so we started talking to small

businesses on the ground, and this is anecdotal, but this is what we heard from our conversations. san francisco -- i think it's a question of evolving through these uncertain times. so in that spirit, there's been a lot of inconsistencies in approval of fees and taxes. some businesses aren't even looking at these bills. some businesses have complained that the sidewalks and public spaces aren't being cleaned on the weekends, when they need it the most.

street street encampments in parking are actually keep people way. they actually need grants and small payment release, and then, increased operations to comply with covid regulations is a burden. and some businesses that have had to revert to other forms of delivery and business, they need help. they don't know how to do this quite. so these are the things that we learned from our conversations on the ground, and i'm sure this is not new to any of you. i'm sure you're hearing the same. so what knowledge are we missing to form policy? first, a lot of the findings are findings at the national level if you take census surveys and population surveys. we need to know the local

context, which sectors need help. i was here the last hour, and you went over the unemployment numbers, and the restaurant industry has been hit hard, but let's not forget there are other specialty retail that are also hurting. the gift stores and book stores and hardware stores and other things that people use a lot. we also -- we also want to know, what are the best resilient businesses, what are they looking for? what do they need to survive? and then, what [inaudible] on unemployment that's happening? and finally, to look ahead, if recovery is slow, we're already six months into this. we have no idea where the end

will be. what is this going to have -- what impact is this going to have on our downtown, on our neighborhoods in san francisco? so what are going to be all the indirect and the spill-over effect of what's going on right now? so that's really where we are. our team is really myself, and i got excited about this and interested in the spirit of giving back to the community. a lot of my research is currently, you know, about the community. and i come up with questions with my community partners. i have a student working with me. she's an indian student, and a lot of this has been in consultation with commissioner

[inaudible] so i want to see if you have any questions. if not, i will go over the questionnaire. i sent a draft out for you to look at, and maybe we could go over there and see if these questions make sense. and we go over the questions and see what ideas and thoughts you might have. >> so first, professor, i want so say thank you so -- i want to say thank you so much. i we can relate to that public service, because we're super

generous, as well. with respect to the questionnaire, perhaps i missed it. i don't know how that was distributed, but we do get a bunch of e-mails. it's possible i overlooked it. now -- it was in the agenda. got it. okay. i guess i'm supposed to look at the agenda now, is that the expectation? >> no. i might -- i might be able to bring it up. domenica, would you like to give me the share option again? >> clerk: yes. >> and i've added a few things, so i'd like to share the most recent. >> you know, one thing i just wanted to add, you know, just as another thing to add to your research, because i do -- to clarify, i'm imagining this being the beginning of a conversation that we're going to have over perhaps the next

few months that this project -- and i'm very grateful to commissioner huie to be setting up. but one thing or data source that you can add to the existing research, there's a website called tracktherecovery.org. i don't know if you've seen that or are familiar with it. >> yes. >> okay. it is interesting because you can look at this county level data and run chart -- county-level data and run charts. i don't know how accurate the data is, but harvard brown, bill gates foundation, my assumption is it's reasonably

good. >> yes. >> please, let's go through the questionnaire. >> okay. so i'm not completely sure how you want this to go out, and so this first part is really a place holder. it's something that i would like some discussion on, but there is a certainly amount of graf 2k3w gravitas if it went out not from researchers at san francisco state university but the small business commission. businesses are looking for guidance, they're looking for help. they're fatigued with numerous measures that they've taken, and i don't apeople will be as interested in contributing to research knowledge as they are

in how this is going to help them. i'd like to put that out there, and with that, let's go through the questions. so these are some demographic questions that we came up with based on our conversations with business owners. and a lot of the census questions don't get the -- into this -- this much detail. a question that i added today was do you need a license to operate, but before that, it's the usual zip code, gender type of business. what kind of people frequent this business? and again, this was developed with our conversations with business owners. also, looking at a little bit of comparative analysis of all these questions that are to come next, small businesses who operate in san francisco versus

they have branches in other counties, that could tell us that san francisco is doing the right thing or they need to improve. so that's the question there, is to have that comparative analysis. and -- and then, we dive into an overall effect, but breaking down -- and initially, we had taken the census date of march 134, but cynthia and i discussed and said it's more appropriate to have the stay-at-home order in san francisco and cut it off a off

march 17. so this is related to how the business was operating before the pandemic, and then, how many employees, and what has happened since march 17. so was there a change in operating revenues, sales receipts? did the business do any of the following? since march 17, did this business have a change in the number of paid employees? increase or no change? and then, as we opened up businesses in a safe manner relative to one year ago, how would you describe this business' current operating capacity? so is the capacity -- there's no wchange or is it less than 50% or more than 50%, has increased 50% or more, and so

i'm getting some of those metrics? and then, in the last month, did this business rehire any paid employees? and so yes, no, and did they layoff any paid employees. in the last month, was this business affected by any of the follow, and select all that apply so we are able to find relatively which ones are the most commonly -- the ones that are commonly chosen by businesses. so this is ability to rehire. i've heard, and i think the jobs now discussion kind of related to this, that a lot of businesses or restaurants, especially, it's hard for them to find employees, and

especially now, with the workers that they had to layoff, it's hard for them to find people and bring them back. and this is disproportionately affecting ethnic restaurants that typically hire undocumented workers, and they're gone. it's hard to track them down. ability of employees to work, ability of employees to work from home, physical distancing, available p.p.e., need for new licenses or permits, confusing a lot of programs, availability of covid regulations, availability of other supplies or imports. in the last month, was this business' sales affected by any of the following? competition from businesses outside your county. some other counties may open

earlier, so maybe san francisco businesses lost some of the competition. not enough business in san francisco, lack of cleanliness, confusing opening guidelines. i had to turn away customers who refused to follow rule does. this is one that we're hearing quite a bit. increase in the cost of parking, homelessness, closed streets, lack of parking, delays in getting permits and approvals. would you describe the current availability of cash on hand? so this is the financial health questions. has this business missed any loan payments? has this business missed any other scheduled payments which could be rent, utilities, payroll? and then, has this business requested financial assistance from any of the following sources? and this is a laundry list, and i think that this laundry list is also a way to educate some

of the businesses. do we -- do all of them know that these things exist, and so we would -- we have a question later, asking if they have heard of or where do they get this information from? and then, we break this down into federal assistance versus local assistance. and has there been any change in this business' use of forms of delivery. and then, some planning ahead questions. do you think this business will need to do any of the following? so this is -- i think when we learn some of these things, we may be able to connect businesses to these types of programs and resources. and then, yeah, the expectation

of how -- how much time do you think? this is how optimistic are businesses feeling about this? so we want to know what their optimism, pessimism is. and then, how has this business getting all this information? i have an open-ended question there, and then, a few scale questions where business feels supported by the local merchant community, the business feels that people are shopping locally and supporting us, the businesses feels that the city is doing a good job in supporting small businesses, and then, if the business feels that san francisco is a good place to do small business. and then, two open-ended questions there.

if they can tell us what kind of assistance would help is u sustain them, and then any other information that they would want to provide that didn't get captured in the previous questions. so that's really where the survey is. i'm always trying and debating with the length of a survey, how long it takes to take a survey, survey fatigue, and we want good quality data. we want everybody to answer the questions and not leave holes, so that's, again, an important task. we are not -- we haven't completely decided this is going to be the order of the questions. that's going to be another iteration, so what feels like. and sometimes, there are

validation-related questions. you want to ask a question in a certain way that you can validate that the business is really paying attention to this, and they're not just clicking away. so those kinds of things, we can't gotten to. but i just -- you know, cynthia and i have gone back and forth on these questions and would love your feedback and love to hear what you have for us. >> i just can't commend you enough. that's a fascinating and exhaustive set of questions, and i mean that in the best possible way. before we get to any questions, commissioner huie, do you want to offer any additional observations or what you experienced? >> for sure. sorry. this is my first time speaking

in a little while. i just want to say, commissioner laguana, for encouraging this conversation and for having this on our agenda tonight. and i wanted to thank the rest of the commissioners for your support on my interest in wanting to find out more information and more -- and to actually do a formal kind of data seeking. and of course, i wanted to thank professor chaudhuri and her research assistant. we've worked really hard on just making -- just trying to get as much understanding around what we were seeing because things continue to move and evolve. there's different things coming out from different data sectors, with ybut really stay focused on that lens of san francisco itself, and looking

at how our city is going to be recovering in the next few months. i was blown away with that presentation. i thought that was amazing, so thank you very much for really bringing so much information for us to really be able to think about. one of the things that i wanted to encourage the commissioners with tonight is really that, you know, this is all -- it's very open. you know, so, you know, i think we've talked about we're very open to, you know, looking at how best to gather the data, but also doesn't want to go out in one giant survey, you know? i think something the commission could do is think about regular data gathering and how that works into our infrastructure? so i think this is kind of, like, the beginning, and we are just really hoping for, you know, ideas and comments on how to pak thmake that a really va

piece or tool for our policy advocacy. so i think those were my main kind of header pieces, and i'm really excited and happy to hear all of your comments. >> well, thank you again. this is really incredible, and it feels like the start of getting better data, which i think is going to be really helpful for all of us. commissioner zouzounis. >> thank you, professor, and thank you, commissioner huie. real great stuff. real comprehensive. the only things that i would like to add or ask a question about, i think -- and i've expressed this before. something -- i think the purview of this survey in terms of how we can best utilize the

data is we want to collect information that we can actually asupply legislatively, whatever form it takes that can actually be in the control of san francisco in terms of what we have at our disposal. and one question that i would like to add, is have any city, state, or federal laws unrelated to covid-19 impacted your business this year or since that march 17 date? because we need -- we need to -- [inaudible] regulatory changes haven't stopped, unrelated. i mean, they just made a ban of a whole product category for the state of california, flavored tobacco, which is

largely going to impact essential businesses in the immigrant community. so we've also been getting tipped off that some expense -- some expenditures that are a result of city specific ordinances are not being, you know, calculated in forgiveness -- for example, p.p.e. so we need to start to be able to track any laws out of covid that might be impacting small businesses at this time. and then, the second thing on the scaled questions, the first one, the scale of one-to-five questions, i would recommend changing that to local merchant organizations specifically because we also know --

[inaudible] i had a question. what exactly do you mean by social insurance?

>> people have already applied for eidls and ppps. they don't want anymore loans. how are they going to payback if they're not generating any revenue? so that's the kind of -- i know we are all hurting. there's limited amount of money, but this is the idea of, you know, if we don't support

now, we might see really bad spillover effects a year from now, and we are not anticipating that. and this is why we want to preempt that stuff and give the relief and give the support now. but i cannot come in and say that this is the kind of stuff we want to give. we should tell the tbusinesses

that this is the kind of information that drives that advocacy, once we learn the on-the-ground story. >> well, we certainly try. commissioner adams -- i'm sorry. commissioner zouzounis, were you done? >> yes, thank you, and thank you for your responses.

>> when we do these surveys, it's not to do them all at once, and spreading out and maybe targeting it. and starting out at different segments. this is how we're going to get some real important information, how we move forward here in the next, you know, year, if not longer. >> if you do it all at once, you're not going to get a good take on it. you need to spread it out. how we do it, i don't know.

these questions are excellent. you know, i'm hoping that things are going to get better, but i'm hoping from a lot of people that it isn't. this will help us be proactive rather than reactive. and these questions, this couldn't happen at a better time. the sooner we get this out to groups in segments, the better. this is something so, so important, and commissioner huie, thank you for pushing this. this is good. [please stand by]

. >> later in this hearing, in new business, i think we'll be exploring some of the commission's goals for the next six months and what our focus should be. i did want to mention it because i did mention it during the hearing, we have placed a pretty big priority on shared spaces and restaurants because of the number of people affected, but we have also had hearings about sperpersonal services and gym businesses. i did not want to imply that we

were not paying attention to other sectors. so with that, i think the next steps are the commission needs to develop priorities over the next six months, and i think that'll inform what kinds of things we can target with the survey, and then, with respect to coordinating with business associations, and commissioner dooley's suggestion, i think that's an excellent suggestion, and i know we all have relationships with business associations that we can help facilitate that. and certainly, i think i agree with you, that if it's seen as an official commission work product, but being distributed through the various business

associations, hopefully, we'll get a little more buy-in -- and also, quite frankly, we'll get higher quality data because we'll know the folks coming to us will be through vetted channels, and it's not just some random google form on the internet that just anybody can answer. so i think this is extraordinary and excellent work, and i can't wait to push the ball down the road a little bit farther. our next hearing is jam packed, so i would say scheduling wise, let's look to reconvene in november, either the first or second meeting in november, schedule permitting, and we'll -- hopefully by that point, as a commission, we'll have a sense of, you know, do we want to target a specific sector or a specific size, and

how does -- how will the output of the survey help us turn that into measurable results better in line with our priorities? and, of course, there may be legislation that emerges, too, that just throws everything out the window, and now, all of a sudden, we're dealing with the legislation, and that's now top of mind. that seems to happen a lot in our universe. so with that, any other commissioner comments or questions or reactions to what i just said? are we good? commissioner huie, are we good? >> yeah. actually, i wanted to follow up on those things. i think those are really good comments, and i feel that i can help with the time between now and november with, you know,

developing kind of, you know, some sort of framework around how we can break things apart with professor chaudhuri. >> yeah. >> and we can also -- i also want to think a little bit about outreach. i, of course, love all of our merchants associations, but i've also noticed what commissioner zouzounis has mentioned is there are many people not connected in those types of networks, so figuring out a way to actually, like, get people in stores, you know, and actually spending time walking into businesses. so i want to spend a little bit of time doing that. >> commissioner dooley. >> just one thing. when i've tried to get these

surveys done, people want to know how they can transmit this information? and i'm also wondering if you're going to have paper surveys that can be gathered and mailed? because i personally find when gathering information, not a lot of these businesses are going to like having someone bring a computer to them, so i guess i want to make sure we cover as many people as possible, so i really urge a paper option that we could, say, a business association could gather and send somewhere like a business association. >> let me ask you a question, commissioner dooley. when we did this in the past, previous to my time on the

commission, did we do that in the past? >> we sent things out in the past. this is a survey we wanted to take about vacancies, business vacancies, how long things had been vacant in the neighborhood, and we thought that maybe that maybe would make some comments on that, but it was not particularly successful just because i feel that people just didn't bother to answer. >> well, you know, we'll continue to push the ball forward. commissioner huie, i'm glad that you're willing to continue working on this. i think myself and vice president zouzounis can continue to coordinate with you

offline and, you know, if there's an opportunity to move faster, i'm happy to take it just because i think that data sooner rather than later is helpful in this time. so i also want to say, you know, that we're not obligated to wait longer periods of time if we can develop strategy. >> may i say something? >> yeah, please. >> so, you know, in terms of survey research -- and this is -- i'm putting my researcher hat on here. in internet surveys, we've seen that a good response rate is about 40%. you're never going to get 100%, never ev never, ever, and if you know people really well, you might

get 70%. if we can start with a large sample, like, if we have 25,000 businesses that we have e-mail addresses for, and we get 40% to respond, that would be a really good baseline survey. we don't want to lose too much time in gathering that baseline data because who knows? in a month's time, i don't want to say anything, but maybe we go back indoors, and then, we lose the opportunity of really understanding of what people were feeling when they opened up? and then, we will have lost this window. so i would urge you to think about these when we discuyou d and i'm happy to work would cynthia in terms of what would be doable in terms of a starting point. i agree that you're not going to get everybody all the

sectors, maybe targeting the sectors, or maybe targeting through the merchant associations and, you know, the s.b.c.s or whoever has the outreach might be a good way to get out there. but i would say that don't let low responses, you know, low responses pull us down. >> i would be thrilled if we had 40% return. i'm thinking 5. >> yeah, and i think the key is to make it clear that this is something that will inform how you can help businesses. and from what i've talked to, some businesses on the ground, they've told me, oh, my god, another survey? but if you can show me that

what i'm going to say is really going to help us, then, i'm absolutely willing to take this survey. >> okay. >> i think the header will be important. >> well, professor, thank you so much for your time and your work. we're looking forward to working with you going forward. we'll try and figure out how to give you good resources so you can get good data and results. we're very appreciative of your partnership, and thank you, commissioner huie, for your leadership here and pushing this forward. this is going to be really helpful to the commission and to the commission's work. so i've been excited about it since you brought it up, and as excited as i was, i'm 1,000 times more excited now that i can see where it's going. so fantastic work. before i let you guys go, we

have to check in on public comment. are there any public commenters on this item? >> clerk: let's give a moment to see if our one caller would like to press star, three. and it appears we have no public comment. >> okay. seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. have a great evening, professor, and we'll be talking soon. >> all right. bye-bye, everyone. >> bye-bye. next item, please. >> clerk: item 5, approval of draft meeting minutes, action item. >> okay. i move to approve the item meeting minutes. >> you need to have public comment first. >> oh, public comment first, is that what you said? yeah. okay. do we have any public comment on the minutes? i'm such a dumb-ass.

>> there appears to be no public comment at this time. >> thank god. okay. i move to approve the meeting minutes. >> i second. >> motion by commissioner laguana to approve the meeting minutes from september 28, 2020, seconded by commissioner adams. roll call vote. [roll call] >> clerk: motion passes, 7-0. >> great, and thank you for that reminder, commissioner adams. i do appreciate it. next item, please. >> clerk: item 6, general public comment. allows members of the public to comment matters that are within the small business commission's jurisdiction but not on today's

calendar and suggests now agenda items for the commission's future consideration. discussion item. >> are there any members of the public who would like to make public comment on items not on this agenda. are there any public callers on the line. >> operator: there are no public callers at this time. >> public comment is closed. next item, please. >> clerk: director's report. update and report on the office of the small business and the small business assistance center, department programs, policy and legislative matters, announcements from the mayor, and announce points recording small business activities. discussion item. >> good evening, commissioners. before i begin my report, i want to extend my congratulations on today's announcement with the announcement of small business

commissioner manny yekutiel to the small business commission. i want to thank the mayor for making this nomination. it's been a long time, to my recollection, that we've actually had a small business -- especially neighborhood commercial corridor business on the sfmta board, and that representation is going to be extremely valuable. so best of luck getting through the nomination process, commissioner yekutiel, but congratulations. i want to report that since the last meeting, starting march

16, we have services 3,765 businesses. i am the business assistant center staff. -- i and the business assistant center staff are beginning to have a conversation on reshifting, so we'll be reshifting our -- reshifting our focus in terms of that we are no longer in the sort of cov covid rapid emergency response, but now, we are in the recovery response, and so we'll begin to shift how we track and report our numbers, and so more will come in relationship to that, but this will be something that we'll have worked out in the next couple of weeks. we've also sent out 75 informational e-blasts to the business community. the mayor, in the last couple of weeks, has issued several

key supplementals. one on september 25, the just add music permit, or the j.a.m. permit. that will be administered by the entertainment commission to help add more activity in the shared space program, and a means for supporting our artists and musicians. so you will be receiving a presentation from the entertainment commission director, maggie weiland, at our meeting on october 26. the commercial eviction moratorium was extended through to november 30, and there are some kia additions that were added establishing some specific criteria for written

notice and cure periods. and one, i'm working to get clarification on, landlords with less than 25,000 square feet of rentable space in the commercial property may evict a tenant due to commercial hardship. this is something they may have to report to oewd. i'm trying to get clarity on -- i mean, 25,000 square feet of rental space. getting clarity, if that means commercial and residential or just commercial space. the third party delivery app, ccap, was extended, and this time, the mayor extended it to when indoor dining is at 50%, so i do want you to note that supervisor peskin is now going to be -- he has scheduled his third party delivery app

legislation, which the commission had heard -- has heard already, and that he will be hearing it this thursday at the public safety neighborhood services committee meeting. and just -- i don't think i've gone over, but at the state level, there's been two bills that have been signed by the governor in relationship to the third-party delivery app. one addressing that third-party delivery apps must receive the consent for food-related businesses to be placed on their platform. and then -- and then, the other bill requires third-party delivery apps or companies to ensure cleanliness when preparing and delivering meals to customers. some key updates for legislation. supervisor mar's right to

return to work ordinance that the commission heard on september 14, that piece of legislation has yet to be scheduled in committee, but he did, last week, reintroduce a third emergency ordinance, so -- in relationship to that, so we might be able to read into that that he will be moving forward a third emergency ordinance. and the temporary -- the fee waiver for the sidewalk tables and chairs, that has passed, and -- passed last week, and a couple amendments to it is it now applies retroactively to april 5, 2020, to april 2022,

and it urges the sfmta to waive fees for parklets. so the board of supervisors can't waive fees for -- like they can for public works or department of public works. only the sfmta and the board can waive the fees. so there are fees that parklets do need to pay to the sfmta. and then, in addition to the 31,000 jobs that president sharky identified with the restaurant industry, i think one other thing to -- of particular to note is the 63,000 -- the pandemic unemployment assistance

insurance, and that was a special unemployment insurance that was created due to covid for z-- and i'm going to stres, it's our sole proprietors. a lot of people want to frame it that it's our big economy workers -- gig economy workers, but it's a lot more than our gig economy workers. it's professional sectors, so i think that 63,000, it will be interesting to see if we can get a breakdown in terms of the different industries that those 63,000 unemployment claims apply to. and then, lastly, want to just let you know that staff, in terms of staff work that we're

doing, we are in the -- we are in the process of transitioning our salesforce database from a very old version, the classic version into the new lightning version. this will help expedite and make easier the data reporting that we have and need to do, so that will be a focus for the -- probably through the end of the year as we work on that migration and transition. so with that, if there's any -- i'll leave it at that, and happy to answer any questions you may have. >> commissioner adams, were you raising your hand? >> yeah, really quick. on that 25,000 square feet and mixed use building, that's just commercial space. residential's not included in that. that's separate. i know that for a fact because we have mixed-use buildings, and i went and had attorneys

clarify that, and so they're residential, like apartments and that, are a whole other category right now, and you're still protected on that. so -- >> right. and i -- thank you. i'm glad -- i'm glad your attorneys were able to clarify it for me. oewd was not able to clarify it. >> the funny thing is i just got the message on that at, like, 4:00 this afternoon. >> thank you. all right. >> any other commissioner comments or questions? go ahead, commissioner dooley? >> in north beach, we've had a really successful shared spaces program. it's really brought a lot of people to north beach, also, except for you, sharky.

i haven't seen you there yet. i want to let you know we're moving forward, which we've now requested of m.t.a. to give back parking meters to the public for those who are not using them. a lot of merchants -- well, not a lot, but some merchants felt that they should be able to park their private car all day long in their shared spaces, which i don't believe is really the intent. but we are definitely moving forward to try to find a way to allow people to come in and stay at a meter, but not for indefinite periods. so that's fife a new challenge for us to kind of get back to more normal and being a

destination place, and we'll let you know how it goes. >> okay. [inaudible] the supes tomorrow will be hearing the shared spaces resolution that got started in the small business commission in july, as many of you recall, so it'll be heard tomorrow, and it's sponsored by supervisor mar, walton, and haney. so that's a nice little bit of progress there. i mean, tangentially related to

director report. >> exactly, so thank you for adding that. >> yes. okay. any public comment on the director's report? >> there's no public comment at this time. >> seeing none, public comment is closed. next item, please. >> clerk: item 8, commissioner discussion and new business. allows president, vise president, and commissioners to report on recent small business activities, make announcements that are of interest to the small business community, and make inquiries of staff. allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration by the commission. discussion item. >> so, you know, i alluded to this earlier.

we were going to have it be a separate agenda item, but we didn't pull that out. it was a little snafu. it seems we're six months into the pandemic, and it's probably a good time to check in with everybody and see what we should be spending the next six focusing on. there was a lot of energy put into shared spaces because of what it meant for restaurants and the community, but with that resolution now going in front of the board of supes, it does seem like it leaves t -- least the heavy lifting has been done, and we've tackled quite a bit of items. i'm interested to hear from you what you think core priorities mighting over the next six months that will have a mean

will -- might be over the next six months that will have a meaningful impact on our community. domenica has been keeping track of it, and there is an ongoing need to address any legislation that comes on down the pike, but we're going to check with you to see what you might think of as being possible priorities. commissioner zouzounis? >> i would like to highlight what i mentioned earlier, bringing an equity lens to this next phase of recovery and -- and put a special specific ' emphasis in getting resources to the harder-to-reach business communities. i know commissioner huie and i

were talking about p.p.e. because we regularly reach out to our small businesses and are affiliated with our merchant groups. i know that our trade association has partnered with ucsf in setting up p.p.e. hot spots in particular in the bayview at corner stores because ucsf has recognized that the traditional channels, whether it be listing nonprofits or city channels are not actually reaching the constituents in these harder-to-reach neighborhoods. and by putting, you know, p.p.e., for example, at community centers, which really are our neighborhood small businesses, that seems to be the best way to reach some of our more vulnerable communities. and the trade association, we

don't have staff. we don't have paid consultants to help administer surveys. like, we are in the store and we are also doing the organizing in our sector, and we need resources because clearly, the existing landscape of the bigger funded merchant groups rb hitting our vulnerable merchant communities. we need -- are not hitting our vulnerable merchant communities. we need to make a strong push to the mayor, to the board, to get outreach to these merchant groups that are already not getting resources from the city, whether it's p.p.e. or whether it's -- you know, various whatnot. so i want that to be our kind of -- part of our equity lens in how we -- whether we're distributing a survey or whether we're recommending resources be distributed to a

certain small of the small business demographic. >> okay. so just making sure i got this right. so continue to focus the equity lens on the work of recovery and assist -- engage with helping with the distribution of p.p.e. to vulnerable communities? >> i think just recognizing that resources to vulnerable communities aren't necessarily getting there through traditional channels, they're getting there through businesses that are in those communities, and so we need to better support those businesses that aren't part of these networks but are really playing vital roles in their communities. basically, like, the non -- the -- you know, the -- the --

the ethnic merchant groups and groups that aren't already on the radar with the city and stuff. we need to have a line to them as part of our equity plans. >> okay. so reaching out to businesses that are community resources in these vulnerable communities. commissioner adams, i'm going to -- well, i'm sorry. commissioner dooley? >> i wanted to comment about for the future that we're done a lot of amazing work with the restaurants and the food service industry, but from what i see on the streets, we're really leaving behind the small businesses that are retail. they weren't really benefited by the shared spaces, because, for example, they're not going to put their clothing out on the street, and that's, like, i

had mentioned that we wanted to start opening up a few parking places for -- that would benefit these other kind of businesses, these retail businesses and maybe encourage folks to start frequenting them again. so my main point is we need to start thinking about retail. >> i agree. it's an excellent suggestion. commissioner adams, do you have a comment? commissioner adams? >> i was on mute. i was just seeing where we were. i didn't know we combined this part of the agenda, so i apologize. >> no. >> first off, the few things that i'd like to focus on were just mentioned on. one thing that miriam -- commissioner zouzounis just said is really important, and that is with the equity

businesses, and that goes across the spectrum. i do hear from -- actually, i've heard from a lot of constituents, especially with the arab grocers. they're not getting the messages, and the messages that they are getting, they're getting from the arab grossers association. they're doing a great job, but they don't have a lot of staff, and then, it's getting support to those groups. and then, what commissioner dooley said, we're focusing a lot on restaurants, but we're going to see the apocalypse with these small shops, and i'm seeing it in my small businesses that i'm managing. and, you know, they were able to open up with limited

capacity and all of that. you know, that's just -- what we need to start focusing on is recovery, and not just restaurants, but all businesses, and a lot of second-floor businesses, recovery done in the financial bid, down in the financial district, with a lot of those retail businesses. this opening up is what we need to be focusing on, and support to these businesses, when we're talking about the survey, the one thing i want hearing from a lot of my businesses on conflicts is where i'm an asset manager now is they don't want anymore loans. they need relief they need help with their rents. a lot of them are opening -- i'm looking at financials right now on businesses, and yeah,

some of them are starting to make money again, but not what they were making precovid, and they can pay some rents but not all their rents, and landlords -- i went to supervisor mandelman's hearing because -- i didn't go to supervisor mandelman's hearing because i was working: we need to make sure that everybody is working together to make this thing work because i'm very, very nervous about the future. with that said, we've got the people with deep pockets -- or just capital. i don't mean deep pockets, who are ready to get into business and can go into space that's have closed, retail spaces that

have closed. there's now this whole new generation of people that are ready to come in and open up, and we need to make sure we're there for them. i want to comment on what president laguana, what you said in the chronicle yesterday, with the ice cream guy on valencia street. it's something that's next to impossible, and it's something that commissioner dooley and i and those that have been on the commission a long time [inaudible] maybe the mayor and the board of supervisors will hear us, but if they don't change the rules on how to get businesses open in this city, you ain't going to have it, and

we need to streamline that because despite all the negative stuff out there, there are other people standing on the sidelines who can fill in and take up our spaces, and i think it's our fiduciary responsibility to make it easier for them and not go through all that b.s. you said in that article yesterday, president laguana, you were spot on. i cheered when i read that, and, you know, we need to get more of that out there. >> throwing the f-bomb in particular? >> we've all got to throw f-bombs. there's a whole lot that we could be doing, but i think it's more in recovery, recovery for the new people that want to come in for business, but also helping commissioner zouzounis and a lot of the equity people.

the mission needs a lot of help, and with those groups. and i know we have bilingual out there, but maybe we get more. you know, it's crazy times, so -- but i'm trying to stay optimistic right now. but when you go to the financial districts three times a week, and it's apocalyptic -- and i hate to use that word over and over again, but it's true. when i see all the businesses there, and they're struggling, i get a pit in my stomach. that's it. >> okay. commissioner huie? >> i just have a few responses for some of the things that have been said so far by other commissioners. i -- you know, through the distribution of p.p.e., i've

noticed that there's so many businesses that aren't connected on [inaudible] that that's not the [inaudible] for them or receiving information from them, so i've really struggled how to get people on board. what i'm noticing is this is our opportunity right now to build community partnerships, build strategic community partnerships and realize what community am i a part of and what am i not a part of and realize the channels that they're tuned into. and i think this has been very interesting exercise. i think if we're able to kind of find these [inaudible], like, sometimes maybe it's the community. like, i know in the chinese community, there are smaller banks that people bank at, and those might be great

partnerships for us to have as a small business or merchants association, but, like, helping connect people right now is a great resource or a great tool that we can use, and think about how this is an opportunity for people to get connected. because in better times, you know, maybe we take for granted all of our community associations, all of our merchant associations. the second piece, in terms of retail, looking at the survey, we had started to kind of look at e-commerce in terms of, like, retail and what the landscape for retail is going to look like because retail is affected so differently than a restaurant. and so i think we have some opportunities to really kind of look at retail specifically and how it could be a very unique

business or role for us if if we allow businesses to have -- us if we allow businesses to have more flexibility, if we allow for mixed-use capability in our retail spaces. i'm really glad you brought up retail, commissioner dooley. i feel like that is what i travel for. i travel for shopping and eating, and i love seeing people come to san francisco to eat and shop and do something new and have that sense of discovery. and spinning towards a more positive note, i did have a meeting with director dick-endrizzi and rick of our legacy business program, and we did talk about, you know, the idea that if legacy businesses are closing, we'd like to, you know, do some sort of exit

interview. and as we were talking, we realized our legacy businesses are doing -- i don't know if they're doing okay or how they're doing, but they're not closing at the same -- at any of the rate that we kind of anticipated? and so that kind of gives some incompete insight and hope, that maybe legacy businesses, because of their length of tenure and doing business in our city, that they have some experience and knowledge to glean from. so i think we should use this to our advantage, like, in terms of talking to our legacy businesses and find out the things that they've been able to do to weather past economic

downturn, and perhaps find ways to safe or ways to pivot. and i hope we can glean some knowledge from a group of businesses that we already [inaudible] within our purview. so those were my three items. >> so just to make sure i got this right, helping people connect, retail, and then, legacy business information sharing, learning. maybe just on the connect part, i just want to make sure i got that part of it correctly, is this, like, were you talking about, like, a communication strategy or help me understand that a little bit more? >> oewd, they have a very extensive network, and i think for the small business community, untds --

understanding that for the ethnic community and the community in general. i feel like we have a very e-mail list, like, i'm very satisfied with the size of our e-mail list, but that still leaves a lot of people not getting that information. i'm excited about that one question in the survey, how are you getting information? i think that will be skewed in terms of how we administer the survey, but i think that would give us some ideas. i think commissioner zouzounis has that same experience, that you literally need to walk up to somebody and ask them the question in order to get the answer, and that's a challenge, and how do we make that different? and part of that might actually be building trust?

part of that might be that we need to build trust. >> okay. build trust. commissioner ortiz-cartagena -- oh, sorry. i didn't mean to cut you off. can you just repeat your last sentence again? >> for me? >> yeah. >> i just said that part of it might be trust, that they see value in being connected. >> okay. thank you. commissioner ortiz-cartagena? >> thank you, president laguana. i agree with what everybody says on the activities, and just to highlight equity, like, i personally have delivered p.p.e. to over 70 businesses

[inaudible] i've personally been to over 20 shared spaces to date. [inaudible] it's really also making sure when you talk about equity that there are unintended consequences. other commissioners highlighted

that there are [inaudible] and making sure that unintended consequences don't gentrify communities of color that were in danger of being displaced prior to the pandemic. [inaudible] talking about it and being about it are two different things. >> yeah. i agree, and, you know, i think we've got to find a way to make sure this stays front and center. when we think about the last six months, the last six months was primarily affecting the

disadvantaged vulnerable communities the most, and so, you know, we were in a state of just having to put some fires out. but i think, you know, when we look at the next six months, you kn you know, now is when we've got to put the rubber to the road, and this is where we've got to start addressing these smaller issues. i think that's exactly right, that we've got to make that connection on equity across everything we do. we've got to make sure that the language barriers are addressed across everything we do, and you've been spectacular on staying on top of that, and we're lucky to have you there, so thank you for that. commissioner yekutiel, i don't

see your name in chat, but i'm going to call you because you're the only person who hasn't commented on what we should do the next six months. >> thank you, commissioner laguana -- president laguana. commissioner yekutiel. i've been thinking a lot about this. it's been said already, but obviously, we've been extremely productive and very busy over the last six months, and i'm really proud of the work of this body and how effective we've been. i don't want to sound to cynical, but one of the things that i've learned already is unless small businesses -- is that -- is that the other departments -- and kind of the general infrastructure of city hall is -- it didn't seem like this is a lot of momentum to

specifically think of ways to support us unless we ask for it definitively, loudly, and continually. and that both makes me sad but also presents an opportunity for us on this body to change the direction and also to increase the visibility and power of the small business community. i think part of that has to do with the fact that small businesses are not voters. from a political perspective, we don't have, like, constituent -- necessarily direct -- we don't have the same means of -- of pulling levers of power that individual voters have, at least when it comes to our elected officials. and the second thing that we have against us is that small business owners tend to be extremely busy people that, you know, many times have to work 12, 15 hours a day just to keep their shirts on, so i think

that's a disadvantage for us. so i think one thing that this board can do over the next six months is try to find a way to increase the visibility and power of the small business community incrementally. and also, i do not think that as we plan out the exit from this crisis, that departments are necessarily going to be clamoring over themselves for bold, new, interesting ideas to support our small businesses. so the agencies that are going to be directly responsible for these things, fire department, police department, sfmta, d.p.w., oewd, you know, i think it's going to be important that we continue to bring the leaders of those departments that are going to be in the middle of recovery and what that will look like back to the

small business commission and how they're helping the businesses, how they might be getting in the way, and how they might be clearing the path for us. so i would love for us to bring department heads into this body. i would love for us to continue to be bold in envisioning what a future san francisco looks like, that is an inexpensive and simple and easy as san francisco can be. i want to take advantage of the opportunity we have in front of us to reimagine how small businesses are thought of in city hall. >> great. so increase visibility, influence, and power, within the departments, and continue to take bold action and influence the leaders to

recognize the small business' contributions to the community. is that right? >> yeah. and one thing connected to today's announcement. there's two kinds of small businesses in san francisco in general. there's small businesses that occupy physical space within a city, and then, there are small businesses that occupy kind of nonphysical space, but the owner-operator is within city limits. there are things you can do on the financial side that assist the small business owner that does not have a physical space. but with regard to small business owners in san francisco that kind of occupies actual physical form and the street have become symbiotic. i had to bring everyone that

was outside inside because they were being attacked. space is going to continue to be important over the next couple of years, and it's going to be up to this body to make sure that we're pushing all the agencies responsible for outside for saying we need to think about what's going to happen inside. so that relationship just became really important, and i would love for us to continue to be in the middle of it. >> yeah. you know, i want to say, the firthe -- first of all, i agree with every one of these things that you guys mentioned. the only thing i didn't see mentioned but which does kind of dovetail into what commissioner yekutiel said --

and the fact that it's not mentioned doesn't mean it's not a priority because many of you have mentioned to this privately and i've heard it nonstop from businesses. but street cleanliness is a huge issue for many of our businesses. it comes up constantly, and i'm constantly hearing about it as being a major priority. and, you know, i think we have to examine, as well, as part of that, now that all the businesses, all business is happening on the street, we're going to have to come to terms with how the unhoused are dealt with with respect to small business and how do we navigate this terrain?

it's very tricky terrain to talk about, but i think it starts with having a conversation with the department heads responsible and getting a understanding of how they go about things, and what are the constraints, and how can we advocate for small businesses and what our needs are? because so often, that seems to be the last thing considered. so those are the only two things that i would add to that kind of more challenging issues, and maybe politically sensitive, but it's something i constantly hear about from the small business community, and i'm sure you do, to. i think we're going to have to start tackling that. i think this is a great list, and a great framework. and as we set the agenda, i

think, you know, this will help guide me. and hopefully, we've all heard from each other, so it'll help put us all on the same footing. with that, if anyone has any last comments or things they want to share -- i know it's been a long meeting, but any legitimate new business or commissioner reports, now would be a good time. and everybody is like no, i am so done. i don't blame you. okay. do we have any public comment on this agenda item? >> operator: there's no public comment at this time. >> thank you. seeing none, public comment is

closed. next item, please. >> clerk: sfgovtv, please show the office of small business slide. >> oh, dear. i've got to be ready for this. thank you, and we will end with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small business in san francisco, and that the office of small business is the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, continue to reach out to the office of small business. >> clerk: item 9, adjournment, action item. >> so moved. >> second. >> clerk: motion by commissioner ortiz-cartagena to adjourn the meeting, seconded by commissioner dooley.

roll call vote. [roll call] >> it's hard to hear someone because there's a lot of static. >> clerk: okay. [roll call] >> clerk: meeting is adjourned at 9:00 p.m. thank you.

>> how i really started my advocacy was through my own personal experiences with discrimination as a trans person. and when i came out as trans, you know, i experienced discrimination in the workplace. they refused to let me use the women's bathroom and fired me. there were so many barriers that other trans folks had in